Ma was Ma this morning… after studying the phonebook endlessly for the last few days she wanted me to put it away in the phone drawer. There was only a couple of weird comments about the ‘other house’ but other than that she was sparking on all four cylinders. I told her that the Dr had organised for her to be assessed at the hospital and she was open to getting to the bottom of her ‘problem’.
The Dr came around 11 to give me a note for the hospital where a bed was waiting for her and off we went, followed by my trusty sister. Checked in at casualty and after an hours wait where we were assessed by triage, for what reason I don’t know, I checked with the desk again only to be told that although we had been told the bed was ready, it didn’t mean that the bed was ‘ready’… really? SIGH. By this time Ma had started to flag but was still quite ‘there’.
Finally we get the call and make it to the Assessment Unit where she has a bed in a lovely big private room, which is probably because of the VRE (Vancomycin-Resistant Enterococcus) she got from there before. I usually tell her she has leprosy and should ring a bell when she’s coming.
The junior geriatrician puts Ma through her paces. Poking the tongue out; sounding her chest; memory questions; reflexes… the list goes on. He tells us he is stumped. The senior geriatrician comes in and basically repeats the other doctor’s tests plus a couple of others. She lists the possibilities of treatable causes, of which there are many, and then moves on to the possibility of dementia and moving Ma into permanent care. They will test the blood and urine; x-ray the chest, abdomen and ankle where her ulcer is; and do an MRI and Catscan. It sounds to me that the more they rule out what it isn’t the more they will lean towards a dementia diagnosis.
Left her there around half six. I hate leaving her there. She is keen to find out what’s going on. They asked her why she thought she was there. She told them it was because she sometimes gets confused and loses her way. I can’t even begin to explain the extreme swings Ma experiences between being there and… not. Tomorrow is another day with hopefully some answers… wait and see.
aged carer experience 