When we first made arrangements for Mother to stay at Colonial Nursing Home for a month of respite care, it was with the idea that we would get her when we returned from our trip, return to the house in Mineola, and pick up our lives where we left off a month ago.
As plans go, it was a fine one, but it immediately took a wrong turn and we soon found ourselves involved in something that was way beyond our capabilities.
We spent a large part of Saturday getting the house ready for Mother’s return and then a little after 2:00, Ladd followed us to Lindale and we began taking Mother’s things out of her room and loading them in the pickup and car for the return to Mineola.
We had told Mother that she needed to be able to walk in order to return home. We found that she not only couldn’t walk by herself, she could hardly stand, let alone walk. Because we had talked so much about getting Mother home today, I made the administrative decision (a very questionable one) to follow through with the plans. I knew that Barbara did not agree with my plan, but I felt that I had to follow through on my promise to Mother, and I really felt that once she was out of the nursing home and back in her own house and surroundings, she would get better.
So, we all trekked back to the house in Mineola, where Ladd helped me get Mother out of the car, into her wheelchair, and back to her room, where the two of us wrestled her into her bed. Through the whole process, Mother was nothing more than 131 pounds of dead weight, completely unable to help us in any way.
By the time we got the car and pickup unloaded and the furniture and clothing put back in place, Angela, who is a nurse, came to the house and saw what was going on. We were all agreed that Barbara and I were in way over our heads and would not be able to continue the type of care that we had been giving before our trip.
By nighttime, we were worn out from making the move and worrying about how we were going to be able to get through the next phase of care giving for Mother, an obviously overwhelming task.
On Sunday, we made arrangements with Sophie to come in and stay with Mother while we went to Sunday school and church at Yantis. We returned home at noon, took a little nap, and then went back to church at night for the presentation of the Easter Cantata.
This was, perhaps, the last “normal” day we would have for quite a while. It became increasingly obvious that Sophie would not be able to assist Mother as she had been doing, and we would not be able to do all the things that needed to be done. Not only was Mother unable to walk at all, she couldn’t help turn herself over, and she was incontinent, requiring more moving around so we could clean her and change bedding.
To top everything off, Barbara was called for jury duty in Quitman early Monday morning. I stayed at the house to do the best I could to take care of Mother…also made calls to have At-Home Healthcare to come out tomorrow to do a thorough evaluation of Mother and our circumstances so we could get some additional assistance.
I also began making calls to the Neurology Center at East Texas Medical Center in Tyler to get an appointment with Dr. Plotkin to find out what part of Mother’s condition was directly related to her Parkinsonism. Unfortunately, my calls today all went to answering machines, so at the end of the day, we didn’t know any more than at the beginning.
On the bright side, Barbara was able to get a waiver on this jury duty call after explaining our situation to the judge. She didn’t ask for a hardship dismissal, just a waiver for this call.
One of the nurses from At-Home Healthcare came by to check on Mother and read all her vital signs, but she was unable to give any prognosis about what was going on.
When Barbara got home, we went to work on all the different aspects of caring for Mother…fixing meals…doing laundry…doing our best to change her and keep her clean and dry, etc. All the while, we were learning that we were in deep trouble, and we didn’t know how we were going to get out of it, both for ourselves and for Mother.
Tuesday brought more of the same…no answers from Dr. Plotkin’s office, but Kelly, from At-Home Healthcare, came by to do an evaluation to determine what additional resources we might have available. Kelly told us that he would get to work on lining up aides to come help take care of Mother, but there was a shortage AND we were headed into a holiday weekend, but he thought he could find someone to come in.
On Wednesday, one of the aides from At-Home healthcare arrived to assist us, but she was also stymied by Mother’s condition. We also had a visit from Keith, the physical therapist. We have learned that if anyone can get Mother’s attention and cooperation, it is Keith, but even he, who was hopeful of helping Mother restore some of her previous physical abilities, was concerned about the shape she was in.
I was finally able to contact the folks in Dr. Plotkin’s office, but they said there was nothing they could do for Mother until she was checked out at the hospital to rule out any infections she might have that would mask the Parkinsonism. They suggested that we get Mother to the emergency room at ETMC in Tyler, but by the time this all took place, we couldn’t arrange transportation and getting her into our car was not an option.
Thursday morning brought us another aide, but it was obvious that Mother’s condition was deteriorating…she was unresponsive to everything we said and tried. I called Dr. Plotkin’s office and they made arrangements for us to get Mother admitted to ETMC Emergency. At-Home Healthcare gave us the number to call for a transportation service, so I called, found out what time they could be at the house, and then we set about packing Mother’s things for yet another hospital visit.
We got Mother to the emergency room at 1:00 p.m. and her condition was so obviously bad that they soon found a bed for her to lie in, even though we still had to wait in the main waiting room for two more hours while they handled all the patients who were in the examining room.
They finally got Mother into an examining room at 4:45 and we sat with her until 9:00 p.m., when they officially admitted her to the hospital for more tests and observation. By that time, we were completely exhausted, but managed to make our way back to Mineola to fall into bed and a deep sleep.
On Friday, we began five days of driving between Mineola and Tyler at least one and sometimes twice a day to check on Mother. We had thought we might board the puppies at the vet in Mineola and just overnight it in Tyler as long as necessary, but the vet hotel was booked solid, so we decided we’d just have to commute.
As it turned out, Mother had a severe urinary tract infection, along with other complications, and for most of the five days she was mostly non-responsive when we were there. The doctors told us upfront that there was no way we would be able to take care of Mother when they released her, and that we needed to spend out time finding a suitable nursing home and rehab center.
Since we did not want to put Mother back at Colonial, we spent a couple of days looking at some of the many nursing homes in Tyler, but decided they just didn’t fit out needs. We also checked out a place in Quitman and thought it might be suitable, but it didn’t have a private room available. We told them we’d check out some other places, but they might expect to be hearing from us again.
After looking at all the different homes, we finally decided to look at the two homes in Mineola, one of which we had looked at before leaving on our trip to Virginia. We returned to it, took about five steps inside, and immediately turned around and walked out. One of the things we learned through the process was that our noses could tell us immediately where we didn’t want Mother to be, and this particular place let us know in just that way.
On Saturday, we went to Wood Memorial Nursing Home, a place that had not been recommended by Dr. Bankhead last month. We were immediately impressed with the cleanliness of the place and the friendliness of the people who worked there. We spent some time with the head nurse for the weekend and she told us that she had looked all over for a place for her mother, and Wood Memorial is what she chose…a pretty high recommendation, we thought.
Sunday was Easter, perhaps the most normal day we had spent in a long time. We went to the sunrise service out at Lake Fork and then to the regular service. Afterwards, we drove to Tyler to check on Mother and then back to the house to take a long nap and then spend the evening taking care of the house, yard, and business issues.
Later in the morning we went to Tyler, stopping first at Colonial Nursing Home in Lindale to wrap up so paperwork there. When we got to Tyler, we found that Mother was still not very responsive to anyone, but the nurses assured us that she had been eating well and that tests were showing some improvement in the infection.
While we were there, we did find out that Wood Memorial was going to admit Mother upon her release from the hospital. In a sense, that was a great relief, but we continued under the burden of guilt of not being able to do what we had wanted for Mother – to keep her in her own house. We had made the promise that we would take care of her as long as we could, never realizing that the day would come when “taking care” meant relinquishing the direct care giving to the professionals who could do it much better than we could.
On Tuesday, I got up early and drove out to Yantis for our weekly prayer meeting. It would be an understatement to say that we were in need or prayers ourselves…we were feeling pretty low and lost by now, but we did at least have a place where Mother might be able to get better.
When I got back to Mineola, we had some breakfast, then got cleaned up and drove back to Tyler (the car was running on auto pilot by then). We visited Mother for a bit, left for a while to go out and have some lunch, and then returned to see Mother and visit with the nurses to find out what was going on. They again assured us that the infection was clearing up and they felt that Mother could be released tomorrow with a new regimen of meds for her Parkinsonism and the persistent urinary tract infection.
We returned to Mineola and began gathering things to take to Wood Memorial to get Mother’s room set up for her anticipated arrival tomorrow.
I called the nursing station at ETMC Wednesday morning to see if Mother was still on schedule to be transferred to Wood Memorial today and whether we needed to come over. The nurses said that they had everything under control…ETMC would transport Mother this afternoon and it wouldn’t be necessary for us to come over.
With that bit of information discovered, we set about to take care of regular business around the place. Barbara took care of paying bills while I took the car to the Dodge place to be serviced.
When we found that Mother was on the way to Mineola, we went back to Wood Memorial to await her arrival. I took care of some remaining paperwork with the admissions and financial offices and Barbara oversaw the operation of getting Mother transferred from the bus to her new room. One thing we immediately discovered was that Mother didn’t have her glasses with her. They were nowhere to be found in her personal effects and the driver of the ambulance couldn’t find them anywhere…just another mystery to deal with later.
Thursday morning I made a series of phone calls to ETMC regarding Mother’s glasses. Since they weren’t found in any of Mother’s personal effects, and the ambulance drivers couldn’t find them, the hospital assumed the responsibility for replacing them. We would be jumping through hoops for a while, but we would be able to get some new glasses.
This afternoon we went through Mother’s closet and selected clothes to take to her. We tried to stay out of the way at the nursing home as much as possible today so Mother could get acclimated to her new surroundings.
Friday was furniture moving day at the house. Since we had every intention of getting Mother through rehab and bringing her back home in another month, we rearranged the furniture in her room so it would be much more convenient for her to walk from her bed to the bathroom and to her recliner. Of course, moving furniture also meant dusting, cleaning, and vacuuming, but once it was done, we began to wonder why we had never set the room up like that before…all of a sudden it was very open, roomy, and cheery.
Around noon we stopped work to drive out to Holiday Villages to meet with Jack Roe, the president of Holiday Villages Lake Fork. Jack is also a member of the board of directors, and he wanted to know if I, as a member of the board, would serve as the chair of a committee to oversee the transfer of the operations of HV Lake Fork from the Dallas office to the Lake Fork Property Owners. After many questions from both of us, I agreed to take on the task, never anticipating what that would entail down the road. But, we did have a nice lunch together before heading back to Mineola to see Mother for a few minutes and then returning to the house to finish the job we had started in Mother’s room this morning.
We all know how room rearranging goes…one thing always leads to another, and on Saturday morning we discovered that we wanted to change some of the things we had done yesterday. Luckily, none of it involved heavy physical labor, and soon we had the room looking just the way we needed it to be for Mother to return after her physical rehabilitation.
After a very hectic two weeks, it looked like things were going to finally calm down a bit and we were all going to get back to normal, whatever that is.
“Getting married and becoming a spouse. Giving birth and becoming a parent. Watching your adult children move away and becoming an empty nester. Seeing your parents age and becoming a family caregiver. These are all major life transitions that schools don’t give classes in! Most of us never have the opportunity to learn the basic how-to’s about these long-lasting roles and responsibilities we take on during our lives.” – Linda Abbit
Worn and weary, but still hopeful,
Jim/Dad/Gramps & Barbara/Mom/Grams
