Sunday, August 13, 2006

Mom..........round two!

In March 2005, my Mom nearly died from renal failure. She was hospitalized for 23 days and diagnosed with Bright's Syndrome. It is basically, chronic kidney disease. For the past year and a half, she has been getting dialysis three days a week. Well Mom is back in the hospital again. Monday morning, I got a call at 6:30 from the dialysis center saying that Mom never showed up. After calling her and getting no answer, I called the neighbor and he said her car was in the garage, yet she wasn't answering the door or the phone. So we called 911, by the time I got down there, they were already in there. Seems she got dizzy and fell, so they took her to the emergency room. She told the doctor that she had a headache the day before, so they did a CT scan, which showed bleeding on the brain. They life flighted her to Pittsburgh, where they immediately did brain surgery. They made a small incision at the lower back of her skull, removed a portion of bone and the two blood clots, went down into her skull, which is good and they got the bleeding stopped. They said that with her on blood thinners, it can make a small incident into a large on in no time. I don't know if she fell and hit her head (she landed in a big pile of clothing) or if an earlier head wound caused the fall. It's all a mystery. I was at both hospitals all day, Monday and finally got to see her at 9:30 pm. She developed a fever Thursday, it finally broke on Saturday. Also her one arm swelled and the skin turned black and had blisters all over it. It looks like and IV was infiltrated. On Friday, it looked like they had cut and removed all the dead skin from it. It's such a mess.

She is now awake and alert and will answer questions with head nods. She just doesn't seem like she is all there mentally. She moves her good arm erratically, pulls away when I try to touch her and has a very vacant look in her eyes.

I am just trying to take each day at a time!!