Since 1998, my mother has been plagued with numerous health problems, but we had been able to manage. My father has been partially paralayzed from a CVA since 1990. Last Thursday night, I got in from clinicals and talked to my mother and everything was fine. On Friday afternoon, I get a call that she has fell and is sick and needs to go to the ER. When I got there, she wasn't even able to walk through the house with my help, so I called an ambulance. She was diagnosed with pneumonia, and I was told that she would probably have to stay for about 5 days. I spent the night with her on Friday and she was very coherent. On Saturday, at midnight, the nurses call me and tell me that she is very disoriented and trying to crawl over the rails of her bed. They had to place her in restraints. Well, fast forward and in 1 weeks time, my mother is unable to stand on her own, and doesn't know who I am at times. I have no brothers and sisters to help out. I remember my mother making me promise that I would never put her in a nursing home when I was a little girl. If there were any way in the world that I could keep her home with me then I would, but I have to work to pay my bills, and neither my father or I can afford to have 24 hr. care. My husband works, but we have loans from where I'm in nursing school, and I have to get a job as soon as I graduate in May. My heart is just breaking at the thought of all of this. It just goes to show how one's life can change in the blink of an eye. Last week, anytime that I wanted to pick up the phone to talk to my mother and tell her what was going on in my life, I was able to. Now, she doesn't understand much of anything that I say. I have always heard people say that you don't realize what you've lost until you lose your mother. Now, I really understand what they meant. My mother's body is still here, but she's some place that I just can't reach her. It doesn't make it any easier that my parents live in another state. I keep hoping that the physicians are going to discover the reason for her mental state, but so far, they have just decided that it's dementia. I could really use some support from others that are going through or have been through problems like this with their parents. Thanks for listening to a very long post.
