What's Been Going On

It's been three years since I have posted to the blog and I am truly shocked by that!  We've lived a lot of life since my last post so I will try to catch up.

In October 2018 my MIL took a fall and ended up breaking her wrist.  It was pretty bad.  We still aren't quite sure how it happened but got a call to meet her at the hospital.  At first they said it was a sprain so we spent several hours in the ER for them to wrap it up and send us on our way.  It wasn't long.....the next day.....that she re-injured it and this time we found out it was broken.

This is where it gets tricky.  It was a Friday afternoon that we met her in the ER again and the doctor said they were going to have to schedule her for surgery Saturday morning due to the severity of the break.  We sat in the ER with her for several hours while arrangements were being made and tried our best to answer her repeated questions about where was she, she wasn't sick, why can't she go home, etc.  It is the hardest thing to explain to a person who can't remember in the short term and truly does not know what is going on.

Saturday morning we got to the hospital very early for the surgery that lasted about an hour.  Thankfully she did fine with the anesthesia and the doctor said the surgery went well.  We were instructed to meet her in her room as they escorted her down a patient elevator.  We barely got off the elevator before we met her coming out of the patient elevator asking all kinds of questions and using her fingernail to try to pry the staples out of her arm.  She had unwrapped her bandage that was keeping her from bleeding and didn't understand why her arm was hurting.  This became a long journey of healing and explaining what was going on.

When we got her to her room and the nurses, thankfully one male who could handle her, were able to get her arm bandaged back up.  They gave her pain medicine which allowed her to fall asleep.  The nurses were beside themselves, as were we, about how difficult she was being ----she told one nurse "it was her arm and they couldn't tell her what to do".  It was at that point they communicated with the doctor that she was going to need to have someone sit with her 24/7 so that she would not hurt herself trying to figure out what was going on with the pain in her arm.

My husband and I stayed with her over the weekend and were able to get breaks with the sitters which was helpful.  I have always believed that something good can come of something bad.  We were disappointed because we had to cancel a weekend getaway with another couple when the MIL took the fall and was hospitalized.  For the first time, I had some real feelings of frustration and at one point had a little pity party.  It ended soon enough but it was still feelings that I didn't expect and I had to have a "little talk with myself" to put things in perspective.

So, you ask, what was the good that came of something bad.  In the midst of this hospital stay, the hospital staff saw quickly the current state that my MIL was in and communicated that message to the doctor.  We raised concerns with the medical team treating her about how she would return to the nursing home given her tendency to unwrap her bandages and pick at the staples.  The doctor said he was going to write orders for her to go to a rehabilitation facility and given her Alzheimer's would recommend another facility that could do both---the facility we had originally wanted her to go to but couldn't get her in.  We were quickly visited by a social worker from the facility who assured us she would be admitted and that she could transition from a "rehab patient" to a "resident" after 30 days.  I literally broke down and cried----this is the good that came of something bad!  Praise the Lord!