Friday was one of those days. Mom had her first session with the physical therapist, and it did not go well. He had her lying on her back on the bed doing leg stretches and she was having trouble breathing, and he got snippy with me because I “undermined his authority” by responding to her needs without clearing it with him first. Even with the oxygen cannula in, her sats didn’t get above 91 and she was laboring so hard to breathe that he cut the session short and let her go back to sitting in her recliner.
I was so relieved that she already had an appointment with the cardiologist that afternoon because I felt sure it was a CHF (congestive heart failure) episode. But the cardiology PA who treats her didn’t hear any congestion in her lungs or heart. They had the results of Monday’s labs sent over and noted that she’s almost dangerously anemic, which might explain the difficulty getting enough oxygen even when the fluid build-up is gone. Since we are seeing the kidney specialist next Monday, and this is something he’s been tracking, cardiology PA left it for him to determine the best course of treatment. I took Mom home and she almost immediately fell asleep in her recliner.
Worn out from a stressful day, at 9:00 p.m. I got into my pajamas, poured a glass of wine and settled in for a West Wing marathon on Netflix. At 9:30, I got a call from the owner of the board and care: Mom had a nosebleed that thet couldn’t stop and they were taking her to the ER. I met them there shortly before 10:00, and it was a LONG night. They got her into triage very fast, considering the unusually large number of people in the waiting room, and had a quick temporary fix to stop the bleeding.
But then, as you can see in the photo, they sent us back out to the waiting room. Where we waited… and waited… and waited. It was cold in that room and Mom was thankful for the cozy flannel pajamas, though she was a little embarrassed about being out in public without her dentures in. And though she complained that the clamp on her nose was uncomfortable, I would have been thankful to have one myself when a young woman sitting across from us suddenly vomited.
It was three hours from the time we were checked in until Mom saw a doctor. He removed a massive blood clot from her nose and thought that would solve the problem, but the bleeding started up again. The culprit, a broken blood vessel, was too high up in her nose for the doctor to see or cauterize, so they had to insert a balloon catheter in her nose to stop the bleeding — a last resort because it’s “uncomfortable” (the doctor’s word). Mom cried out in pain when it was inserted and kept exclaiming that she couldn’t stand it because it hurt so much. It was 3:00 a.m. by the time this happened, and 3:30 by the time we were leaving the ER. The owner of the care home and her husband had waited with us the whole time, and they drove Mom home once she was discharged. I got in my car and immediately began to sob from exhaustion and helplessness at not being able to ease her pain.
I got about five hours of sleep before I got another call from the care home telling me that Mom had pulled the balloon halfway out during the night. I drank a big mug of strong coffee, threw some clothes on, and headed over there. The balloon catheter was supposed to be left in place until Monday, when we had been directed to see an ENT doctor to remove it. I called the ENT office and left a message for the on-call doctor, who called me back quite promptly and said that we could leave it as is unless it started bleeding again. Thankfully, that did not happen. And the balloon didn’t hurt when it was only half inserted, so Mom was much more comfortable for the duration of the weekend than she would have been otherwise.
All’s well that ends well, I guess.
The Little Moments 