The Doctor suggested that we stay at the ER because they were going to try and do a Telehealth psychiatric evaluation since they didn't have anyone at our local hospital. It's like a teleconference where a nurse practitioner spoke with Mother and then with us about her history and what had been happening. They need to determine if she was a candidate for a mental ward rather than dementia ward or what. We stayed up all night with Mother until 7:30am we finally got the teleconference. There is was determined she was not qualified to be a geriatric mental health patient so transferring her to their facility was not going to happen. Back to square one now. More tests were ordered which she refused and off and on all night she had not slept and asked for me but then just yelled at me each time. It was the drug reaction I told myself. Tried finding as much patience as possible dealing with it but frankly my anxiety was through the roof. We did work with the social worker at the hospital but it was slow going. We convinced her the Doctor needed another urine sample this time to grow a culture since the previous 5 times we'd tested all came back negative for UTI's but her incontinence continued. They also wanted a CT scan to make sure nothing showed that could be suddenly creating this behavior. They decided the Zyprexa they were giving her wasn't working since she was still seeing bugs that weren't there. Risperdal became the new drug. The only nursing home with an availability with a memory care unit was 29 miles one way away from us and it was not going to take her without a PASRR evaluation. It's complicated and takes time so she was in the ER for 3 days before they finally found a room upstairs in the hospital for her. They weren't admitting her so her insurance wasn't going to pay for it but she began getting bed sores from the ER cot she was on so I think they took pity on her and she spent a day and a half in a very nice room where she was comfortable and safe. They also told us in the ER they could keep a better eye on her in the ER rather than upstairs which is why she stayed there so long.
When I asked the social worker if this was something that happens to others or if we were some sort of special case she assured me they'd had this type of situation with elderly dementia patients before. They kind of fall through the cracks and the cuts in Mental Health services in our State didn't help put this hospital in this screwed up situation. We really need better help for geriatric patients with dementia that exhibit behaviors too where they can go to get their medications sorted out before a memory care nursing facility will accept them. Because she had gotten 2 days under her belt of good behaviors and the psych evals came back, suddenly Westbrook Acres decided they'd meet with her again and bypass the requirement of the PASRR. So before we knew it Tuesday afternoon she was discharged and we had to transport her to their facility that we'd never seen before. It was our only option seeing as my Dad didn't want her any further away. Once again we all became extremely anxious again on how the transfer would go and had no idea what to expect. For all we knew something bad would happen and we would not be accepted and we would have had no other choice but to take her home where we all felt helpless and overwhelmed by the thought of having to care for growing needs.
Today it's been 11 days since she'd been admitted and it's been a day to day to struggle. I've decided to try and document what's happening in hopes of chronicling our descent into dementia with our loved one and having no skills whatsoever to draw on.
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