... as a daughter would proclaim when sumthin' completely unexpected occurs: I am in Valdosta. After getting up at 4:00 a.m., to be alert and on the job at 5 o'clock this morning. There were a number of calls back and forth all day on Saturday, conversations with staff in the facility where the Auntie has been living for over a year. It's so hard to really get a feel for what is going on with her from a distance. Plus it is doubly difficult to know if the 'crisis' is actually a serious problem or something relatively minor along the lines of 'The Little Boy Who Cried Wolf' too many times. You remember that tale: the kid got lonesome, or bored, or scared, kept yelling to get attention/assistance, until the townspeople no longer felt his cries warranted a response.
It started with a fall on Friday night/early Saturday morning. I was sound asleep, then startled awake by my phone. Naturally my first thought was it was the alarm, signaling time to get up and stagger off to work. But it was even earlier than that: someone calling to report the Auntie got up in the wee hours, disoriented, and had walked out of her room into the hall way, then fallen when escorted back to bed. You might recall she was at the orthopedic office two weeks ago, and given a cortisone injection in her knee, in an effort to ease chronic pain. We will never know if it had the desired effect as she cannot reliably report on the efficacy of the shot for relieving chronic knee discomfort.
She made a big production of how badly her leg hurt all day on Saturday. Constantly reporting that she was in much pain, and demonstrating how she could barely walk, struggling to move about. The staff concluded she needed to be evaluated, called EMS to take her to hospital for exam, x-rays of the leg she claimed to be causing misery. I was almost certain that upon arrival at the ER, the decision would be made to admit/keep her for 'observation', ie: insurance billing. They had no idea what they were in for when they decided to admit her and assigned her a room on the nursing floor. You can imagine how much attention she needed throughout the night, as well as all day today, after she was labeled (literally - there is a bright yellow armband announcing to everyone she is a) fall-risk. I can tell you they were very happy to see me when I walked up to the nurse's desk about five o'clock this afternoon, reporting for duty.
When I called my contact person at the home this morning, soon thereafter I received a call from a PA, who reported she was getting antibiotics for UTI (which we already knew about). And that they were struggling to keep her in bed so she would not get up on wobbly legs and fall again. I told him I would be there about five after I got off work. They were all very pleased when I showed up. After they had spent then hours attempting to placate Connie - I can understand why the staff was all smiles and joy when I introduced myself: two hours of answering the same questions a dozen times wore me out.
I asked her nurse if there was any reason to keep her here. She looked really alarmed, so I said: tomorrow! Can she leave tomorrow! That is likely, so I plan to be here early, to plead her case. And arrive in time to hear what the doc/PA/NP has to say. If all she is doing here is taking antibiotics and filling up a bed, no reason she cannot do that someplace the rent has already been paid, right?
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