Well, just when you think maybe mom is making progress, the next shoe drops! Turns out the several days in a row of Diarrhea was a "sign"- she has the C-Diff bacterial infection that is very common with long term facilities. It seems to stem from antibiotic use, which in essence kills the bacteria that fights that bad bacteria, making one susceptible to this type of infection. I find it hard to believe that the last few days when the nurses did not tend to her in a timely enough manner has not had an impact on this infection. The response time of 10 minutes to the call button seems to be normal, but not quick enough for my mother and her needs. Keep in mind that she only calls when she needs assistance with the bathroom. Then she beats herself up because she has an "accident" and is embarrassed, when it's the nurses fault for not tending to her quickly enough.
I get that the nurses are understaffed and that they have too many patients, making it very hard to keep with the expected standard of care. However, it is still unacceptable. Take in fewer patients, hire more nursing staff! It's absolutely appalling!
I reached out to my Facebook family today to get some advice and input on how to handle this, who to reach out to, what to say, what to do. Half of the problem is that we've never really had a point of contact at this new facility- so who do you talk to? In any case, I received a lot of helpful advice. I also had a long chat with a Mercy Alum who is a nurse and read my posting and felt compelled to help me with advice. She gave me key words to say, told me who I should be checking in with regularly, etc. She also mentioned that her cousin works at the facility and has for 20 years, she's a highly respected nurse. One phone call to her and it now appears that my mother has a new "niece" or guardian angel. Her Niece is going to make it known to the staff that her "Aunt" is in their care and hopefully that will step up the level of care that she is receiving.
The good news- her wounds are healing nicely - in fact, I took some progress pictures today and I feel they are actually not too gross to avoid posting. So here goes:
The Surgery Wound:
The "bad" leg, but seriously, this is so much better!
It's nice to see that her legs are "normal" color, ok she could use a tan, but she's not red, red swollen and she's not purple for lack of circulation!
So today mom expressed her concern for "returning to her normal life" and she doesn't think it will happen and that has been her whole premise, she didn't want to get "fixed" if she couldn't return to her quality of living. I tried to tell her that if the Doctors have not told her it's not going to happen to not think about it. That she needs to fight through this and that she could do this. I didn't want to completely set her up for disappointment, so I told her that I wasn't sure she'd be able to go back to living alone at home or maybe she could with a stair chair, but then would she feel comfortable living alone? I did try to "sell" her on the Assisted Living/Independent Living place- Woodside Terrace that we checked out last year and told her that she could very possibly have a better quality of life in a place like that with shuttle service to take here where ever she needed to go, new friends, new activities and she seemed to take it in for thought. I know that she is concerned about the "rent" taking up all her income and leaving no "fun money"- so we need to help her to start thinking creatively, she could rent out her house and use that rental income for fun, she could sell her house and bank the proceeds and then tap into that for fun and I believe there is some government assistance that she may be eligible to apply for given my dad's Veteran's status. But we can't dump all these ideas onto her at once, it must be a gentle process.
So it is still one day at a time and we keep hoping for forward progress. So far she has shown that she can fight, even when she doesn't feel like fighting - her body still does.
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