The time before this last time this month my mom was in the hospital with another mild stroke was in January. She was sitting there eating breakfast as usual and then all of a sudden she just stopped. Her eyes went blank and she did what I call a zombie stare. She was there but not really. My nephew and I screamed her name, first we just called it in our normal voices but then we screamed it like she was totally hard of hearing which she isn't yet. I immediately called 911 and within a few minutes the emergency people were here and they took her to the hospital.
My mom hates hospitals and I can't much blame her. By the time she got there she was responsive again and knew just about everything and everyone she did before she got there and was mad as a pistol that she was there in the first place. She hated the open gowns and complained that more people have seen her butt then the law allows. She still had her sense of humor. She hated all the fussing and the all the IV's that were placed on all parts of her body and all the poking around they did looking for a vein. The one they found was in her neck so she had an IV hanging from there. It was a good thing that there were no mirrors in that room or she would have really had a fit. I am sure she had one when they put in her vein in her neck.
I know it seemed to her that she would never get out and that all the questions about did she know where she was and did she know her name were endless. She did know where she was and her name but when it came to her birth date she would know the month and the day but the year she would not know. She would get it backwards almost every time. The days of the week she never really cared about when she didn't have demtia so that was always a blank to her even when you told her five minutes before they asked her.
They asked the woman in the bed next to my mom almost the same questions and her daughter would cue her in on the answers before the medical people came to ask her and she was basically like my mom she knew some of the answers like where she was not the day of the week or the month. I wondered if she had dementia too. I knew that she had a lot of other things and was taking a lot of meds. I over heard that when the daughter was telling the doctors what she was taking. Hospital rooms have no privacy whatsoever unless I guess if you are in a private room. But, she heard our stuff and we heard hers and that was just the way it was.
When my mom came home 5 days later she was overjoyed and the light came back in her eyes. Once while she was at the hospital she had the nurse call and she asked me where she was and said she was confused. I told her where she was and that she would be home soon. That reminded me of something she told me about my dad when he was in the Airforce in Vietnam. I was around 3 or 4 years old and I would ask her where my dad was and when he was coming home and she would tell me that he would be home soon and not to worry. I did worry though in my own way until he got home for good. I told her not to worry she would also be home soon.
The roles have been somewhat reversed now. I am parenting my parent and my child. But, that is okay with me. I am glad that I have both of them here with me. When I think I am drowning in paper work for medi-cal for my mom and this and that I just stop and take a break and think that I am blessed to have her here to be able to "parent" her and to have my son grow up with her. Then I get back to the mounds of paper work.
Today so far has been a good day. My mom even surprised me when she remembered the day of the week. It is a small thing but I will take it.
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