25 September 2017

A turn for the worse.

My mother has got worse. A week ago, I went in - as I do every day - to prepare her lunch and found her floppy, confused, shaking like a leaf and not at all like my mum. I dialed 999 and an ambulance crew arrived in ten minutes. She was whisked off to A&E where we spent ten hours!  Yep, you read right - TEN HOURS. In the first few hours, she was undressed, put in a gown, bloods taken, a catheter put in and then we more or less sat in a cubicle for a few more hours waiting and waiting and waiting. I studied the scratches and gouges on the walls and got  to know them intimately. Mum writhed on the trolley in agony.  We then saw an A&E doctor at about the  3-hour stage. The blood results finally  came back, showing a severe infection - but where? More waiting. Then after about nine hours one of the ward doctors came down to assess whether she was ill enough to be admitted. She was. But first a chest x-ray, which thankfully was all-clear. Finally after ten hours (and not a drop or morsel past our lips) she was taken up to a ward, where she has been for the last week.

The infection is coming from the nasty leg ulcer she has had since May. Back in May it was the size of a grape, then grew to a kiwi, then a peach. It had been more or less peach-sized for weeks, but now with the infection it is the size of a postcard! It is not healing as her leg artery is blocked meaning blood cannot get down to heal the ulcer. It is virtually eating away her lower leg and is quite an horrendous sight.  District nurses have been dressing it three times a week but now the hospital has left it exposed for it to dry out and thus stop the moist warm conditions that bacteria thrive on. The infection would explain my mother's quite dramatic decline over the last few weeks when even making a cup of tea was too much effort for her and she has been eating less and less of the meals I have prepared for her. Thankfully over the last week the infection is losing and the IV antibiotics are winning. However the excruciating pain she has been in since November (which we recently found out is caused by the arterial blockage) is still driving her crazy and she cannot get any rest. The hospital are experimenting with new drugs to try to lower the pain, but so far nothing has worked, even morphine. Even amputation has been considered by the doctors but, we are told,  is really too risky for a 94-year-old. We wait and wait with bated breath.

7 comments:

Elizabeth said...

Oh dear - but thank goodness there is improvement. Good luck to your mum - I hope now she will get completely better.

Anna of Mutton Style and Years said...

I'm sorry to read this but empathise as my mother was admitted on Saturday. The first half of your write up until the leg wound would be my write up too. We're still not knowing where the infection is so they've decided it's viral so she's now in isolation. She was found on Saturday on the floor having collapsed there 36 hours earlier. I rang the neighbour as I was worried as she wasn't answering her phone. She's got a neck pager thing but didn't have it on. She crawled to the phone then knocked it on the floor so the phone sounded engaged. Lucky she did as that was what alerted me.

Maggie May said...

Although I'm pleased that the infection is responding to the antibiotics, I'm worried for you both about the long term effects and how awful this is. Can't they remove the blockage? You'd think with modern drugs there'd be something to dissolve it.
Hoping for the best for you both.
Maggie x

Yorkshire Pudding said...

I have just caught up with the news about your mother. How very sad that at 94 she finds herself in pain with issues that are not easily resolved. She should be sitting in a rocking chair staring into the sunset and remembering the best parts of her long life. Not this. However, I imagine that this spell in hospital has eased the pressure on you - her principal carer.

ADDY said...

Maggie - the walls of the arteries are narrowing, as they do in old age from calcium/fat deposits over the decades. Any surgical intervention to widen them in the legs (such as stents or by-pass) is very risky in someone of her age and would lead to further infection,clots or internal bleeding, so the doctors are not keen to risk that.

Flowerpot said...

I'm so sorry, Addy, for both of you, but hope the antibiotics help clear the infection. Growing old is no joke is it? Thinking of you both.

Polly said...

I’m so sorry to hear your news. It’s very distressing to see your mum in so much pain and not be able to do anything to ease it. I hope the antibiotics have helped.