Can I please leave!(mom con't)

I walked back into the hospital I was so mad I had responsibilities! I hoped when I came back to the room my sister would say, I am so sorry you were not able to go, it will be o.k., or Thanks for helping we will get you to Orlando as soon as possible! Not, not one word.

By this time I think we had sortof convinced my mom she was home. This stopped her from trying to get out of bed to go home. Although it did bring on a new deluge of insults and anger. She kept yelling at my sister about things she thought we had put on her wall(they were the hospital stuff) She would keep saying "Susan(my sister)why would you put that ugly thing on my wall, right in the middle of my living room." She would say when she gets better she needed to paint the walls. This illusion we were eager to perpetuate.

We decided if she had a few things from home she may continue to believe she is home and calm down and sleep. I elected to go to her house, it was only a few miles from the hospital. Once at her house I grabbed a few personal items, a few family pictures, and a large furry cat stuffed animal. A great deal of the reason she wanted to get home was to care for her three elderly cats. WE had been caring for them but in her state of mind she was the only one who knew how to feed a cat.

I felt it was really important for her to eat and drink as much as possible, the more she ate, the more her body would function and push stuff out. The more stuff came out, the more the drugs would move out of her system. Getting her to eat was quite a job. She would not use her utensils. It seemed she had forgotten what food was. Everything she ate tasted weird to her. Her lunch was chicken salad, in which she ate with her hands. Not chk salad sandwich, just chicken salad. Her dessert at dinner was a piece or cheese cake(i think). She insisted on eating this with a knife. Every time we tried to suggest a folk she would just try harder to make the knife work.

It was about 8:30 when the night nurse came on duty. We explained the days events to her. She was quite busy, and pushy. We explained Mom was not to have any medication at all. With this the nurse told us we were wrong. With this we told her we were not wrong. After a 10 minute conversation she consulted her electronic chart . She was so sure she was right, she said my mom had been getting some form of drugs every four hours since the night before when she was their for her last shift. I tried to explain she had not since about 10 am when I arrived and she was not to be given any now. Once we reviewed the chart she realized we were correct and it was Dr.s orders to discontinue all medications. At this point if she had tried to give her any medication I would have attacked her!


After I returned from moms house and she was finished with her dinner we tried to encourage her to sleep. She was not having any part of that. I had grabbed a puzzle book, a book, and some newspapers from her coffee table. I also scooped up her mail. She was good with these items. She didn't read them just shuffled them around. This was good It kept her busy and she didn't try to get up, or remove any monitors. The results were trickling in from the test the Dr. had ordered and they all were confirming the same thing. This was strictly a reaction from the anesthesia from the surgery, It would pass with time. While I was at her house it dawned on me she had a perfectly good vehicle sitting in her driveway not being used! This was my ticket to my vacation. My brother-in-law helped me transfer vehicles around so I had the my moms truck at the hospital, if she would just sleep I might be able to leave, guilt free!

We set all the pictures around the room, I covered her up with a blanket from her bed at home and put the stuffed toy cat next to her. We closed the blinds and finally convinced her it was bed time(9:30 ish) We turned off the lights and put on the baseball game, and much to our surprise she started to drift off to sleep.


As she dosed off a nurse came in and turned on the room light! Both my sister and I winced, the nurse could tell what ever she had just done was not popular with the masses. We explained it had been about 24 hours since mom had slept and at least twelve since she stopped talking and moving and only about 5 seconds of peace and quite. She quickly apologized, took moms vitlel signs and scurried on her way. But once again we were dealing with an alert crazy woman. At this point she would want to locate all her cats. She thought she would get up and look for them. Then she thought she would get up and go to the (her )kitchen. WE had succeeded in convincing her she was at home which stopped her from wanting to leave, but we had convinced her so well we now had a whole new set of issues to deal with. Once again we started the process of tricking her into going to sleep. Telling her the cats were fine or under the bed, telling her the stuffed cat was the real cat. She seemed to find comfort in the stuffed cat as she petted it and began to relax. Once again it was seemed safe to leave. As my sister and I would start to leave room she would start to fidget with something or try to get up, but every now and again a brief moment of normal would appear. She would say, I'll behave, I will stay in bed, I promise. She would say it sarcastically, but true to form for her. We got her settled in once again and the nurse placed the bed monitor on her. This would alert the nurses station if she tried to get out of bed. At this point we had done all we could do, the nurses had to take over. I was panicked she was going to go though what she had endured the night before, I was panicked they would tie her up again, I felt guilty leaving her, but I felt guilty my family had to check in to our hotel with out me.

When I finally made it home on Friday it was about mid-night. I was exhausted, I fell into bed still wondering what I should do about Saturday, Saturday was July 5th, we had race tickets to the Daytona Cokezero 400. It was my sons first big Nascar event. My son the ultimate Jeff Gordan fan, my son who's bed is a race car, his bedroom is race car drivers and overall race car stuff, my son who had ask the last time I went to a race,"When will I get to go to a race?" I promised my husband and son I would be at the hotel by 10:00 for a Noon departure time to head for Daytona, but now I was not sure I could deliver on this promise.