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Today is my mother's 30th day in the hospital.
Saturday morning I received a panicked phone call from my sister, who lives about 5 hours drive away, "You better get to the hospital, there's something wrong with mom. I talked to her on the phone and she's not making any sense at all. She thinks that you're a baby, I'm dead, and she says Dad is in the room there with her."
My father died in 1983.
My sister was right. There was something wrong with mom. Friday night my mother was given some medication to help her calm down or to sleep or something (her nurse isn't sure why, but it may have been that there are two agitated patients near her room who scream all night, and she may have complained about the noise level). Anyway, she reacted poorly to the medication and was kind of bizarre. It worried me and scared my sister quite a bit ... audiovisual hallucinations, delusions, and disorientation are part of a pretty average day for me, but my sister is a financial manager ... even understanding what's going on it's difficult dealing with this in a family member who has never presented symptoms quite like this. Mom was really bad on Saturday, but was much better, but not totally there yet today. The episodes of confusion were fewer, but she's still not doing totally well, and was very irritable, particularly toward me.
The night nurse, Donna, is a great caregiver. She actually talked to me for about 20 minutes on the phone last night explaining a lot of what was going on, and she was equally helpful tonight in person. New labs were drawn and compared to an earlier set, with no changes noted, and a neurology consult was done ... they continue to assume that it was the Ativan my mom was given. Obviously, she will never get Ativan ever again.
The good news related to my mom for today was that she has started eating real food, if you can call hospital fare "real."
I'm allowed to take her special things that she wants to eat. So far she mentioned peanut butter and jelly, but she was still pretty goofy at the time. Once she's oriented a little better I'll start finding out from her what she really wants, but I will take PBJ along with me tomorrow, just in case.
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