The long slow nothing

With the exception of the incident with the therapist the hospital was just a long slow crawl of waiting and worrying.  I'm sure even more so for my mother who felt crummy and looked worse. She did insist on having some makeup and her own underwear. You have to have at least something to make yourself not feel like you're fading into the woodwork. Even getting the green Jello instead of the read Jello makes you feel a little tiny bit different.

The doctors are the most frustrating part. Her hospitalist was great but syncing with her schedule was practically impossible, and unless it's an emergency it's pretty impossible to just talk to a doctor on your own schedule. By the time I left California between conversations I had had with her and my mom's confused and confusing description it seems that the lost blood had probably gone into her lower bowels. Sautrday mom had had a particularly lengthy and upsetting bout of diarrhea that apparently had some old blood in it. Her overflow of Coumadin was probably due to her not eating, which was probably due to her not feeling good from the back pain and anemia; a vicious circle.

Sunday when I came in ( the day after the bad therapy incident). The first thing mom did was give me a grocery list of clothes to bring, punctuated by "I'm going home tomorrow. No matter what anyone says." I gave her my skeptical look which set her off on a rant with me responding that she needed to cooperate with the next physical therapist. Fortunately just at that moment  the new therapist came in and the first words out of her mouth were "Let's see what we can do to get you out of here." Later I found out that she had heard our conversation out in the hall; timing's everything.

Apparently all went well and Monday, while I was flying home to Seattle mom was discharged to her house. She'll have a nurse and therapist visiting her regularly. I'm still not sure she doesn't need to be in a managed care facility of some sort but one battle at a time.
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Just a few notes before I leave this story. My apologies to the very nice orderly who I unknowingly kept saying "hello"  to in the elevator until she finally laughed and said "Hello again." I looked at her blanklyand she laughed, "I had my scrubs on before. We've been in the elevator twice already" I was so tired I hadn't even noticed the first two times.

That hospital smell sticks with you all day. It's an odd mixture of chemicals, cleaners and human smells. It clings likes cigarette smoke in a bar.

For future reference - The cafeteria closes at 2:00 on Saturdays, is closed on Sundays and closes at 7:00 on weekdays. And at lunch during the week forget it, the local highschool kids come here for burgers and fries and you can wait twenty minutes to order. I just missed it every time.

For future reference - Don't break your mother on future trips. If she falls put her in the car and go to the ER immediately.

This is how the bruise looked Tuesday before she went to the hospital. It faded in color but doubled in size by Thursday.