Post by J. Hova on Jan 17, 2021 0:01:53 GMT -5
Mom has had a rough few months as I've shared on here. A couple of months ago she fell and broke her shoulder that resulted in her needing to go to a nursing home and rehab facility to get over the initial issues. She's been home for about a month and been doing extremely well with her in home physical therapy, nursing aides, etc. She was doing well enough that next week we were talking about getting cleared for more day to day activities (driving being the main one).
While she was in the nursing home, she started to develop a blood clot in one of her legs. I've been pretty vocal about how little I thought of that place, but whatever. As a result of this, she was put on a new blood thinner and kept on that with consultations with her primary physician. You generally don't go on those and just randomly come off. She had an appointment with her almost two weeks ago and the doctor wanted to keep her on those for a few months and reevaluate at that time.
Fast forward to this week, she was putting away dishes and pans from the dishwasher and smacked her head on the corner of the door of one of her cabinets. I've said this and she has admitted to this in the past, she is a klutz. We didn't think too much of it but she complained about how tender it was right where she smacked it, which isn't shocking. I'm speculating that it was this and blood thinners that caused the problem.
Yesterday morning, she called me and told me how bad she felt. It sounded like a really bad stomach flu or bug. She asked if I could come over and bring her some pepto as she didn't have any there. I went over to her house and she had been throwing up a pretty good amount. She had a basin and I tried to get her to take some pepto and she couldn't hold that down. I gave her some water, and the same thing. At this point, I figured rest was the best idea so I helped her back to her bed and she went to sleep almost immediately.
I ran home and grabbed my work laptop and decided to work that day from her house. I came back and got a little work done, checked on her and she was sleeping still and thought that was great. I'll always subscribe to the theory that in a lot of cases, sleep is the best medicine. About an hour after this, her home visiting nurse called and said she was going to be there in about half an hour for her scheduled visit which I had completely forgotten about. I explained to her what was going on and we almost cancelled the appointment but then decided to have her come and just check her out. At this point, her vitals all checked out fine but she was next to unresponsive. The nurse said I should call 911 and get her to the hospital, which I did.
We got her to the ER about 1:30 or so Friday afternoon and they did a banger of a job finding the problem and gave her a ton of reversal drugs. They don't do the surgery there that she needed and I had a choice between going to Peoria or Iowa City which are roughly the same distance. I pretty much flipped a coin and it came down to Peoria. They transported her there and got her in almost immediately to do the surgery and they were really trying to prepare me for the worst case scenario. It's not like I didn't have those thoughts driving down there.
She was in surgery for about 3 hours and got out about 8pm. She was responsive afterwards but they cautioned me that things were still up in the air as it was a pretty big injury but the location was promising. She was out of it and intubated, so I left about 10 and drove home. I came back this morning and all limbs respond and she can move them on command. She can't talk over a whisper since she was intubated for about 16 hours or so, but she told me that she loved me too when I told her I loved her and was somewhat responsive when I held up my phone for her to talk to my sister and niece. She still has a long road to recovery, but I'm really optimistic on her chances of a meaningful recovery, especially since the words, "Amazing" and "Incredible" were said out loud during one of her assessments that I was there for today by people who do this stuff for a living.
While she was in the nursing home, she started to develop a blood clot in one of her legs. I've been pretty vocal about how little I thought of that place, but whatever. As a result of this, she was put on a new blood thinner and kept on that with consultations with her primary physician. You generally don't go on those and just randomly come off. She had an appointment with her almost two weeks ago and the doctor wanted to keep her on those for a few months and reevaluate at that time.
Fast forward to this week, she was putting away dishes and pans from the dishwasher and smacked her head on the corner of the door of one of her cabinets. I've said this and she has admitted to this in the past, she is a klutz. We didn't think too much of it but she complained about how tender it was right where she smacked it, which isn't shocking. I'm speculating that it was this and blood thinners that caused the problem.
Yesterday morning, she called me and told me how bad she felt. It sounded like a really bad stomach flu or bug. She asked if I could come over and bring her some pepto as she didn't have any there. I went over to her house and she had been throwing up a pretty good amount. She had a basin and I tried to get her to take some pepto and she couldn't hold that down. I gave her some water, and the same thing. At this point, I figured rest was the best idea so I helped her back to her bed and she went to sleep almost immediately.
I ran home and grabbed my work laptop and decided to work that day from her house. I came back and got a little work done, checked on her and she was sleeping still and thought that was great. I'll always subscribe to the theory that in a lot of cases, sleep is the best medicine. About an hour after this, her home visiting nurse called and said she was going to be there in about half an hour for her scheduled visit which I had completely forgotten about. I explained to her what was going on and we almost cancelled the appointment but then decided to have her come and just check her out. At this point, her vitals all checked out fine but she was next to unresponsive. The nurse said I should call 911 and get her to the hospital, which I did.
We got her to the ER about 1:30 or so Friday afternoon and they did a banger of a job finding the problem and gave her a ton of reversal drugs. They don't do the surgery there that she needed and I had a choice between going to Peoria or Iowa City which are roughly the same distance. I pretty much flipped a coin and it came down to Peoria. They transported her there and got her in almost immediately to do the surgery and they were really trying to prepare me for the worst case scenario. It's not like I didn't have those thoughts driving down there.
She was in surgery for about 3 hours and got out about 8pm. She was responsive afterwards but they cautioned me that things were still up in the air as it was a pretty big injury but the location was promising. She was out of it and intubated, so I left about 10 and drove home. I came back this morning and all limbs respond and she can move them on command. She can't talk over a whisper since she was intubated for about 16 hours or so, but she told me that she loved me too when I told her I loved her and was somewhat responsive when I held up my phone for her to talk to my sister and niece. She still has a long road to recovery, but I'm really optimistic on her chances of a meaningful recovery, especially since the words, "Amazing" and "Incredible" were said out loud during one of her assessments that I was there for today by people who do this stuff for a living.
