When your parents' bedroom lit*er*al*ly looks like a crime scene
Truth Serum Tell #15
Two days after Christmas, my Mom fell.
Twice.
In one day.
In the morning, I’d barely gotten 15 mins from the house when Dad called and said she’d fallen in the bedroom and knocked her head against the bench.
Welcome to Lit*er*al*ly, Ororo, a weekly blog by me, Ororo Munroe. You are reading Truth Serum Tells, posts about deeper life shit. No needles or toxic, mind-bending drugs were used to write these posts. Thanks for reading.
A bench that would’ve been perfectly at home on the set of Bridgerton, so you can imagine the aftermath. Wait, I’ll show you…
He’d been in the closet getting her clothes when she fell; she’d been about to get out bed and had told her to stay put. But she didn’t, because, well, she’s lit*er*al*ly losing her mind.
HoV (Hospice of the Valley) called 9-1-1 for us (we contact them for everything for her now, including before we call 9-1-1) and she was taken to the hospital. She required no stitches and was released hours later with an Ace bandage around her head (that didn’t really stay on) and just to give her ibuprofen for head pain; we stole borrowed the antiseptic wash they used to clean her wound.
The only good thing about that visit was the McHottie Attending Physician. Way Hawter than McDreamy and McSteamy put together and is it a doctor’s requirement to work out? Because McHottie Attending Physician was…
Fast forward to later that evening.
I’m in my room talking to Sis’s BFF when we hear Mom cry out. We all come running and she’s sprawled on her stomach in the foyer, head turned to the side.
My Dad and sister had been in the kitchen for only a few minutes. The last time they saw her, she was sitting on the couch.
You’re starting to see a pattern here, I’m sure.
Once again, she had fallen.
And once again, no one had been in the room with her.
We waited 40 minutes for an HoV nurse to arrive. We didn’t want to move her just in case there was internal damage.
So, 9-1-1 was called. Again.
And once again, the same crew that had taken her that morning, showed up again.
In complete disbelief.
Yeah, join the fucking club.
Did I mention we live down the street from a fire station? Convenient.
This fall was much worse.
Broken left wrist.
Three broken ribs on the left side.
Left bruised lung.
They tell us it’ll take 6-8 months for the ribs to heal.
Six. To eight. Months.
This time, she left with another Ace bandage around her head, a fiberglass cast… and no pain med script. #YouFuckingSuckDignityHealth
We end up getting pain meds from HoV, to be administered every 4 hours, and now The Munroe’s have become Walter White. Minus all the drama.
Our drugs of choice?
Lorazepam – 0.5 ml
Dilaudid – 2mg
Senna – 10ml a day for constipation
Trazodone - 150mg at bedtime
Melatonin - dissolvable pill at bedtime
It’s now one month later and I am beyond stunned at how drastic our daily lives have changed since this incident occurred.
Gone is the woman who was able to:
Feed herself
Dress herself (even though it practically took an hour)
Get around with a walker
Saw/talked to people we couldn’t see
Read messages—verbatim—that we couldn’t read (on clothes, walls, midair, paintings, sheets, etc.)
Ask you the same question over and over every 3 minutes. She didn’t hold conversations with you, but she listened intently and had some really good zingers every once in a while.
She has now been replaced by a woman who:
Can no longer feed herself and now receives liquid nourishment via protein smoothies and Carnation breakfast drinks.
Is wheelchair-bound because she barely has any strength to stand.
Sleeps most of the time (thanks to The Cocktail) or has her eyes closed when she’s sitting in a chair with her head bowed (we rarely see her eyeballs and even before the falls, her eyes were at half-mast like she was sleepy).
Doesn’t really talk, but when she does, she whispers, and her words are slurred or unintelligible.
Now has to be dressed and physically transferred from/to bed/chair/toilet by her husband and daughters.
Now sleeps in her own hospital bed with a gate and a bolster.
Is bathed twice a week by a CNA who comes every week.
The fiberglass cast was replaced with a plaster cast which she wore for 3 weeks. But since she’s been tugging and twisting her fingers and trying to pull her cast off, the healing hasn’t been significant.
So, her ortho doc put another plaster cast on that she has to wear for another three weeks. At this rate, she’s going to be wearing that fucking cast for another six damn months. Because she keeps tugging and twisting her fingers and pulling on the cast.
It’s been a month, and we think her body is getting used to The Cocktail (aka the pain meds). It used to knock her out in about 15-20 minutes. Now, it takes hours to kick in and we’re exploring alternative ways to help her sleep through the night; the Traz and the Mel are helping… to a certain extent.
So.
Yeah.
Drastic changes.
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I'm so sorry, Ororo. I can only imagine the stress you and yours are dealing with, and the adrenaline rush every time the phone rings or dings. I hope you get a chance every once in a while to catch your breath and have some time for you. I hope that for your dad and sister, too. xo
So sorry about your mom’s falls. Aging really sucks and I can’t imagine how hard it must be to watch her change physically and mentally so much. Thanks for being so open and sharing your journey with all of this.