October 14, 2009

Last Thursday I drove to Leitchfield to check on my mother. My sister, Mary Sue, had said she looked frail.

It rained all the way there. It was like driving through a car wash at times. When I got there she was gone to the doctor and arrived about 20 minutes after I did.

She said he put her on Aricept for her memory and on an antidepressant. She had been on an antidepressant earlier but I think she thought it was like taking an antibiotic - that when the bottle was empty, you were done. So we start that again.

Late that afternoon her doctor's office called to report that she was dehydrated and needed to drink more fluids.

During the night on Friday she started having diarrhea and was feeling very weak and shaky. She said she was a little dizzy or light headed as well. Around noon, she fainted and hit the floor hard. She was awake almost at once and said she needed to go to the bathroom. We helped her get there and the next thing we know, she fainted again and this time hit her head on the stool she keeps in the bathroom to sit on while rolling her hair. She had a large goose egg on her forehead right above her left eye. I turned around and called 911. She was able to get back to the couch with assistance and said she didn't need to go to the hospital. I disagreed and we had to talk her into going. Good thing we did. She was severely dehydrated and her potassium was too low. They started an IV and got the fluid running almost full force. She started looking a little better as the bag began to empty. They did a CT scan on her head, a chest X-ray, and numerous blood tests.

They called her doctor and he said to admit her for observation. Mama told the nurse that she couldn't stay all night. "I have a beef roast in the oven and I have plans for this evening." She stayed! By the next morning she was feeling and looking much better. We brought her home and she slept quite a bit all day.

I came home on Tuesday and Mary Sue plans to stay until Thursday. I think the time has come for Mary Sue and I to trade off two or three weeks at a time so that one of us is there at all times.

I will admit that it was a very hard few days for me. My stress level was way too high. I needed the quiet day we had on Sunday as much as she did. I still have to go to bed early and sleep late. I still need a lot of sleep to be able to function, especially when things are stressful. Even now what would not bother anyone else still stresses me out.

Trying to figure out how to help Mama, how to have someone there with her all the time now, and still keep myself relatively stress free. That sounds awful but stress really makes my Graves disease worse so I really need to address that issue for my own sake.