I had planned to finish today's entry when we got home from Kaiser this morning, but since we didn't get home until after 4 p.m., I decided instead to make it two entries in one!
I also planned to write an article for the newspaper, which is due tomorrow morning and which involves interviewing several people, which I figured I could handle nicely in the afternoon.
If you want to make God laugh, tell her what your plans are!
None of that got done, but it's probably just as well because yesterday, Sunday, was definitely a day of rest. It started with a full night of sleep. Be still my heart. I didn't intentionally binge watch NCIS-LA, but I didn't get hooked on the show until the 3rd or fourth season, and so these 1st and 2nd year shows are new to me and once I got started, I just kept at it.
I was so lazy that I even served Walt leftovers for dinner. They were delicious leftovers. I had made an Instant Pot spiced chicken and rice in coconut milk the night before and it served enough for an army. In fact, there is enough left over for him to eat it again tonight.
So the day passed quietly, with calls from all the kids to check on how Walt and I were.
This morning I was scheduled for an echocardiogram. The doctor had heard a slight murmur at my exam and wanted to have it checked out. My appointment was for 10:40 and it say that if you are late, you will be rescheduled, so we made sure we got there early.
The nicest thing about an echocardiogram is that you lie down for it. on a bed. The nurse had to bring Walt in from the waiting room to help me get to a lying down position and she had to find a big pillow for my back, but once she got me situated and comfortable, the test could proceed. They allow 40 minutes for it, depending on how cooperative your heart is, but my heart must have been n its best behavior because she was finished in about 25 minutes. I was sorry I didn't have my cell phone to videotape the action on the screen. I will be curious to see what it shows.
They got me up and dressed...
....and I checked my messages and there was one from Atria. The message was from one of the aids for whom English is not her first language and even when I talked with her on the phone directly, I still didn't get what the problem was but the upshot was that they were sending her to the hospital. Coincidentally the very hospital where I was sitting.
So Walt and I went from the Echocardiograph lab down to emergency to await the ambulance. For once, I couldn't explain to her why she was there because I didn't know myself. The doctor asked me questions about her degree of dementia and there didn't seem to be anything unusual about it.
When I got to the room where she was, they were taking an x-ray with a portable machine.
As they got the equipment off of her, you could see how thrilled she was with the whole thing.
They took her off for a CT scan and took me to what would be her room, where I met JD, the tall handsome nurse who would be dealing with her. I thought this was great because even when she's out of it, she comes alive around a handsome man and I told him he should flirt with her. But even JD couldn't make her smile.
While waiting, I was communicating with my editor about the article that needs to be written and how we could still make the deadline, with her writing the bulk of the article and me sending her a few interviews to use
I don't know how long we were there, but hours. They attached her to lots of cords and that was the bane of my existence.
She hated them and wanted them OFF of her and could not remember for more than half a second that she could not pull them off. I spent most of the time there trying to get her to leave the damn cords alone. Whenever I explained to her what the cords were for she would say "well, why didn't anybody tell Mel!"
The worst part was when JD had to catheterize her to get a urine sample. She didn't know what was happening, was furious, cried out several times and said she was going to walk out and go somewhere else and never come back to that place again. But it was a necessary test and discovered a urinary tract infection, for which she now had medication. I felt so sorry for her. It must have felt like she was being raped, being held down by man who was jabbing something into her body.
We were finally able to leave at about 4:30. She said she had to go to the bathroom, and I'm afraid I gave that chore to JD because I wasn't sure how I was going to handle her, her barely fitting diaper, and my walker in the hospital bathroom. He didn't look thrilled, but did it.
I thought she would be happy when given the OK to leave, but she is beyond feeling happiness, I fear.
Walt had gone to the pharmacy to get her meds. I got her dressed and gave her my walker so we could walk outside to meet him She had been complaining of the cold all day and I thought the heat would feel good on her, but she complained of the heat.
It was an uneventful ride home and she went with the aid who came out to get her without a backward glance to Walt and me. She had already forgotten we were ever there.
I'm not sure if I'm getting results of her exams, but I'm still fighting Kaiser's technicians trying to get a temporary password so I can get back on line. I have to have another CK test and I'm supposed to make an appointment with a nurse to check on the sore on my backside, and I'm not sure if I'm supposed to see the doctor after the echocardiogram. All these things can be handled beautifully by e-mail if they'll just give me my damn password!
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