If you are a doctor or nurse or just handy with medical stuff (speak the lingo or play one on TV) you should open an Emergency Room.
Amy and I carted Mom to the Urgent Care here in Durham and were referred to Duke's Emergency Room because Urgent Care was not equipped to take care of Mom.
So we went to Duke's ER. It is so nice, they offer FREE valet parking if you are going to the ER. That was a perk.
Here it is, Monday about 2pm. And it is packed. Hmmm. They triage Mom right away because Urgent Care called the ER and said Mom was coming.
Then we sat in the ER waiting room. Mom finally got into the ER room at 5:30pm.
The staff were very nice. At about 2am, the doctor showed me how to work the television so I could change the channel. I had finally seen a full cycle of Bizarre Food.
I did not bring any cash ~ but I did have two bottles of water and some crackers. Mom was sleeping.
They did a chest X-ray, a CT scan. They kept trying to draw blood but could not get a vein.
At 1 am I met the night time doctor and we were still waiting for a bed upstairs. The night nurse told me that Duke has 900 beds and they were all full. That was the hold up. They were diverting cases because they had no where to put them.
They finally got a vein on her left shoulder for a port and then around 3 am an ultra sound nurse came in with an ultra sound and found a vein for a bigger port to pull the blood. That was pretty cool to watch.
The exams showed that mom had two pockets of blood internally and that was swelling in her belly. She was also retaining fluid. Her extremities were Navy blue.
They said she did not have a UTI nor pneumonia. But they were not sure what was going on.
They also talked about her heart: Mom has afib and congestive heart failure (which is pretty normal for elderly people, especially the ones who don't want to move around or exercise).
They put in a catheter and Lasix in an IV to try and pull the fluid. They put her on oxygen because no one could get a reading on the oxygen in her blood.
The oxygen was great. The blue in her extremities cleared up!
Amy brought me a huge care package at 11am - a roast beef sandwich and a coke and magazines and candy. She was terrific!!!!!!!!
Amy brought me another sandwich at 5:30pm. What about Mom you ask? Well, she was sleeping and they did not want to give her anything in case they had to do surgery.
Then, at 7pm, miracles of miracles we get a room and a bed on the cardiac unit!!!!!
I finally went home at 8pm. Lori came and picked me up.
Mom's care manager called me this morning. We had a long chat. We talked Home Health Care, oxygen....all the basics. We talked about what we wanted.
We want Mom to come home at her baseline ~ which is to be able to walk with her walker around the house. Not the most difficult of goals.
We also will keep her on oxygen or have a compressor for when she needs it.
She did tell Lori and I this afternoon during our visit that this new thing called a catheter was great because she did not have to get up and walk to the bathroom anymore.
I told her she wasn't coming home with a catheter and that she would be walking to the bathroom. I guess I am now written out of the will.
We were treated very well at Duke ~ I have no complaints.
Hopefully Mom will be home in a couple of days.
Just wanted to let you know what was going on and maybe how to start a new career.
Love, Leslie
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