Hospital Visit #3

Change is hard.  Imagine people coming up to you and telling you how wonderful you are and how much they are going to miss you.  Now, imagine that you don't know what they are talking about.  You don't know where you are going.  Or are they leaving you? Are you dying? Despite many conversations, Nana is unable to digest the fact that she is moving. (Even though she had asked to move to an Alzheimers facility.) So, Nana showed her anxiety in her usual way.  She had chest pain and dizziness, and this time, her dizziness just got worse and worse.
   I made it to the emergency room about 45 minutes after Nana was brought in by ambulance.  She was hooked up to heart monitors and was wearing oxygen.  She gave me a huge smile and thanked me for coming. She had already charmed most of the emergency staff; they had done an EKG and taken blood to check for abnormalities. Her vital signs were marching across the monitors, and they were more stable than mine, I'm sure. We sat and waited for the doctors to decide about her needs.
  Bells ringing, people moving quickly by the doorway. Voices calling, people retching-- hospitals are a den of activity.  And when one has dementia, this is all very confusing. The doctors came in, and they asked Nana many questions.  They asked her who I was.  She turned, smiled and said, "Go ahead, you can tell them."  I said that my name was Nancy, and Nana added, "And I am so glad that I married her."  Hmmm.  I laughed.
  After the medical team left, Nana continued to try to make sense of her environment and her dizziness. She tried to stand up and leave the room, convinced that she was at a party.  "I think I better go greet my guests."
 I assured her that she was not at a party, but at the emergency room.  "Ohhh... Do I do this a lot?" I said no, she hasn't been in the hospital in over 6 months.
 "I'm sorry for doing this."  I assured her that she hadn't done anything wrong.
"Do I run with a fast crowd?"  Um, no, you have wonderful friends.
It suddenly occurred to me that she thought she was in the ER because she had become drunk. "I guess my parents called the police and had me sent to the hospital".... I told her that she wasn't dizzy because she was drunk-- she did not have anything to drink today.  "Oh, thank goodness!"
  Nana's disequilibrium continued until we got her to a hospital room for observation overnite. Once in her hospital bed, she hopped out of bed without a complaint of dizziness. The nurses showed her how to call them if she needed to get out of bed.  She thanked them for the lesson, and dazzled them with a big smile.  As I walked out of the room, I warned the nurse that she should ask for a 1:1 sitter for Nana overnite.  "Oh, she is lovely.  She will be ok."
  When I returned to the hospital the next morning, she had been removed from her room.  I found her in a geriatric recliner, sitting next to a 1:1 aide.  She was smiling, and chatting with everyone at the desk. I received a big smile and a wave.
  As the morning wore on, she became more and more confused.  Yes, I became that obnoxious family member who thinks she knows more than the medical staff (sorry, Memorial Hospital.) But the nurse had said that we could leave in 20 minutes, when she would have time to remove her IV and her telemetry monitors. Thirty minutes went by, and Nana was getting worse and worse, not understanding how to dress herself or how to eat, or swallow her pills.  I removed her telemetry monitors and unhooked her IV.  I dressed her, and I ran downstairs and got a wheelchair for discharge. I went to the nurse's station and waited for the discharge paperwork. The nurse removed the saline lock from Nana's arm and actually thanked me for helping with the discharge (thank goodness.) We headed home, and when we reached her apartment, she was back to her normal level of confusion.
  Needless to say, I am a bit nervous about her move to the Alzheimers facility tomorrow.  But I am confident that the new staff has had a lot of experience soothing new residents.  Either way, I will sleep with my cell phone next to my pillow, just in case.