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Mum's Free!
Feb. 23rd, 2022 10:43 pmGood news today, we finally broke her out of hospital, and she's managed to last until 9pm watching Portrait Artist and then Landscape Artist of the year. She's walking around slowly and carefully but unaided, she's managed to get her bed socks on and get into bed without help and hopefully she'll now have a nice peaceful night's sleep after being kept awake last night by another patient off her head on something, shouting all night. We had to sit in the conservatory for 30 mins when we first arrived back from the hozzy because she wanted to see her garden, even though it was rather chilly in there!
The hospital rang me three times today, and that's the most information and most contact i've had with medical professionals the whole 11 days she was in there. The physio was very good, really pleased with the progress she'd made already and didn't have much to say about what she should do next, apart from keep mobile and keep doing what she's doing. The nurse, Roxy, was also really nice and willing to answer questions, and then when we went to pick Mum up she was equally helpful face to face. I'm not impressed that nobody had told Mum or me that the stomach tubes were (pretty definitely) permanent features. According to Roxy, the tubes are part of whatever they did to anchor the stomach in place in the abdomen, and thus stop it ever twisting again, and therefore can't be removed. I'm still not exactly clear what they do, but assume it's to drain acid reflux and stop that uspetting the stomach? They aren't for feeding, that's a definite. Mum's not happy about this, because it will affect any travel she might have wanted to do - but perhaps once she's got the hang of the cleaning process, and is more used to them, we can still take a trip or two in the UK. She's been saying since before Covid she'd love to go to Berwick on Tweet, and I'm still hoping I can get her there, maybe next year. We'll see.
A district nurse is supposed to be coming round over the next few days to run through the tube maintenance until Mum's happy with doing it herself, so that's good. In the meantime, I have to give her an injection of blood thinners once a day for the next seven days - which was interesting and a bit scary, since I've never even held a real syringe before. But Roxy talked me through it in the hospital and it did seem pretty straightforward, and as Mum said I did ok, if she's happy with Nurse Me then who am I to worry about it!
The dietary requirements are still unclear because the diet info sheets Roxy gave us are aimed at people with chewing and swallowing difficulties, something we came across with my aunty and Paul's mum when they had their strokes. And really that element isn't a problem for mum. I'm assuming the main thing for her is how much fibre she has, since the issue is around digestion after the food's reached the stomach, not it's journey down. So luckily we now have a number for the nutrition people at the hospital, so I will be ringing them tomorrow to make sure we know what she should and shouldn't be eating. We have sheets covering pureed foods which Roxy said was the top list, but that since Mum had disliked the hospital's purees so much, she could also eat stuff off their soft foods list. Which means so many more options and much more nutritional value too.
So what ha ve I left to do - ring the nutritionists, find an electrician to fix the weird leaky light fitting in the living room and probably instal some much better lighting in strategic places round the house, shop for some tempting food, buy hand blender...and at some point, go home to paint a giant flower with a bee on it, and a giant fibreglass 'rubber' duck. Yay!
The hospital rang me three times today, and that's the most information and most contact i've had with medical professionals the whole 11 days she was in there. The physio was very good, really pleased with the progress she'd made already and didn't have much to say about what she should do next, apart from keep mobile and keep doing what she's doing. The nurse, Roxy, was also really nice and willing to answer questions, and then when we went to pick Mum up she was equally helpful face to face. I'm not impressed that nobody had told Mum or me that the stomach tubes were (pretty definitely) permanent features. According to Roxy, the tubes are part of whatever they did to anchor the stomach in place in the abdomen, and thus stop it ever twisting again, and therefore can't be removed. I'm still not exactly clear what they do, but assume it's to drain acid reflux and stop that uspetting the stomach? They aren't for feeding, that's a definite. Mum's not happy about this, because it will affect any travel she might have wanted to do - but perhaps once she's got the hang of the cleaning process, and is more used to them, we can still take a trip or two in the UK. She's been saying since before Covid she'd love to go to Berwick on Tweet, and I'm still hoping I can get her there, maybe next year. We'll see.
A district nurse is supposed to be coming round over the next few days to run through the tube maintenance until Mum's happy with doing it herself, so that's good. In the meantime, I have to give her an injection of blood thinners once a day for the next seven days - which was interesting and a bit scary, since I've never even held a real syringe before. But Roxy talked me through it in the hospital and it did seem pretty straightforward, and as Mum said I did ok, if she's happy with Nurse Me then who am I to worry about it!
The dietary requirements are still unclear because the diet info sheets Roxy gave us are aimed at people with chewing and swallowing difficulties, something we came across with my aunty and Paul's mum when they had their strokes. And really that element isn't a problem for mum. I'm assuming the main thing for her is how much fibre she has, since the issue is around digestion after the food's reached the stomach, not it's journey down. So luckily we now have a number for the nutrition people at the hospital, so I will be ringing them tomorrow to make sure we know what she should and shouldn't be eating. We have sheets covering pureed foods which Roxy said was the top list, but that since Mum had disliked the hospital's purees so much, she could also eat stuff off their soft foods list. Which means so many more options and much more nutritional value too.
So what ha ve I left to do - ring the nutritionists, find an electrician to fix the weird leaky light fitting in the living room and probably instal some much better lighting in strategic places round the house, shop for some tempting food, buy hand blender...and at some point, go home to paint a giant flower with a bee on it, and a giant fibreglass 'rubber' duck. Yay!
