Date Night Nixed

My Mother-in-law is a pretty great person.  She was a stay at home Mom until going back to school to get her Bachelor’s Degree.  She then continued on to get her Masters, eventually becoming a Dean at a major university.  She’s strong, independent and has always been really good to me.

A month ago she had hip replacement surgery after walking around on a broken hip for two weeks because she thought she had pulled a groin muscle.  She was doing really well until a few days ago when she became extremely weak and tired.  We spent all weekend with her, making sure she ate and stayed hydrated.  My sister-in-law is a nurse and seemed to think she was depressed and that’s why she wouldn’t get out of bed.  I said she might know medicine, but I am the expert on depression lol. And depression doesn’t slow speech and motor functions as dramatically as she was experiencing.  She wouldn’t let her daughter take her to the hospital on Sunday, so we stayed all day into the night and I spoke to her a few times about how something was medically wrong and she needed to go to the hospital.  I said she’s only depressed cause she feels so sick and tired.

This morning she willingly let my sister-in-law take her to the hospital, saying I had talked to her and make her realize she needed to go.  She said I’m really good at caretaking and she appreciated all my help.  Turns out she only had 1/2 the amount of blood we’re supposed to have.  She was on blood thinners and they had given her a drug celebrex as an anti-inflammatory.  They think between the two, it caused a bleed in stomach. So they gave her a transfusion and tomorrow morning they will do an endoscopy to find the bleed and cauterize it.  She didn’t get into a room until about 9:30pm and my sister-in-law has to work in the am, so I went up to the emergency room to wait with her while they got a room for her.  After all the times with my Mom, if waiting around in emergency rooms was an olympic sport, I’d be a gold medalist lol.

Well as of this morning her blood count didn’t increase at all, even with the transfusion. They put the endoscopy on hold and tomorrow will do both an endoscopy and colonoscopy at the same time. This way she only has to be sedated once. But now she has to prep for that oh so much fun colonoscopy, complete with laxative drinks and enemas. Fun times so I’m letting her 4 children, my hubby, his sister and 2 brothers take the lead today lol.

At least they gave her some zanax to calm her as she is very agitated which is not like her at all. Last night she was picking at the dozens of wires coming thru her hospital gown from all the cardiac monitors. Frankly I think almost everyone laying uncomfortable in a hospital bed should be given something to relax them. Why the hell not right?

Oh yes I almost forgot, so unfortunately the Saturday night date of dinner and a movie my H had planned had to be put on hold. Actually we were so tired and worried when we got home that night, we didn’t even remember til we got into bed. He was worried about his Mom and I was too. I also had the added bonus of remembering all the days n nights I had done almost the same exact things for my Mom. And of course it made me miss her beautiful smiling face. I’m a good caretaker, not because I’m Mother Theresa, but because unfortunately I have had quite a bit of practice. Thankfully I had off from work for the Jewish holiday 🙂