Mom has NOT passed away! I wasn't thinking when I posted about going to the funeral home to make her final arrangements. I should have said that, while we were still thinking clearly, we went in to make her final arrangements. We wanted to do it while we still had our wits about us and knew what we were doing. She did NOT pass! I am so sorry and, obviously, I'm not thinking as well as I should be! Please forgive me! I went into the dinner thread and saw the posts and, oh lord, I am sorry.
She was admitted to the hospital on Saturday. I went in to the home to see her on Saturday morning and she started talking about sewing buttons on shirts and the dishes were dirty and she needed me to help her get out of bed so she could wash the dishes. The salt shaker was missing.....oh, all kinds of weird things. I knew right away something had happened. They took her to the ER. She was talking about cutting something and not to cut there.
Mom has been on oxygen now for a couple of weeks. She can no longer expel carbon dioxide from her lungs and the gas was building up inside of her. When it got to a certain level, it started to interfere with her thoughts. They had to give her a special breathing treatment, a by-PAP or something like that. It helps to get rid of the extra carbon dioxide. By Saturday night, she was breathing easier and, while she wasn't very alert, she was better. And last night, for the first time in over two weeks, my mother ate dinner! We had to feed her, but she ate....actually we couldn't get it to her mouth fast enough.
It wasn't much, but she ate. And she was hungry. And she was talking to us. She's still very, very weak, but it's a start. They think that the high carbon level combined with the drugs she's on are what was causing her to lose her appetite and to sleep so much. It was all we could do to awaken her some days. And she was getting nasty bc we kept trying to get her awake, trying to get her to eat, trying to interact with her.
I'm going to the hospital to feed her lunch today and I'll see what's going on. As soon as she goes off the oxygen, her level drops quite a bit. So she'll have to continue to be on oxygen for however much time she has left. But they'll have to continue giving her the by-PAP treatments, too, at night to get rid of the carbon dioxide that she cannot get rid of on her own.
We don't know why the nursing home didn't see this as the ER doctor said she had all the signs of carbon dioxide poisoning....I shouldn't say poisoning, but I don't know what else to call it. Too much carbon dioxide in her body: extreme sleepiness, loss of appetite, lethargy, etc. My mother has lost 37 pounds since she was admitted to the nursing home on Labor Day weekend. 37 pounds! That's a lot, even for a healthy person; for someone like Mom, that's just ridiculous. And had I not gone in there on Saturday morning, we don't when somebody would have noticed that she wasn't lucid anymore.
We had had a long talk with the Nursing Director on Thursday night. She said that all of Mom's vital signs were good, that she was responding to the meds to get rid of the pneumonia and, unfortunately, she didn't know what to tell us about Mom's downhill slide, why she was sleeping so much, why she wouldn't eat, why I could never awaken her. That sometimes the body just starts to shut down.She simply did not know why, but she was very sorry. Well, yeah, the body was shutting down....there was too much carbon dioxide in her body and it didn't know what else to do!
She was admitted to the hospital on Saturday. I went in to the home to see her on Saturday morning and she started talking about sewing buttons on shirts and the dishes were dirty and she needed me to help her get out of bed so she could wash the dishes. The salt shaker was missing.....oh, all kinds of weird things. I knew right away something had happened. They took her to the ER. She was talking about cutting something and not to cut there.
Mom has been on oxygen now for a couple of weeks. She can no longer expel carbon dioxide from her lungs and the gas was building up inside of her. When it got to a certain level, it started to interfere with her thoughts. They had to give her a special breathing treatment, a by-PAP or something like that. It helps to get rid of the extra carbon dioxide. By Saturday night, she was breathing easier and, while she wasn't very alert, she was better. And last night, for the first time in over two weeks, my mother ate dinner! We had to feed her, but she ate....actually we couldn't get it to her mouth fast enough.
I'm going to the hospital to feed her lunch today and I'll see what's going on. As soon as she goes off the oxygen, her level drops quite a bit. So she'll have to continue to be on oxygen for however much time she has left. But they'll have to continue giving her the by-PAP treatments, too, at night to get rid of the carbon dioxide that she cannot get rid of on her own.
We don't know why the nursing home didn't see this as the ER doctor said she had all the signs of carbon dioxide poisoning....I shouldn't say poisoning, but I don't know what else to call it. Too much carbon dioxide in her body: extreme sleepiness, loss of appetite, lethargy, etc. My mother has lost 37 pounds since she was admitted to the nursing home on Labor Day weekend. 37 pounds! That's a lot, even for a healthy person; for someone like Mom, that's just ridiculous. And had I not gone in there on Saturday morning, we don't when somebody would have noticed that she wasn't lucid anymore.
We had had a long talk with the Nursing Director on Thursday night. She said that all of Mom's vital signs were good, that she was responding to the meds to get rid of the pneumonia and, unfortunately, she didn't know what to tell us about Mom's downhill slide, why she was sleeping so much, why she wouldn't eat, why I could never awaken her. That sometimes the body just starts to shut down.She simply did not know why, but she was very sorry. Well, yeah, the body was shutting down....there was too much carbon dioxide in her body and it didn't know what else to do!
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