The One-Year Mark: Part 5

Let’s recap, shall we? My sister arranges to move out of town, leaving my 68-year-old aging mom stranded in Chicago area.

Dutiful daughter that I am, my family and I decide to move Mom closer to us. We go to Chicago for a visit for Thanksgiving 2007, and on the drive home to Pittsburgh, we prop my diabetic, obese, cardiac-patient Mom (aka Chiquita or Grandma Chiquita) in the front seat of the minivan. Here goes nothin’.

Cue the chest pains. There’s a stop in the ER in Sandusky, Ohio; some vomiting by my 6-year-old; and then we arrive home. Where we wait nearly three weeks for her moving truck to arrive. My walker-and-wheelchair-using mom now has to climb 2 flights of stairs each day to her bedroom.

Here’s what a typical day looked like over those few weeks:

7:00 am: Kids and I wake up, get dressed and ready for school. Look in on Mom (or just check to make sure I can hear her snore)

7:30 am: Breakfast for kids & Chiquita. Kids eat at kitchen table, Mom gets a tray in her room. She’s so weak and diabetic, I don’t want her attempting the stairs before breakfast.

8:15 am: Leave for bus stop; stop in to let Mom know we’re going. Chances are, she’s still asleep.

8:30 am: Breakfast for me; make coffee for Mom and me. Park Little Sis in front of the TV so I can…

8:45 am to ?: Head upstairs to give Mom a shower and “treatment.” Of course, she’s still asleep. Once she wakes, I’ll help her with breakfast (not that she really needs the help so much as she’s so co-dependent she’ll take any help anyone’s dumb enough to give her…that’d be me). She takes her pills (13 at the time). Then a shower, and her “treatment.” I’ll spare you the details except to say that it involves washing & powdering her delicate skin condition.

Late morning: Help Chiquita down the stairs and get her settled in front of Fox News (*gag*), where she’ll repeat the day’s headlines to me almost incessantly.

Sometime before lunch (hopefully): Cleanup duty begins; head back up to her room, strip the bed and wash the sheets (wet from incontinence), her towels (one from shower plus 2-3 more for her treatment), her pajamas and the previous day’s clothes (she only packed enough for a few days). Bring down her breakfast tray and do kitchen cleanup. Start lunch; must be healthy because I’m feeding a diabetic cardiac patient.

After lunch: take care of my 3 year old (hey, remember her?), alternating with fielding “What are you DOING?” from Mom and losing my mind because I SO did not sign up for this howamIsupposedtocookandcleananddolaundryand groceryshopand handlemykidsandmyhusbandandnowmymomtoo!

3:45 pm: Pick up Big Sis from school bus. Great, now I have three people to take care of!

4:30 pm Start dinner; must be healthy because I’m feeding a diabetic cardiac patient. Must also be something that picky Big Sis will eat unless we want a battle at the dinner table. Allow extra time for incessant interruptions. As 6 pm nears and am interrupted for the 34th time, shout “DO YOU PEOPLE WANT TO EAT DINNER TONIGHT OR NOT?!?”

6:15 pm Mr. Hoagie gets home from work. Inwardly rejoice because the cavalry has arrived.

6:16 pm Heart sinks as he trudges upstairs for a “quick nap” before dinner. Inwardly seethe, slamming pots and pans, until I…

6:20 pm …remember that he’s epileptic so his neurologist has given him carte blanche on sleep. Say a quick prayer of thanks that he didn’t have a seizure driving home from work and kill himself and six other people and commence to feeling guilty that I inwardly seethed at all.

6:45 pm Start dinner for five. Repeatedly get up to get stuff for people. Listen to regurgitated Fox News headlines. Mediate kids’ arguments. Count bites for whiny, perpetually hunger-striking Big Sis. Eat cold food and start clearing table.

7:30 pm Encourage everyone to head up to bed, knowing that that’s the only way I’ll get any peace. Chiquita needs to go up before she’s too tired; we had several instances of wobbliness and near-falls over those weeks.

7:31 pm Chiquita turns Fox News back on.

8:15 pm Kids head upstairs; Mr. Hoagie puts them to bed.

8:20 pm Chiquita (reluctantly) heads upstairs, supported by me.

8:26 pm Arrive at top of stairs. Assist Chiquita in getting ready for bed, including (whoo hoo) another treatment.

9:15 pm Chiquita is tucked in and watching prime time TV in the dark. She invites me to stay and watch with her, but I weasel out of it (feeling guilty) because I. AM. BEYOND.DONE.

9:20 pm Curl up on the couch with Mr. Hoagie to watch The Daily Show.

9:30 pm Fall asleep on the couch.

10:15 pm Mr. Hoagie wakes me up so I can drag my sorry butt to bed. I get to do it all over again tomorrow.

Part 1 • Part 2 • Part 3 • Part 4 • Part 5 • Part 6

Lettuce is wilting.

Still feeling squished. Like a five-day old sandwich now. Wilted lettuce, top slice of bread getting moldy.

Yesterday morning I ran a few errands, one of which was taking the kids to a play at our local library.  While I was there, apparently Mom’s doctor tried to reach me. The one place in town that doesn’t have cell phone reception. When I called home, my husband told me that he had called.

“Which doctor was it?”

“Ummm…he didn’t say.”

“Did he leave a message?”

“No.”

Nice. Very helpful. I’ve been carrying this cell phone on my hip for days in case someone calls, and the one time they do, I’m out of range.

I call mom’s hospital room. No answer.

Did she code? Emergency surgery? More tests? WHAT??!??

I call my sister to see if anyone tried to reach her. No. But she offered to call the nurse’s station and find out.

She calls me back. They took her for a CAT scan. I remember that when I had talked to Chiquita earlier that morning, she’d mentioned that she had a little blood in her urine again. They must be looking for more information.

I sighed, and decided to continue with that morning’s plans. I met my family for lunch at Eat N Park. My husband took the girls home so I could head to the hospital. I called back to see if I could reach Mom or her doctor. No luck.

When I got to the hospital, Mom was in good spirits. I let her nurse know that I’d never connected with the doctor. He told me that her blood count had dropped that morning, and that the doctor had ordered a transfusion of two units of blood. While I was there, the weekend cardiologist stopped in. He said that it looked like she’d be scheduled for a heart catheterization on Monday. They suspect that one or more of her stents (she has 5) may be occluded due to being off the blood thinners for that week.

What he didn’t have to tell me, however, is that this catheterization may (probably will?) take out her kidneys. The dye that they use is tough on the kidneys, and she’s only operating at 50% at best.

Save the heart, or the kidneys?

Not much of a choice.

Extra Sandwiched

I’m feeling a little extra sandwiched today. Here’s the update: Mom’s back in the hospital. Took her in Tuesday afternoon (just a week after she came home from the hospital) at the cardiologist’s recommendation after she had complained of chest pains the night before and had vomited at lunch (in the communal dining room. Mortifying!) that day. Since then, they’ve found that the bladder infection that put her in the hospital the week I was on vacation affected her kidneys. They slowed down, not filtering her blood as efficiently. That resulted in a high potassium level and an elevated level of one of the the cardiac enzymes (which caused the nausea). Also contributing is a little dehydration. Not helping is the fact that they took her off blood thinners when her bladder was bleeding; she was due to begin them again the day after I took her in again.

So the idea is that once her kidneys recover from the “insult” from the infection and all the medications kick in (the blood thinners, potassium meds, etc.), they’ll watch her labs to make sure that all her docs (heart, kidney and GP) are happy with the numbers before they release her.

Whew!

In the meantime, life at home must go on. I’ve arranged playdates for the girls the last three days so I could get to the hospital. Yesterday, I took dinner to a friend of mine who’s recovering from breast cancer surgery. Today, friends from the Washington, D.C. area are coming in to stay overnight. So I took today “off” (from the hospital anyway) to clean the house. It’s no small feat, since it hasn’t had much attention lately due to Chiquita’s 2 hospital visits, the last weeks of school and our vacation.

I’m wiped out.

It feels like my summer hasn’t even started yet…I haven’t had the chance to get the girls on the schedule I’d envisioned (summer bridge workbook, reading and chore enforcement daily, swimming as often as possible, library once a week, visits to museums and amusement parks).

On the bright side, I did lose 3.6 lbs this week at Weight Watchers. I’ve been running so much, I haven’t had time to stop to eat!

I’m trying to remember that this is a marathon, not a sprint. I’ve made a point to have healthier foods around, to ask for help when I need it, to take time to talk (vent) to friends (sometimes via text message and Twitter), and to exercise (taking the stairs at the hospital) and stretch (yoga stretches in the emergency room!).