Another day in Paradise. Frances call at 7:36 this morning. Mom had pushed her LifeLine button when Mary, her caregiver, left mom’s room to get dressed to take mom down to breakfast. Mom told the LifeLine people she was there by herself. When EMS arrived she told them to take her Baptist Hospital. She cannot go to Baptist because her doctors are Novant which is Forsyth Hospital. Luckily Frances arrived at Creekside in time to stop them. She crawled in the ambulance with the EMT and mom, put me on speaker, and tried to talk mom into going back upstairs to her apartment. She refused, insisting she was not safe and needed medical attention. We tried to explain to her they would put her in that awful psych ward where she was last year and then we would have to discharge her to a nursing home. Finally, we agreed to just have them take mom to Forsyth and we would work it out from there. In all that hullabaloo, I dropped and broke my cell phone. I finally managed to get dressed and out the door to head to the hospital. Mom’s care giver was still on duty so she rode to the hospital with Frances. We figured they would run some tests like they did the last time she went to the ER and then send her home. Frances could take her back to the apartment, have the care giver take over, and we could go on to work.
When she got to the hospital her oxygen level was 83, she was running a fever, and she was talking out of her head. After taking her for a CT of her chest it was discovered she has pneumonia. They took more blood for cultures and started on IV antibiotics. Finally around 11:30 they told they would definitely be admitting her. I drove Mary back to Creekside to let her get her belongings and to tell Creekside she was back in the hospital. I then went on to work.
The latest update is they are not sure if it is pneumonia or if she has a blood clot in her lungs, or something else going on. Frances stayed all day with her in the admitting holding area where they took her in and out for tests and added a steroid to her antibiotic. Frances just called to let me know she has a room assigned but had not been moved. She was going to get something to eat then go back to with mom’s personal stuff and talk with the floor nurses before going home.
So, the good news is mom may be physically sick which is why the mental medications where not working. Hopefully they can get her medically well which my fix the mental issues.