Still Kickin'

Sorry for the long silence.  It's been a little nuts.  I actually had to go back to the last post to see at what point in the "Saga" I had left you hanging.

Wednesday morning Hubby and Sonny Boy got up early and loaded their stuff and headed to North Dakota for the big duck hunt.  Igor went to school and I went to the hospital to hang out with Mom.  I found Mom REALLY groggy, but not unreasonably so considering.   I hung out most of the day pushing fluids on her as the doctors had cleared her to leave as soon as she urinated (she'd had a Foley catheter for a couple of days)  ALL DAY LONG she did not pee.  She drank 4  or more big cups of ice water, a root bear, a cup of coffee and they hooked her back up the IV and gave her nice sized bolus of fluid that way, nyet, still nothing. The whole time all this is going on Mom is like a she is three sheets to wind, not making much sense, dozing off in the middle of a sentence and just generally out of it despite the fact she had only had tylenol since early morning.

When 2:00 rolled around I went to do my volunteer duty in Igor's classroom and spent a pleasant half hour outlining kindergarten kids on giant sheets of paper.  It was fun and nice break and I got to put some of the faces into Igor's classroom.  My duty was up just before school let out so I ran a quick errand to the post office and then back to the school to pick up Igor and go back to the hospital.

I took Igor to the hospital with me thinking that hopefully Mom had peed and we would simply be getting her dressed and out the door.  No such luck.  Mom was still way out of it, and was complaining that her chest hurt and got way overly winded when I walked her to the door of the hospital room.  The nurses called her doctor (who happened to be Russian - got a little story about him) who then decided to draw some blood and run and EKG.  Around this time I figure she's staying the night, the nurses are asking me if I want her home, or at the hospital as it's apparent I'm managing alone with a 6 year old who is sitting in the corner playing Angry Birds while Mom hallucinates that her brother is standing behind me.  I'm getting more than concerned at her altered state because by this point the only pain med she'd had was tylenol and the last narcotic was over  12 hours earlier.  I'm sure the nurses were having enough of me as well since I was on top of every odd thing.  The nurse that did Mom's intake on Sunday came in, unfortunately she was assigned down the hall but helped alleviate my fears that Mom wasn't having totally bizarre stuff, as she'd seen many older people respond to anesthesia like that (even the next day or two) and the lack of pee was likely due to her being behind on fluids since she was NPO for two days straight despite the fact she had an IV.  That nurse was very reassuring, and had her little angel wings on that day.

Well Igor and I stayed until the EKG was ran and there wasn't anything that made anyone go screaming for the doctor or pushing the code button on the wall and the phone battery went dead from hours of Angry Birds.    I got Mom settled in the bed, alerted the nurses I was leaving and drove through McDonald's to get us some supper and got us both of us into bed early.

The next morning after dropping Igor at school I find Mom much more coherent and the plan for the day is to give her a unit of blood (her blood counts were way off) and release her.  She had evidently started peeing in the middle of the night - every hour on the hour- according to her and the nurses.  Of course getting the blood started and the two hours it took to infuse, etc she was released at 2:15 on Thursday.

Since Thursday she's doing pretty well.  Her shoulder is sore of course, but she's doing surprisingly good about trying to use it and do the PT prescribed exercises sent home with her.  The first night home I gave her a percocet at bedtime and that wasn't the best of ideas as she told me she thought I was up gathering laundry out of her room in the middle of the night until she turned the light on and I disappeared.  Since then it's been Tylenol and really very little of that.  The color of bruising on the woman is impressive.  Not only is the shoulder bruised, but her whole chest and her breasts as well.  The most exciting thing is it's been 8 days since her last cigarette.  While in the hospital she couldn't smoke of course and when she got out I went and got her some patches and gum.  She's been changing the patches out daily but hasn't been smoking.  I think the success has a few degrees of help with it as her smoking had been cut back a lot when she moved here as we don't allow her to smoke indoors so she was down to about 1/2 a pack a day there, then when she was in the hospital for several days being nagged at by just about every health care worker through the door and realizing she had already gone four days without she's giving it a shot.  I hope she sticks with it.

Perhaps the most worrisome thing is that today I reminded her to change or orthopedic doctor appointment as it clashed with timing of her psychiatrist appointment and then went to pick up the kids from school and Igor to get his glasses fixed.  When I got home she had written the two down, Doctors and what for, times, etc had the phone number out but then told me she just couldn't do it, she was to anxiety filled to make the phone call.  She was really upset about it as she was concerned she wouldn't be able to function on her own (which I've been wondering for a while now) but things like appointments and such she has been able to handle on her own.   I don't know, I told her she definitely needs to tell the shrink that when she sees him next week.

In other news the boy's duck hunt was a success.  Sonny Boy had lots of fun.  Not too many ducks were killed, but Hubby proclaimed they let the boys do most of the shooting.  I've been busy selling stuff on E-bay trying to clean out some old kid's clothes and the like.  I've also been busy catching up with cub scout stuff - as in I was at cub scouts tonight and Sonny Boy was at football practice.