Monday, February 20, 2017

End Of An Era paelrt 1.

I wrote this within days of it happening, but I held off sharing it because it was so hard at the time. I felt horrible guilt for screaming at him, and I still do. I was angry, I was hurt, I was scared, and I knew then that my world was about to change and I would have some very hard decisions to make.
it's time to share it now though.
this is life of a caregiver.
originally written 10/24/2016, and published 02/20/2017.




My amazing husband has been in the hospital 20 days of the last 30. First it was a night filled with falling, and my dads help to get him up He was admitted to get him to the inpatient rehab hospital faster, a few days vs a couple weeks if I had taken him home and worked on placement with the social worker. He spent 12 days between the two.
It started with a cystoscopy. He had a kidney stone and had been having a lot of abdominal pain. After the procedure he was on 2 antibiotics for 3 days. Over the next week he started having a little more confusion, but over all he was doing ok. He was still taking care of himself 6 days after the test he woke up vomiting and with a low grade temp. I took him to the VA urgent care/ER. They decided that he likely had a urinary tract infection brought on by the cystoscopy. That sounded reasonable to me. Hey, I am a nurse after all, and I had worked in geriatrics. I know a UTI can cause an increase in confusion. I took him home.
Over the next few days he got worse and worse. He quit going upstairs for breakfast, he was only taking meds when prompted, he spent all day in bed. The Saturday night/sunday morning after he started the meds he got immensely worse. He fell 6 times over the night and I had to have dads help getting him up. I decided in the morning I would be going back to the VA. They immediately got him to a room and on an IV for fluids as he was severely dehydrated. We also checked labs from the previous visit and discovered he did not have a UTI.
The doctor told me that he wanted him at the community living center, the VA's short stay rehab hospital that also houses their hospice and they do respite care, which we used a few months ago. The staff knew him and they were shocked at the huge decline in such a short time. The doctor gave us the option of taking him home as he was medically stable, or admitting him to get him into the CLC faster. I knew I was unable to keep him safe at home and I requested admit that day. He was at the main hospital 3 days then at the CLC for 9 days.
During his time there he declined further. He became psychotic and was hallucinating badly. He was convinced the staff was all aliens and were taking people away to kill them, and a lot more. PT/OT/ST all worked with him. They told me he was stable on his feet and was doing excellent, yet every time I visited he was in a wheel hai with an alarm to prevent him from walking. They made some med changes, including adding one to raise his blood pressure. He suffers from horrible orthostatic hypotension, his blood pressure will drop 30-50points when he goes from sitting to standing. It has helped awesomely and he wasn't having many dizzy episodes. After 9 days at the CLC and 3 days in the main hospital they sent him home. He was medically stable and had met all the therapy goals. I took him home still hallucinating, though he wasn't talking about them much.
He was home 9 days. In those 9 days he declined more. He wasn't taking his meds regularly, he wasn't eating or drinking much at all, and he was staying in bed almost all day.
I worked and mom and dad had Lee duty during the day. On my next day off I decided I needed to do some shopping. I got him up, got meds into him, and took him to the bathroom for a shower, he hadn't showered all week. On the way to the bathroom he fell. Twice. I got him up each time and eventually made it to the shower got him naked and in the shower. It took an hour to get him in the shower and washed. Dressed his top half in the shower then took him out to dress the bottom. He panicked. He started grabbing everything, anything to hold on top, even things not stable. He would grab the towel bar but not the hand bar that was strong enough to hold. I tried to get him to hold me in a hug so I could pivot him and set him on his walkers seat. He wrapped his arms around me and immediately grabbed a handful of hair and the towel bar. I was screaming to let go right now, but he pulled harder, shook the towel bar yanking it off the wall and the momentum stopped at the back of my head. I set him down on the floor and walked away until I calmed down.
I calmed down, went back in and managed to get him off the floor to sit on the toilet seat. Finished dressing him, got him seated on his walker, and pushed him to the bottom of the stairs to sit and wait while I packed a bag and loaded things in the truck to take him back to the hospital. While I was loading things in the truck he decided he could walk, and did, About 20 ft to the doorway to the living room where he fell. Again I managed to get him up and on to his walker and back to the stairs. At that point he couldn't walk anymore. I tried and tried to get him up the stairs and I couldn't he fell again and I managed to get him sitting on the stairs. I was home alone except for him and my oldest daughter, and I was in tears. I couldn't help my husband and I didn't know what to do. I called 911 to request lift assist.
They sent a fire truck with a paramedic. They came in and immediately started assessing him, and he started vomiting. The paramedic made the decision to call for ambulance transport. They got him up the stairs and into the ambulance, told me the VA wouldn't take him like this and asked which hospital.
to be continued....

No comments:

Post a Comment