Mother's In The Hospital

Image via WikipediaI took my mother (88 years old) to the hospital yesterday... actually, the ambulance took her. She's been coughing more, lately, and yesterday the cough sounded a lot worse. And she didn't seem to know whether she had been taking her medications, or not. She said she had called her oncologist, and that his office told her to go to the emergency room. When I got to her house, she was in her pajamas. Her cough sounded more like a gurgle. I tried to persuade her to get dressed so we could go to the ER... but she just kept saying "wait a minute, wait a minute, just let me lie down for a while" ... this went on for half an hour or so...

Eventually I called for an ambulance. Just a few minutes later, we had at least 6 or 7 big firefighter paramedics, with their equipment bags, milling around in her little house. So she retreated to her bedroom, and the bathroom, and began walking around in just her panties, hollering at the guys to "Git! Git out of here!" ... Eventually the ambulance guys arrived, and the paramedics left (that was a relief). With much resistance from her, we eventually managed to get clothes on her, get her on the gurney, and to the hospital.

Turns out that her electrolyte levels are really screwed up (causing confusion), and her emphysema is a whole lot worse. They admitted her. Last I heard, around 8pm last night, she was raising hell with the nursing staff (they called me, and asked me to call her and tell her to cooperate; of course, that's a course of action that's never been effective, before... but I tried it, anyway).

My mother's dog, who has never truly been housebroken, is wandering around in my back yard now. The cats are scared, and my dogs are annoyed.

It's been so hard to watch my mother as she has made an endless, life-long, series of bad decisions, all the while blaming and attacking everyone who has tried to help her... Hearing her complain that she is lonely, and knowing very well why has no friends, why her neighbors avoid her...

When an elderly person is not demented, but refuses or abuses the available resources that could help her live independently and with reasonable comfort... there just doesn't seem to be anything that can be done to make matters better. It is an utterly heartbreaking situation.