BrokenFingernail.com

So, my grandmother has been in the hospital for over a week once again. If anyone has been reading my updates, they would have noticed me talking about it off and on. She’s still there, but doing better today. She seems to go back and forth.

Last Sunday I woke up and found her in the back of the house having fallen in the bathroom. Of course, she said she didn’t fall, so to say, but we couldn’t get her back up because her legs refused to work. She was also rather light-headed and kept saying she “felt as though she was about to pass out,” so when my mother returned home from work we called my uncle and managed to get her out to the car.

From the car, my mother ran her to the emergency room in Evansville. Since my grandmother cannot ride in an ambulance without constantly throwing up, this was about our only choice. She has since been in the hospital and they have run every test that they could think of to find out exactly why she can’t feel or move her legs.

All those tests have come back with no results. My mother and I have noticed that when my grandmother isn’t paying attention, she can move her legs without too much of a problem, but when someone comes and asks if she can move them or they attempt to move them, it seems impossible. No, I’m not suggesting that my grandmothers’ ailment is in her head, but I’m sure a tad bit of it probably is.

Yesterday when we went to see her she couldn’t stop throwing up. I was sure her hacking was going to make her roommate vomit as well, because she eventually started coughing too. Today though, she was able to eat and drink without much problem, whereas yesterday she couldn’t even take her medicine. I believe most of the problem was the fact that they moved her to a different room and took out her IV’s.. She just doesn’t react well to change.

As some of you may or may not know, my grandmother has cancer–again. She had cervical cancer in the 70’s and then had her lef breast removed a couple of years ago because of breast cancer. Her tumor was the size of a soft ball then and they did a lot of chemo and radiation to make sure they got it all, but, alas, they missed a couple of cells and it spread into her left lung. Now, this does not mean that she has lung cancer, because, since it is still the breast cancer cells, it is still considered breast cancer.

The last two months she has been taking chemo pills–at 4,000 mg–every day for two weeks with one week off in between. These pills were not working fast enough or working at all (we aren’t completely clear on that), so they decided to go back to the injections. She just had her first chemo with this literally days before her legs stopped working.

Now, this has happened before and we have had trouble getting her to go to the doctor or hospital for it, so I don’t exactly see what the big deal is myself.. It has happened when her blood was low, it’s happened when she took water pills, and it’s happened when she’s been on chemo before. It could even have something to do with her neuropathy or even her arthritis, but the doctors wanted to make sure that it didn’t have anything to do with her cancer first, obviously.

Since they (the doctors and specialists) are unable to find the problem, they have told her that she can not come home until she is completely better. This is good, because I was very worried that she may come home in the condition that she is in and something may happen to her. One of her main doctors told her she was either going to stay at the hospital or go to a nursing home because it would be impossible for us (her family) to take care of her. She needs constant help and can no longer move around on her own, so I believe that he is right.

Surely, if you were in this situation you may not want to admit to that, but I’ve gone through it before with my grandfather before he passed away. I had to be the one to stand up and say, “Hey, we can’t do this anymore. He needs more help than we can provide. It would be best to put him in a nursing home.” Of course, those weren’t my exact words, but that’s really what needs to be said in this situation because my grandmother is throwing a fit about the thought of going to a nursing home.

I know, she’s seen her husband and her mother go to nursing homes and die there. I’m sure she doesn’t want that, but what can she possibly do here at home? She can’t get out and garden and mow the lawn like she wants, because she would simply be unable to do so. But, that wouldn’t stop her from trying in the first place and getting hurt, which is another good reason I think her coming back home is a bad idea. She never listens to the doctors or us about “taking it easy” because she doesn’t seem to know the meaning of the phrase.

She also has to have physical therapy since her legs are slowly starting to bend and such. This will be a constant thing and, until then, she would need to be in a wheelchair. Our house isn’t built for wheelchairs, or any kind of mobility that isn’t walking upright. You couldn’t even use a cane properly in the hallway if you needed, so it would be impossible for her to get around.

She wouldn’t be able to have someone come here daily to help and do therapy, because she needs constant care. She has needed it for some time, but she didn’t want to go to the hospital.. The night she fell, all she wanted us to do was help her to her bedroom so she could lie down. She didn’t want us to take her to the ER, but my mother told her she was because she needed to. When she couldn’t move to get up at all, she admitted defeat and agreed.

My grandmother is very stubborn. (That’s where I get it from!) My mother and I have both told her that she could always go into an assisted living type of nursing home, but she won’t hear any of it. My thoughts are that if my uncle, her only son, would join in and tell her that is what she needs, that she may listen. Because, honestly, it doesn’t matter what I say to her–she isn’t going to listen. It really doesn’t matter what my mother tells her either, because she really only listens to my uncle and truly listens to what he is saying. (I guess she thinks he’s the sanest of us all?)

..So, my past couple of weeks haven’t been too great. What’s new?