Mom Moved to Rehab

Thank you to everyone who sent well wishes for my Mom. She's doing better but still has a ways to go in her recovery. She was in the hospital for 6 days. While in the hospital her doctor's greatest concern was for her sodium levels. She also developed atrial fibrillation (a too high heart rate accompanied by too low blood pressure) so had to be moved to a special "telemetry" floor to be monitored constantly.

Within a few hours they were able to fix the heart problem with medication. Before her hospitalization she always had a strong heart so I guess it was all the trauma of broken bones and low sodium that set her heart aflutter. Tests revealed that in addition to breaking two ribs she also had some fluid on one lung and a broken pelvis. Fortunately she doesn't feel any pain from those things.

On Wednesday her sodium levels finally got high enough they felt it was safe for her to be discharged from the hospital. She wasn't well enough to go home though so she was transferred to a rehab facility. It's supposed to be the best one in the Olympia area. Mom sure didn't want to go. She didn't understand why she couldn't just go home. Never mind that she still has two painful broken ribs and cannot walk unassisted.

The first couple of days in the rehab facility were very hard for her. She was rather depressed and she was sure when they got her up to walk that they were going to send her home in a day or two. I knew that wouldn't be the case and finally had a talk with her social worker. He scheduled a Care Conference for Thursday. A Care Conference is a meeting of the patient, family, nurse, therapists and social worker to set goals for her release and hopefully tell me what help I need to have in place before she goes home. It's at the Care Conference that a tentative release date will be set.

Now that Mom knows the Care Conference will be Thursday she has reluctantly accepted the fact that she will be there a while. I think some of her fear came from not knowing if there would be an end date and maybe being afraid that she might get stuck there. My best guess is that she will be there at least 2 or 3 weeks. I really hope they can help her get strong enough to go home to her own home. We want her to be safe and not be in danger of falling again.

Mom doesn't eat very well these days. She doesn't care for the food at the rehab place. I did bring her one of the cucumbers from her garden and she seemed to enjoy that.

Mom has had some visits by friends and family, but of course there are times when no one is there. I was happy to discover the rehab facility has several animals that live there. One in particular is a cat named Lacy who frequently visits my Mom. She is a really beautiful kitty with long hair who has been clipped a bit like a lion. She's also quite affectionate and my Mom loves her company. She's a really big kitty cat though (18 lbs!) so we have to pull her off sometimes because she's a little too heavy to be laying on Mom's legs. Here is a picture of Mom with Lacy.


We also wanted Mom to have some company from home so we brought Tony, Mom's big stuffed gorilla. She was very happy to see him. Here is a pic of them together.