Personal Note: My Recent Absence

Where do I start?  Thursday, three weeks ago, my mother fell.  For those that don’t know, my mother is eighty-six and less than two months from her next birthday.  You can read a bit about her here.    A good number of posts about my mother have to do with hospitalizations.  This is no different.

How dumb is this.  She was cleaning the oven, put one of those racks inside the oven on the floor, walked away, walked back, and slipped on it.  She fell in her right side.  Luckily she did not hit her head, but still she broke her right kneecap ( fractured patella), and got a deep bruise on her right shoulder, but no tear or break.  She spent a week in the hospital, mostly for rehab.  Luckily also they had room for her at the hospital rehab or she would have had to enter a nursing home.  And wants to do that these days?

She was discharged on the following Thursday with a brace on her leg.  She is allowed to put weight on the leg but not allowed to bend it.  She has trouble lifting her right shoulder.  For a week she had a visiting nurse come to the house and a physical and occupational therapists coming to the house.  That was going well.

Then I had to take my mother to the ER again this Thursday night.  Why is everything happening on Thursdays?  This time it was her stomach.  Everything was repeating and she was belching non-stop and couldn't hold down anything.  After this was going on all day I took her to the ER.  They did an endoscopy and no ulcer or cancer but she does have gastritis, which I guess is the best possible outcome.  She was a little better today but still not good.  Between her knee, her shoulder, her stomach, and a headache on top of it, she is one uncomfortable woman.  She’s also understandably crabby.  It’s a cross I’ve had to carry…lol.

She's always had some gastritis but it may have been inflamed from some of the meds she was taking for the pain.  It may have been my fault.  When she was discharged last week, they had added a stomach acid med (Omeprazole?) but for some reason Medicare didn't cover it.  I didn't realize you could get it off the shelf.  By the time I figured this out almost a week had gone by and perhaps the Tramadol she was taking for pain inflamed her gastritis.  They are giving her a couple of other meds (Protonix and Maalox I think) while she's in the hospital.  Hopefully it will be fixed soon. 

The meds for gastritis have helped but not solved it.  The doctors thought there may be more going on.  Something called Gastroparesis.  It involves the transfer of food from the stomach to the small intestine.  It's when the small intestine doesn't open.  It could be caused as a side effect from some of the meds she already takes.  It didn't turn out to be that. 

By the way, I've heard some big burly guys belch, but they have nothing on my mother.  Her belches are probably the most unfeminine belches I've ever heard...lol.

She finally returned home from the hospital this afternoon, again on a Thursday.  How coincidental.  She was supposed to have been discharged each of the last couple of days but every time she would eat her gastric symptoms would return.  As far as the doctors can tell, it's only gastritis, no ulcer, no cancer.  They wanted her to hold down more food before being discharged.  She was reaching a point where she didn’t think she would survive this or ever return home.  But today was a complete turn.  She was lively and moved around briskly, or as brisk as she could with a brace on her right knee.  She was happy to be home.  She was worried about holding down food but so far so good.

Say a prayer for her continued recovery.