It's been a while since I've given an update on my mom, and I don't know where to begin. She has been in this facility for 33 days, and was in the hospital for 19 days before that...so she hasn't been home for 52 days. I know she is depressed because she is still there and wants to go home. But she also knows that she is not ready...there are a lot of things that she still cannot do in order to take care of herself when she comes home. Of course we will all be there to take care of her, but she is not up to the point where she can do things on her own.
SO MUCH has happened. When I look back on what I went through with my mom's health, I thought that would be the hardest part of my life. And it was. However, the difficulties aren't over. One thing gets resolved and then another pops up before I even get to have a reprieve from the previous battle.
As far as my mom's health is concerned, she is doing okay. Her wounds are healing but she still cannot walk without assistance. The last time I saw my mom was when she was in physical therapy. She did some light weight lifting, flexibility and strength exercises, stuff like that. She did very well...as well as she can do. I would call her their "model patient." She is pretty much the ONLY one who does NOT complain during physical therapy, who does EVERY exercise and doesn't cheat, and who tries to lighten up the mood in the therapy room. Some days she can walk with a walker, but she is always assisted by a physical therapist behind her with a wheelchair and a cotton band around her waist that the therapist holds onto. The last time I saw her, she had to stop once on the way back to her room and sit down in the wheelchair. Then she walked a little farther, but couldn't make the rest of the trip and was wheeled the rest of the way.
Most days she can do this, but some days, like today (Friday, February 24th), she couldn't even use her left leg; it was very stiff. And when she went to the bathroom unassisted, she almost fell. This shook her up quite a bit. She has what is called a "dropped foot." She cannot make her left foot flat like a person does to walk, and she has to wear a plastic brace to keep it flat in order to walk. She still can't sit up by herself or get into the wheelchair by herself. But she is eating well and the last time she told me about her weight, she had gained ten pounds.
In all honesty it is getting harder and harder for me to deal with my mom being this way for SO LONG. It is hard to see her like this, but she is keeping her spirits up. I haven't seen her in about a week, for various reasons. I feel SO badly about this. Today Jeff went to see her and he said she seemed kind of sad that I hadn't been to see her. I call her every day but as you will read in my next entry, it has been harder and harder for me to do much of anything after a long day. I have had a ton of things to take care of. It probably doesn't sound like that much for most of you who work all day and then have to come home at night and do stuff for your family or go to school all day and then come home at night and have to study. But for a person like me, it's incredibly difficult and exhausting to do anything that is stressful.
I so much feel the need to "fix" my mom and it is very frustrating that I can't. The only thing I can liken this feeling to is having my favorite doll get broken. I keep trying everything I can to fix her...glue, tape, string, a stapler...anything I can think of. Sometimes one of the methods holds for a while, but it always comes undone and I feel so helpless that I can't fix her. That's how I feel about my mom. I feel like I've failed her in some way by not doing a better job of "fixing" her now and before she got so sick. I keep telling myself I should have taken her to the doctor sooner; I should have been more on top of her health. But she never showed that she was feeling bad until she started losing weight, and even then she didn't complain. It wasn't until she hurt her leg that she finally let go of her stubbornness about not wanting to complain and let us know how much she was hurting. Really, she didn't have to let us know, we could TELL. She has NEVER been one to moan or groan or cry about pain. But she did this a lot, especially on the day she went into the hospital, both at home and in the first hours she got there. I really don't want to think about that. I just feel like I have failed in fixing my mom and I have no control over the fact that I won't be able to completely fix her. I hate not having control, and the guilt I feel over not doing something sooner or being able to "fix" her now often becomes unbearable.
That doesn't mean she still isn't my mom. Mentally she is fine. It's just hard for me to accept that I won't be able to spend the day shopping with her, taking walks with her, even running short errands. I don't know if she'll ever be able to walk unassisted again, or if she'll even be able to walk with a walker. I am so upset that we let her leg pain get so far and that we didn't take her weight loss as more of a warning sign, so that maybe the whole leg problem wouldn't have occurred. I know these are things I've said before, the things I regret, but they will probably linger in my mind forever. I know things are never going to be the same and I don't take well to change, lack of control, or helplessness. Of all of these, change is always my biggest enemy. It has caused more devastation, heartbreak, and insanity in my life than anything else. Every time I face a big and difficult change, I go through some sort of breakdown. So this is a very worrisome time for me with all of these changes starting to culminate.
There is much more to tell but this is long enough, so I will save that for my next entry. It is totally unrelated to my mom's health and is the biggest frustration and pain in the ass I've ever dealt with. I never realized how just how incredibly unjust, unfair, deceiving, uncaring, incompetent, and just plain ridiculous the health care industry is...if you can even call it health "care."
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