(no subject)

I was at the nursing home from about seven or so until ten-o'clock.

Things were rather bad. Mostly pain related, but also in the area of not being lucid. She keeps calling for her father and seeing a little girl in her room. She also told me, several times, that she wanted to die and was going to kill herself if I didn't bring her Tylenol. And that she was just going to kill herself, in general.

Tylenol? There's morphine and Ativan and Dilaudid and all manner of other power drugs at hand. She asks for Tylenol. I think it's a psychosomatic comfort kind of thing for her. Tylenol was her cure-all. Headache? Take Tylenol. Fever? Take Tylenol. Broken bone or sprain? Tylenol. Bleeding out of your eyes? Take some Tylenol and it'll all go away.

The universe's joke here is that Tylenol makes me very ill and therefore, I could never take it. So my eternal answer to her eternal question, "Did you take any Tylenol?" was always and emphatically, "No, I did not."

Also, the right side of her face is swollen in the upper jaw and in front of the ear area. In massive amounts of pain. Hurts to swallow. Don't know what's causing it. In the short time I was there, I witnessed two doses of morphine and left as they were getting ready to administer Ativan. The morphine wasn't even touching the pain.

I came home, fed the animals, tried (and failed!) to eat dinner. Decided a shower was in order. It was around midnight, and I was still in the shower, when Todd answered a phone call from the nursing home saying that they were bringing her to the hospital, at her request, because of the swollenness and the pain. She wanted an 'evaluation'.

After notifying hospice of these events, I just wait for a phone call that will possibly not come until morning.

I do not believe that I am going into work tomorrow. It is already three and I have yet to find any sleep. I tried to do some research online, listing her symptoms and her current disease, but nothing was apparent.

There's nothing to do but wait.

As usual.

(no subject)

The swollen area and pain is coming from her salivary gland. No word as to just why yet.

I've spoken with hospice and because my mother was taken to the hospital, she has to be taken off of the hospice program. Which I knew and expected. They're not allowed to touch her if she's receiving some form of treatment. It sucks, but they assured me that as soon as she returns to the nursing home, she will be re-admitted to their program with no problems or delay.

The hospital has her on a Dilaudid IV drip, from what they tell me, but she's still in pain. The doctor was supposed to call me after he did his consultation/examination, but I've received no word from him. I think I'm going to try calling the hospital in a little bit, to see if anything has been learned.

During my conversation with hospice, I asked them about her living will. It states that she does not wish to be on life sustaining machinery. I would think that her nephrostomy tubes count as such, since without them she would go into kidney failure and die. But, the hospice nurse told me that the law doesn't consider it that way.

Balls.

I don't know what else to do.

Miss Robin is coming here after she gets done work and we're going to head up to the hospital.