Mental Decline & Dependency/Coping With Aging Loved Ones

Seems to be -momentarily, at least- a lot better than it was feared.

But experience teaches that this might change sooner or later ...

Breathe, Walter. Enjoy the calm while it lasts. She's in good hands.

Thanks, I'll certainly try to enjoy this calmer period and do know that she's in good care.

(Aunt might to have to go to the hospital again.)

I used to consider myself odd dealing with these issues in my twenties and early thirties as an only child, but you truly have my sympathy even if you are nearly as old as I am by now, Walter. I do wish you continuing calm.

Mother did quite well in the home, with the usual, normal ups and downs (didn't want to stay there/best pace she's ever been, didn't want nurses to enter her room/best people around her ... ...)

She got y-rayed (all was extremely well) and the surgial stables were taken away (in the local hospital, in her town, my native town), on Wednesday.

When I just "prepared" to drive there this afternoon (I wanted to drive there every day during the first week), the home phoned: when the nurse came in her room after the after-lunch nap, mother was terribly crying in pain, her leg was ... somehow looking dislocated ...

So they called the ambulance and the emergency doctor (instead of the on-duty doctor, which might have been a gynaecologist).
I drove to the hospital where she had been before. She hadn't arrived, but a kind nurse phoned to the other hospital, asking if she was there ... She arrived minutes later, it had taken longer, because the emrgency doctor already made some examination in the ambulance and gave her a lot of strong analgesics for the transport.
He and the emergency doctor in the hospital made a couple of examinations: nothing broken. It seems she "only" had some kind of spasm (of unknown reason).

She'll stay in the hospital until tomorrow or Monday, for observations.

What a day! I'm glad all's well (or "as well as can be expected", anyway).

Gasp!

Well, JL, it could have come worse.

But like tomkitten said: it turned out to the better (hopefully).

Agreed! Small blessings are still blessings despite their size.

Interesting, sounds like a muscle cramp.. those aren't fun and can be scary.

Is there a connection between muscle cramps and potassium processing?

There does seem to be a connection. Check out "muscle cramps" + potassium on Google.

Frightening, nonetheless. I hope things settle down for a while now.

It seems to have been something like a muscle cramp. (Mother was only -more or less- in bed for over eight weeks, and during the last week just sat a bit in her wheelchair plus a bit of walking-training.)

However, the nurse in the home said, the posion of the leg was "totally unnatural"; the doctor in the ambulance/emergency was apparently puzzled to find the reason for that "cramp". But he was a 'general surgeon', might be duty chief accident surgeon, who will look at mother this morning, has some -other- ideas.

Mother will leave the hospital tomorrow morning and go back to the home.

When I visited mother yesterday she had one leg over the 'bed balustrade': "I was just getting up."
So I explained again that she had been in hospital, doctors fear that she might have to go there again if she moves outside the bed on her own ... I talked until I was blue in the face.

A nurse had done the same, just two hours before. So, I gave allowance to heighten the safety bed rails (that can be done by me without confirmation by a judge).

Today, she was still sleeping. When I came back later with a nurse, she wasn't still didn't wake up. We tried it a couple of times - and finally get an answer: "Get out and let me sleep."


Aunt .... was feeling very bad again. After having asked her a couple of times, I finally got an answer: "I can't open my mouth anymore, additionally to ... ... ..."
I thought, I could hear which way the wind was blowing and indeed: nurses got the teeth/mouth problems more or less solved, but to give her a better (liquid) nutrtion, they changed 'food' a bit, more fibres now in in it, which obviously doesn't taste as good as the former stuff ...

(Especially) As her son it's more than only really sad to look at mother in her "cage". And that she accepts it.

Aunt's "cage" is more "insight", but as sad. But as nephew I'm not that close to her.


Mrs Walter asked me yesterday, when we left the home, how I was able to handle all that, every day.
I had had problems accepted it myself, but when entering the building, I 'switch' from son/nephew to social worker.

Ah Walter. You probably couldn't handle it every single day if you didn't.

I understand, Walter.

I know. But it's a sad feeling that I can only care about my closest relatives with a "professional view".

(Something you, msolga, will probably know from your work, too: I even can laugh about some of their actions/reactions when talking about that others - like an "emotional outlet".)