Frustration

Mom was sitting up in bed this morning when Dad & I arrived at the hospital. She looked and sounded much more alert today than she has in a long time, thankfully. Her breakfast tray had already been removed by the Food Service staff, but she reported that she had eaten "a good breakfast" but wasn't able to remember what was on the tray or the quantity that she had consumed. She said she needed to use the bathroom, so two nurses came in and assisted her to the bathroom where she peed a good quantity (judging from the sound of it, which drifted through the almost-closed bathroom door). Although she wanted to return to the bed  — of course  — the nurses convinced her that she really needed to sit up in the chair for a bit. Not long after they got her settled, she requested another dose of medication for the pain, which they administered. Shortly afterwards, she drifted off into a fitful sleep in the chair, waking periodically for brief moments to ask about noises in the hallway, etc.

When lunch arrived, we could not get her to wake up enough to eat, so we kept her tray off to the side so it would not be collected. She finally work up sometime later, almost mid-afternoon, and one of the nurses and Dad managed to force her to eat about three bites of the "Lemon Baked Trout" and a couple of bites of her dinner roll, plus she drank a few sips of her iced tea. That was all she would eat, but at least it was something.

After being given more medication for pain at her request, she drifted off to sleep again until the Physical Therapists arrived. She complained when they insisted that she needed to walk with them, but finally allowed them to help her to a standing position and grabbed onto the walker. She would not take any steps, however. Each time they instructed her to move her feet and take a tiny step forward, she just slowly leaned into the walker with her head bent way down towards the floor. They asked her if she was looking at something, and she stood up straight again and replied, "Of course I'm looking at something!" When they asked what she was looking at, she just closed her eyes and didn't respond. It almost looked like she went to sleep again standing there beside them. The whole scenario repeated a time or two, and they could never get her to take a single step.

They finally gave up on the walking and allowed her to sit down again, thinking they would try a few exercises. After asking her to extend her right leg straight out in front of her and repeating the request with much prodding a coule of times, she finally complied and did it beautifully. But when they asked her to move her other leg, she just sat there with her eyes closed. One of the therapists gently touched her left leg and repeated the request a couple of times. Without opening her eyes, Mom raised her right leg again instead of the left. Repeated requests from the therapists got no response from her whatsoever and she remained immobile with her eyes closed.

They asked her if she wanted to get back into bed and she finally roused herself long enough to answer Yes!" and let them help her over to the bed. As soon as they left, her IV started beeping. I've been watching the nurses carefully and figuring out how to check the line for kinks and which buttons on the pump to restart the IV, but this time my attempts brought no success. Even one of the nurses was unable to get it fixed, so she just turned-off the IV pump for a bit until someone else could look at it.

Based on all the events of the day so far, I am very frustrated that Mom would not eat much for us or drink much, that she was unable to work with the Physical Therpists at all today, and that she is constantly complaining of pain (even moaning in her sleep sometimes) and just not doing very well at all right now. 

Another addition to the frustrations of the day was that a cold front came through the area last night and it was 45°F on our front porch this morning, according to my outdoor thermometer. Sheesh.  At least I have a couple of warm items of clothing to wear, although most of my cold-weather clothing is back home, of course, in Tennessee. Since it was much cooler today, I decided to wear something other than my staple flip-flops. I  my pink crocs! 




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