Today was supposed to be a home day. And it mostly was.
Then I got a phone call.
From home care.
They don’t have anyone do to my mother’s med assist for her two evening visits.
Which means I am going to soon be on my way to take care of that.
My mother came home from the hospital on Feb. 10. Today will be the 20th day since she’s been home and her meds set up with the lock box. In those 20 days, this evening will be the 4th time I’ve had to do a med assist due to short staffing. Technically, 7 times, since she has two evening visits, and I’ve had to prepare her before-bed pills, too. Plus, she has had two morning no-shows, where someone was scheduled to show up, didn’t, and they don’t know why.
It’s a good thing we’ve got a meeting already set up in a couple of days. I had no problem being the one for them to call if they are short staffed, but that was supposed to be a fairly rare occasion.
This is ridiculous.
The Re-Farmer
The Re-Farmer 
I do understand the frustration, and I guess they probably are understaffed. Since I am no longer working in that industry, I have come to ask some fairly critical questions too: How much of the medication is only due because of the side effects or another, how much should not be given to the elderly and how much could be replaced by a change of diet or natural remedies without side effects. I don’t want to rock the boat in case of your mother at her age, but some questions are worth asking. Best wishes,
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Oh, I understand the questions.
It’s a bit hard to know exactly why she was put on some of the medications, because she’s been on them for so long. She has, several times now, with different doctors, asked about having some of them taken off. The one that did get taken off was the water pills, and she ended up in the hospital with pulmonary edema, so she’s back on those. Going over her other medications and seeing what they are prescribed for, there really isn’t anything that can be taken off, and none are there to treat side effects of others.
As for change in diet, we’ve tried that with foods that trigger her acid reflux and heartburn. She is obsessed with having to eat “healthy” but keeps eating foods that will make things worse, but trying to associate food with things they couldn’t possibly have anything to do with. Like her recent complaints about dry mouth. She wakes up with a dry mouth, and tries to blame it on food – even though she still had it happen while she was in the hospital, and not eating those foods. Basically, she’s sleeping with her mouth open. Probably because of her breathing issues. The only way we will be able to do anything about her diet is to get her into long term care, because on her own, she is neither willing nor able to understand what we try to tell her – but will remember what some diet book author said on a program she saw, 20 or more years ago.
As for natural remedies, my sister has been giving her supplements and teas – but some of the teas, for example, were citrus based, which triggers my mother’s heartburn, so she shouldn’t be drinking them! My sister isn’t really on top of the details, unfortunately, and does stuff like that. 😄
So… yeah… it’s a difficult thing to juggle with my mother for many reasons!
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absolutely is! I marvel at how you juggle it all!
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Thanks!
“Juggle” is a good word for it! 😁
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