Mom update

Oops I haven't written in awhile! What's new....

Last week I flew home to Illinois again to see my mom now that she is awake and talking. She was moved to the rehab unit for a few weeks. When I first visited it was a complete turn-around from when I visited last! She was able to sit up in bed and pretty much was just like my old mom. I really couldn't tell a difference in how she spoke or in her personality, for which I was totally relieved. Throughout the week I saw her get better. She was eating a little more at each meal so they finally took out her gastric tube. She said this hurt quite a bit and it definitely made it hard for her to get in and out of bed. At first she had a catheter in, but then in the middle of my visit they took it out for a trial- only to find that she couldn't control her urge to go. This freaked her out because she thought she was going to have to have another surgery or have a catheter indefinitely. The docs reassured her that this was somewhat normal, and that her bladder could be retrained. Well the next day when I came in she had already retrained it!

She has lost a lot of muscle tone and it is still hard for her to stand or walk for long periods of time. She still has to use her walker although she is able to go a little further each time. She spends at least 5 hours a day doing therapy, which includes exercises with therabands to work her muscles, cognition exercises to work on areas such as memory and computation, and speech therapy. I didn't get to see her in therapy, but she showed me her daily log in which she had to write what she did that day, who visited, what she ate, etc. Her hands shake a lot so she also has a little ball of pink silly putty that she uses to build dexterity in her fingers. My dad and I were playing with the putty a bit- we all were cracking up because I guess my dad had wet hands from using an alcohol swab and so when he was kneading it his both of his hands ended up entirely pink!

My mom had plenty of visitors besides us, and her room was filled with flowers and cards. The nurses were also really good to her, although I always joked that they probably drew straws to see who had to have her as a patient that day. She is a total pain in the ass! She used the call button for everything- and when she couldn't find it she would just yell out the nurses name until they came. I spend a good portion of my visit trying to either convince her not to call the nurse or actually physically holding the call button away from her. I was trying to keep her independent, which was frustrating because she wanted help with everything. If she wanted to move up an inch in bed she would call (she was entirely capable at this point of doing so herself), or if she had a totally medically-irrelevant question. She even called just to introduce the nurse to me. We had to keep telling her- "MOM the nurse has other patients!" Ridiculous. She knew she was a pain in the ass to. I bet you those nurses argued every morning who would have April...

She gets to go home on Monday- tomorrow actually! I think she is going to have some nursing help at home, because she isn't entirely independent and is at risk for falls. My dad working on getting her disability because she won't be working for a very long time. She is just going to be too fatigued. Plus, she has been officially been diagnosed with Post-traumatic stress disorder a result of the whole incident. She has anxiety and panic attacks almost every night. I asked her whether she could hear me and what it was like when she was sedated on the ventilator, and she said it was all one big nightmare. She could hear us, and we just became part of her awful dream. Basically, she doesn't want to talk about any of it, especially any mention of the events in the ICU. It doesn't help that she had to be cooped up in a sterile, white hospital room for a month as well. She did tell me a little about the morning she went to the hospital. Apparently when she was driving to work, several people had reported to the police that she was swerving in the lanes like she was inebriated. She had even jumped a few curbs. She made it to work somehow, only to find that the cops had been chasing her, and had come into her store to track her down! I guess that's when a co-worker drove her to the hospital. Crazy...

The rest of the time I was home I hung out with my sister and her boyfriend. It was my sis's b-day and so it was nice to celebrate with her even though she was super stressed from studying. I always seem to come home right before an organic chemistry test... It was OK though because I had studying to do myself. I also got to see my old high-school buddy in Chicago while I was home. I haven't really gone out in the city so that was fun, especially after a Cubs game! All in all, it was a nice relaxing week and I was so happy to be able fly home knowing that my mom was alright