Sometimes it sneaks up on you

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Driving home from work there is a cemetary I pass. Monday as I was driving home still unaware that my Mom had fallen and what was to come, I was looking, but not - through the cemetary fence. You know how you sit in your car (when you're not in a hurry) and just zone out? You might be looking at something but you're not really seeing .. that's what I was doing.

Right before the light turned green I realized I was gazing at a lot more flowers than usual on many, many graves in the cemetary. Not sure I have ever seen that many flowers there since I've been driving that route.

Then I realized why.

Sunday was Mother's Day.

Kind of took my breath away.



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Things have changed!

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I broke my ankle in 2000. Or 2001. I can never remember. Regardless. My mom is in the hospital I was in. I was in your garden variety semi-private room, had a morphine pump and IV fluids attached - even on my trips to the bathroom. The menu was put on the tray with your meal and you went through it and checked off your choices and sent it back with your dirty dishes.

Fast forward 9 or 10 years depending, and my mom has a private room, flat screen TV, no IV attached, a huge window with a view that has a parking lot but also a golf course and tree tops across the neighborhood.

The walls are painted a warm brown, the cabinets are cherry (probably laminate but I didn't check that close) and even the necessary tile floor isn't industrial white with speckles.

The bathroom has 2"x2" brown tile, fashionable wall sconces on either side of the mirror and a stylish faucet and knobs. There are framed prints on the walls - even in the bathroom, a shower with pretty earth toned tile with contemporary looking drains.

There is a large drawer under the TV that is accessed by punching in a code (and it's electronic and probably tracked) where all patient medical supplies are kept - meds and syringes and I don't know what else. My mom has a hospital bracelet that has a bar code. Every time someone comes in the room to administer any kind of med they scan the bar code which pulls up her info on the computer in the room. They input the information and when they are done - they scan the bar code again. The hallways are quiet, everything is organized and just flippin' COOL!!

Obviously I am impressed. I didn't realize it but this is a new wing of the hospital that has only been open weeks. WEEKS! So everything is new, the latest and greatest and they thought of everything! Kind of made me think they surveyed patients and staff alike and accommodated everyone. Me too! I was very comfortable. There was a small couch that had a pull out from underneath and the chair that I sat in reclined and had a matching ottoman. I mean - you can tell it's a hospital, there is still one wall covered with plugs and places for every kind of monitor and thing that goes beep. But obviously someone went out of their way to consider the ambiance as part of patient care, as well as making visitors welcome while supplying the staff with everything that makes their jobs easier while being more efficient as well.

Oh, and remember those big dinner carts with tray after tray all stacked on a rack and passed out room to room to room with a lot of clatter and activity? Uh huh. There is a standard menu that has options a patient can choose from depending on their diet. Including personal pizzas with choices of toppings. There are set times (like between 6:30 and 7:30) when dinner is delivered, and the patient calls a number and orders whatever they want. My mom had grape juice. JUST grape juice. I'm sure if she tries to do that for more than one meal she will be encouraged to eat more, but there was no tray delivered with something from each food group, diner coffee cup and silverware/napkin/and salt and pepper packets wrapped in plastic. I'm guessing they throw away a lot less food and patients are happier.

As stressful as hospitals are - this is totally the way to go.

There is something they do there that I imagine other hospitals do but I mention it because I think it is so sweet and makes me smile every time. When you hear a lullaby in the air - it means a baby has just been born. I heard 3 - today. :)

Coolness aside, there is one thing that never seems to change - the socks!



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Train is still on the tracks .. sort of ..

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Spent about 10 hours in the hospital with my mom last night. Apparently she fell and smacked her back against the night table in her bedroom sometime during Sunday night/Monday morning. Did I know about it? No.

Monday morning before work I gave my mom her breathing treatment, as well as moving her nebulizer from the bedroom into the living room as has been my practice so she can do her daytime treatments there. She sat on the edge of her bed and spoke to me. I called home halfway through the day and she didn't mention anything. "Everything is fine."

When I got home from work Monday at about 5:30 - she was in her bed in a ton of pain.

Hospital did x-rays and took a ton of blood, I think they were more worried about why she fell as opposed to the actual fall that caused the hospital visit. They didn't say so but I think they thought she had had a stroke. Cat scan on her brain was good - blood tests good - but she has a small fracture of one of her vertebra in her back. Doc says it's stable, not really treatable, kind of like when someone breaks their tailbone. But - she is still in a lot of pain so they decided to keep her overnight. Or maybe it was the fact that she kept saying "Percocet. Percocet works really well." Sounded like a drug seeker, I swear.

Neurologist saw her today - ordered an MRI on her back, we will see what that shows. Off to shower and get back to the hospital.

Good news? This may fast track her placement in a nursing home since Illinois requires an evaluation for care, first. Not the way I wanted it to happen, however.

**Update - They are keeping her for another day for sure, MRI is not until about 8:30 tonight. Pain management is a big concern and they may do some kind of "plasty" - okay I forgot what it's called, don't judge. It would be a minor procedure to fuse the bone that is fractured but that's a maybe. Long days here!

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Maxine Monday

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On a lighter note ...

This is one of the funniest things I have ever read. If you ever had a colonoscopy or are planning on one, you can't miss this one!!!

ABOUT THE WRITER

Dave Barry is a Pulitzer Prize-winning humor columnist for the Miami Herald.


Colonoscopy Journal:

I called my friend Andy Sable, a gastroenterologist, to make an appointment for a colonoscopy.

A few days later, in his office, Andy showed me a color diagram of the colon, a lengthy organ that appears to go all over the place, at one point passing briefly through Minneapolis.


Then Andy explained the colonoscopy procedure to me in a thorough, reassuring and patient manner.

I nodded thoughtfully, but I didn't really hear anything he said, because my brain was shrieking, 'HE'S GOING TO STICK A TUBE 17,000 FEET UP YOUR BEHIND!'

I left Andy's office with some written instructions, and a prescription for a product called 'MoviPrep,' which comes in a box large enough to hold a microwave oven. I will discuss MoviPrep in detail later; for now suffice it to say that we must never allow it to fall into the hands of America 's enemies.

I spent the next several days productively sitting around being nervous.

Then, on the day before my colonoscopy, I began my preparation. In accordance with my instructions, I didn't eat any solid food that day; all I had was chicken broth, which is basically water, only with less flavor.

Then, in the evening, I took the MoviPrep. You mix two packets of powder together in a one-liter plastic jug, then you fill it with lukewarm water. (For those unfamiliar with the metric system, a liter is about 32 gallons). Then you have to drink the whole jug. This takes about an hour, because MoviPrep tastes - and here I am being kind - like a mixture of goat spit and urinal cleanser, with just a hint of lemon..

The instructions for MoviPrep, clearly written by somebody with a great sense of humor, state that after you drink it, 'a loose, watery bowel movement may result.'

This is kind of like saying that after you jump off your roof, you may experience contact with the ground.

MoviPrep is a nuclear laxative. I don't want to be too graphic, here, but, have you ever seen a space-shuttle launch? This is pretty much the MoviPrep experience, with you as the shuttle. There are times when you wish the commode had a seat belt. You spend several hours pretty much confined to the bathroom, spurting violently. You eliminate everything. And then, when you figure you must be totally empty, you have to drink another liter of MoviPrep, at which point, as far as I can tell, your bowels travel into the future and start eliminating food that you have not even eaten yet.

After an action-packed evening, I finally got to sleep.

The next morning my wife drove me to the clinic. I was very nervous. Not only was I worried about the procedure, but I had been experiencing occasional return bouts of MoviPrep spurtage. I was thinking, 'What if I spurt on Andy?' How do you apologize to a friend for something like that? Flowers would not be enough.

At the clinic I had to sign many forms acknowledging that I understood and totally agreed with whatever the heck the forms said. Then they led me to a room full of other colonoscopy people, where I went inside a little curtained space and took off my clothes and put on one of those hospital garments designed by sadist perverts, the kind that, when you put it on, makes you feel even more naked than when you are actually naked..

Then a nurse named Eddie put a little needle in a vein in my left hand. Ordinarily I would have fainted, but Eddie was very good, and I was already lying down. Eddie also told me that some people put vodka in their MoviPrep.
At first I was ticked off that I hadn't thought of this, but then I pondered what would happen if you got yourself too tipsy to make it to the bathroom, so you were staggering around in full Fire Hose Mode. You would have no choice but to burn your house.

When everything was ready, Eddie wheeled me into the procedure room, where Andy was waiting with a nurse and an anesthesiologist. I did not see the 17,000-foot tube, but I knew Andy had it hidden around there somewhere.. I was seriously nervous at this point.

Andy had me roll over on my left side, and the anesthesiologist began hooking something up to the needle in my hand.

There was music playing in the room, and I realized that the song was 'Dancing Queen' by ABBA. I remarked to Andy that, of all the songs that could be playing during this particular procedure, 'Dancing Queen' had to be the least appropriate.

'You want me to turn it up?' said Andy, from somewhere behind me.

'Ha ha,' I said. And then it was time, the moment I had been dreading for more than a decade. If you are squeamish, prepare yourself, because I am going to tell you, in explicit detail, exactly what it was like.

I have no idea. Really. I slept through it. One moment, ABBA was yelling 'Dancing Queen, feel the beat of the tambourine,' and the next moment, I was back in the other room, waking up in a very mellow mood.

Andy was looking down at me and asking me how I felt. I felt excellent. I felt even more excellent when Andy told me that IT was all over, and that my colon had passed with flying colors. I have never been prouder of an internal organ.


On the subject of Colonoscopies...
Colonoscopies are no joke, but these comments during the exam were quite humorous..... A physician claimed that the following are actual comments made by his patients (predominately male) while he was performing their colonoscopies:

1. 'Take it easy, Doc. You're boldly going where no man has gone before!'

2. 'Find Amelia Earhart yet?'

3. 'Can you hear me NOW?'

4. 'Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?'

5. 'You know, in Arkansas , we're now legally married.'

6. 'Any sign of the trapped miners, Chief?'

7. 'You put your left hand in, you take your left hand out...'

8. 'Hey! Now I know how a Muppet feels!'

9. 'If your hand doesn't fit, you must quit!'

10. 'Hey Doc, let me know if you find my dignity.'

11. 'You used to be an executive at Enron, didn't you?'

12. 'God, now I know why I am not gay.'

And the best one of all:
13. 'Could you write a note for my wife saying that my head is not up there?'

Member? Do ya?

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Member when your kids were born? Member how you didn't sleep because they didn't sleep and you spent all your time restocking diapers and making bottles and oh - yeah - working a full-time job? A stressful one at that?

My life. Except the baby is an elderly woman and the bottles are breathing treatments and the diapers are .. well .. let's move on.

I'm tired. 2 falls and 1 bump on the head later, Mom is actually doing quite well. She carries her bag of Hersey's dark chocolate kisses from room to room leaving little purple pieces of foil behind her. But she's using the bathroom by herself and gaining some strength in her legs. I keep threatening to get her on the treadmill and I'm only half kidding. We've gotten the nebulizer routine down, when to prepare them ahead and where to put them so they are easily accessible.

The job of putting all her contacts in her cell phone fell to me. Woo hoo. Wasn't that fun? I made the doctor's appointment and the eye doctor's appointment, I called the nursing home in NJ for some records and a hospital that wanted my first born in trade for an EKG. There has been a lot. Of everything.

Monday when I went to work I was terrified leaving her home alone. I was so on edge that when I called a nursing home nearby that was my first choice for her and they explained the cost - I hung up the phone, put my face in my hands and started to cry. BUT - I ran home at lunch and checked on her and when I went back - I was a bit better.

Not sure where we are going from here but I'm pretty sure I'm going to be damn tired until we
get there.

Still - I feel a lightness - and if I look behind me I'll bet there are big boulders of guilt lying in my path for all the time my brother took care of my mom. It feels good to do the right thing.

I didn't expect it to be easy.

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Maxine Monday

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