![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Continuing Drama
Wednesday, April 23rd, 2014 02:25 pmWell, I am back in the office after a rather longer than anticipated break for Easter.
My original plans were to add Maunday Thursday and yesterday, the Tuesday after Easter Monday into the mix and have a long relaxing weekend. In the event I was off all last week. Mum had another stroke and we were very anxious at one point.
The weekend before Easter I was contacted by my sister to tell me that Mum was back in hospital following a suspected stroke in addition to that she suffered last October. We were very worried (frankly we were scared, if I’m honest), particularly as she appeared to have lost the power of speech and it wasn’t clear that she could understand what was being said to her. For my own peace of mind, I am glad that I didn’t get there in time to see her still curled into a ball sobbing with fright. No-one wants to see their elderly Mum in that state. I know it sounds selfish of me, but I really think it would have hit me too hard.
Still. The crisis passed, and over the period of the week, she recovered to the extent that she was able to sit in a chair and chat, occasionally wandering a short distance. Her memory though, is probably even worse than it was before and when she gets tired her speech slurs. There is still something that needs to be looked at and I fear that no-one quite knows what the problem is. She was kept in hospital until last night because earlier in the week she seemed to have some sort of small seizure in her sleep. From time to time she complains of a pain like pins and needles in her right hand and wrist, and one time when I was massaging it for her, the left side of her mouth drooped alarmingly as if she was having another stroke. That passed, happily, but it has not been explained. Oddly, the droop on her mouth was the opposite side to all the other symptoms. It is her right wrist that aches, her right ankle that swells and when she is drinking, the right side of her mouth that gives her difficulty.
I am not going to details here, but we are once again left dissatisfied with the standard of care she received and some of the decisions seem remarkably misguided to the layman. There may be good reasons for giving a frail 85 (nearly 86) year old dangerous antipsychotics to calm her down, in place of mild tranquilisers, but I have yet to hear the case made. We will not be letting this go unremarked, nor will we let them get away without an explanation of why it took 12 hours between diagnosis and commencement of treatment, followed by a hospital transfer of which the family were left uninformed.
Still. Guerrilla warfare with the NHS Trust notwithstanding, we have our Mum back home and I have a photo of her sitting in my niece’s living room, grinning like a good ‘un over a steaming mug of tea.
I need a rest now, though, I think.
My original plans were to add Maunday Thursday and yesterday, the Tuesday after Easter Monday into the mix and have a long relaxing weekend. In the event I was off all last week. Mum had another stroke and we were very anxious at one point.
The weekend before Easter I was contacted by my sister to tell me that Mum was back in hospital following a suspected stroke in addition to that she suffered last October. We were very worried (frankly we were scared, if I’m honest), particularly as she appeared to have lost the power of speech and it wasn’t clear that she could understand what was being said to her. For my own peace of mind, I am glad that I didn’t get there in time to see her still curled into a ball sobbing with fright. No-one wants to see their elderly Mum in that state. I know it sounds selfish of me, but I really think it would have hit me too hard.
Still. The crisis passed, and over the period of the week, she recovered to the extent that she was able to sit in a chair and chat, occasionally wandering a short distance. Her memory though, is probably even worse than it was before and when she gets tired her speech slurs. There is still something that needs to be looked at and I fear that no-one quite knows what the problem is. She was kept in hospital until last night because earlier in the week she seemed to have some sort of small seizure in her sleep. From time to time she complains of a pain like pins and needles in her right hand and wrist, and one time when I was massaging it for her, the left side of her mouth drooped alarmingly as if she was having another stroke. That passed, happily, but it has not been explained. Oddly, the droop on her mouth was the opposite side to all the other symptoms. It is her right wrist that aches, her right ankle that swells and when she is drinking, the right side of her mouth that gives her difficulty.
I am not going to details here, but we are once again left dissatisfied with the standard of care she received and some of the decisions seem remarkably misguided to the layman. There may be good reasons for giving a frail 85 (nearly 86) year old dangerous antipsychotics to calm her down, in place of mild tranquilisers, but I have yet to hear the case made. We will not be letting this go unremarked, nor will we let them get away without an explanation of why it took 12 hours between diagnosis and commencement of treatment, followed by a hospital transfer of which the family were left uninformed.
Still. Guerrilla warfare with the NHS Trust notwithstanding, we have our Mum back home and I have a photo of her sitting in my niece’s living room, grinning like a good ‘un over a steaming mug of tea.
I need a rest now, though, I think.