Some good, some bad today…
I got an early morning call from HealthSouth – mom was being admitted to the hospital across the street. When they went to do her feeding at midnight, they pulled some blood from her tube. They sent her to get checked for internal bleeding. I got there at 7AM and really nothing had been done yet. After a few hours I got to talk to the doctor who looked at her and felt that the blood we were seeing is old blood. The color was dark, her hemoglobin count was good, and her blood pressure was normal. Nothing to indicate that there was an active bleed. GREAT NEWS!
We were told that the GI doctor still wanted to see her though, with no idea of what time. Because we didn’t have a discharge time, HealthSouth sent over orders for her to have PT, OT, and speech done today. She basically had an eval with them all. The big benefit today was that she got to have a swallow study done. They did an x-ray while she swallowed to see how her muscles were working. More good news is that they are working. Not completely, not strong, but they are working. Something that she can continue to work on. Things look very promising for her to be able to regain that function and eventually eat normally. No guarantees and no idea of when that may happen, but it looks promising.
The GI doctor finally arrived 7PM. He’s going to do an “EGD” (endoscopy procedure) to make extra sure there is no bleeding. He may change her peg tube. More importantly, he’s going to see if there is a blockage somewhere. She has not been absorbing her food and that’s definitely a problem. Because she gets her meds through her feeding tube, that also means she’s probably not getting all of that either. That test will be done tomorrow morning sometime.
Here’s the bad… I had to leave for a bit to take Sam to an appointment. While I was gone, mom decided to take it upon herself to look for me since I was not back at the time I said I would be. I got stuck in traffic and was 15 minutes late. She got out of bed, fell, and banged her face on the floor. She has a big, fat lip – I’m hoping that’s the extent of it. She doesn’t realize it now, but that is going to throw her speech therapy back a few days. Not to mention it looks super painful. It’s only going to be worse tomorrow. She was taken for CT and x-rays to make sure that nothing else happened. I’m still waiting for those results.
Of course I had a LONG talk with her. About 45 minutes of lecturing her. She said that she won’t do it again, she understands why trying to get out of bed alone is so dangerous, and she didn’t realize that she really couldn’t do it. What’s so frustrating is that we had a great afternoon talking about the future despite sitting here in the hospital.
The nurse just gave her her nighttime meds, including a dose of morphine to preempt the pain. If she hasn’t been sleeping before, this should definitely help her get at least a few hours of solid sleep tonight. I’m not sure how long I can last here tonight. It’s been a very long day and I plan on being here early in the morning before she goes back for her testing. I’ll update tomorrow as soon as I have news.