Meme 12-14-07
12/14/2007 11:07 p.m.
I meant to start this journal in the beginning of November, just after Meme came home, but things were going so well at first, there wouldn't have been much to write. But in the last week, she's declining a bit, and so I wanted to start writing about it. Especially since she had what appeared to be a mini-stroke on Wednesday morning, most of her words suddenly garbled, but not beyond recognition. Just slight slurring and some word mis-use and a little garbling, but nothing else. Grip strength equally good, no other confusion and she was getting around with her walker. And it resolved within an hour. Anyway, it's time to do this, start writing things down - both for history, for others who may find their own situations less insane after they read it someday, and because this morning was the first morning I felt annoyed with my caregiver duties. Journaling about it will be good.



Meme woke me up at 5:30 this morning, calling for me over the baby monitor in her room (there are three, on in her living room, one in the laundry room which is an area between the living room and her bedroom, and one in her bedroom). She's never done that before. Ever. So of course the adrenaline is pumping and I fly out of bed, racing downstairs so she's knows I hear her.



She hadn't urinated all night, and she had lain awake, apparently silent because I didn't hear her even stirring around at all, anxious that her usual pattern of having to urgently go every hour or so was not occuring. Also she hadn't had a BM in 3 days and that was troubling her. She told me she hadn't "been to the potty" in over 24hrs. I remembered her going twice yesterday and told her so. She recanted then, saying, "alright. Well, if I did go, it was just a trickle." I asked her when the last time she remembered going was. She said, "Yesterday before noon."

I reminded her that she urinated just before I helped her with her shower. She said, "Ya, but not much. Baaaarely a drop. And I hurt. In my bladder..." (bladdah - the suthin woman in her coming right out)..."and in mah back."



So I called the advice nurse at the local hospital, who concluded she needed to be seen in the ER. Also the advice nurse at her primary care in Portland as her trip to the local ER would be a member out-of-area expense. To the ER. Of course. I mean, what else can they say???



By the time we get there, it's 6:45am. The nurse asks her when she last urinated. "Around noon yesterday." When the doctor exams her, she asks too. Meme says, "Oh, I don't know, sometime late in the afternoon." And when asked if she had any pain, "Not really. No, not now." Within an hour and a half, after a straight cath to get a urine sample and brief rectal exam to check for a possible bowel obstruction, she pees. And then about 20 minutes later, pees again. Her labs look good, her kidney function even better than it has been in a year. But 20-50 WBC in her urine - a slight infection. So, it's good that we ended up going, nipping a UTI in the bud.



And then, on the way home, in her "adult diaper" the hospital provided, the BM. Alot. Three bananas (the way I learned to describe it, from.....somewhere. Where? I can't remember).



She can't imagine how that all happened and says so, just like that. "I can't imagine how that all happened. All of sudden, I could go. Just like that. What in the world is happening to me????"



I wish I knew. But the next time she calls for me at 5:30 in the morning to insist that something is wrong because she hasn't peed in ten to fifteen hours, I think I'll remind her that it won't hurt to wait to go until real people are awake already. I mean, I'm glad we went, because otherwise we might have missed the UTI for another several days. But to woken up like that, wow. That was heart stopping.



She doesn't feel pain the way she used to, and sometimes I swear what she perceives as pain is something else, but I'm not inside her skin so I don't know. She can't describe symptoms the way she used to. Her memory has been slipping worse (again) the last week or so, repeating a comment several times in a short period, (like the way she kept saying on the way home from the ER "It'll be so good to get this infection dealt with.") and asking me to repeat my plans repeatedly, asking me where Jeremiah's church is, and what the name of his church is. Or, asking me obsessively (or dementedly) where her gloves were, her scarf, and reminding me multiple times not to forget them. At least she remembers that she wore them.



Of course she's exhaused this morning, sleeping soundly in her easy chair the remainder of the morning.



It isn't snowing yet and warmer than the weather people thought it would be (35 degrees vs. the 28 predicted). They can never get the weather in The Dalles right. It just isn't possible. The wind patterns here are affected by too many factors, too many different geographies coming together in an apex of sorts right here (knwoing I didn't describe that right). I told Meme that after her comment about loving Christmas trees yesterday, we wanted to put one up downstairs for her even though she'd said in the past she didn't want a tree. She declined, saying she really didn't want one, that it was a sweet thought, but it was a waste of time and money. I argued that she just might enjoy it once we got it up. She said, "No, I don't think I will." She didn't say it in a wistful way, like she felt she ought to say it but she really wished we do it anyway. She does NOT want a tree. But still, I'm undecided. I think I still want to, even if it's just to make me feel better in case it's her last Christmas.