Facing Life in Confinement

After a week at my sister's, we headed out to pick mom up and bring her home. But that was the beginning of the end of her freedom.

When we arrived she was laying on the couch, silent and covered with a blanket. My sister indicated she'd been sick for three days (it had started on the day she'd called about the coaster). I asked if she'd taken mom to the emergency department. With someone like mom, you don't play around with illness.  She'd said mom didn't want to go, so she didn't take her.

I was a little surprised by that.  Not at the fact that she didn't want to go, but the fact that my sister thought Mom was able to make that decision. Mom wasn't capable of making those kinds of decisions anymore. You had to make them, and simply do what was best for her. She also hadn't eaten in nearly 3 days. We put her in the car and headed home - a long 3 hour drive.

Back at her apartment I bathed her, forced to eat some toast and tea and tucked her into bed with her TV on. She was asleep in minutes, and I sent my husband home while I settled down on the couch. It was less than an hour later when I first checked on mom - I thought she was breathing oddly. At least, odder than usual. I called my husband and got him out of bed. He wasn't sure if we should take her to the hospital now, or wait til morning. I sat in her room and watched her for perhaps another 40 minutes. Not only was she breathing oddly, she was mumbling gibberish in her sleep - she seemed almost in a delirium. She had never done that, not in all the years I could remember. She was thrashing about the bed too, but it was almost as if her muscles were locked - she was stiff, and I couldn't even move her or make her bend her leg, though by this time I'd be surprised if she were more than 75 pounds. All at once her breathing became very laboured and slow. I immediately picked up the phone and called 911 for an ambulance.

They arrived in minutes, and whisked her off to the hospital. I called my husband again, and we followed them. Although we were no more than 10 minutes behind the ambulance, she was in emergency and already had a doctor at her bedside and a specialist on the way. They thought she had a pretty severe case of pneumonia, but she was also dehydrated and they started her right away on IV fluids.

By the time the specialist had arrived, the first bag of fluid was empty and a new one in it's place, and she'd been on oxygen the entire time. She was breathing better, and the stiffness had retreated from her muscles. She hadn't woken up, but seemed more relaxed - as if she were in a more normal sleep. They began a round of antibiotics and took her off for chest x-rays.

The result was pneumonia - which they would continue to treat with antibiotics in the hospital.  The one thing we didn't know was how the lack of oxygen in her blood would affect her. It might only have been a couple of days, but that reduction in oxygen levels was pretty devastating - apparently killing off even more brain cells, even faster than alzheimer's alone would normally have done it.

By the next day, she was awake, but very confused. At first, she didn't seem to have any memory of the last few months - she didn't remember moving, or visiting my sister and didn't know what she was doing in the hospital. She asked for my dad. How would I tell her that he'd been gone for a few years already?