Last week my mother fell in her room on something and broke a lot of her ribs and bruised her hip and perhaps punctured her lung. She went to the hospital. But I was having digestive problems and could not visit her till Monday morning, so here is the report of that visit. What a way to start off the new year.
Paul
was waiting right in front of the building.
This hospital was in east Garden Grove on GG Blvd and Palm Street. We took
the elevator up to the seventh floor where Mom was. What struck me initially was how small the room seemed to be. There were no chairs to sit on besides the
porta-potty. I had forgotten how narrow
hospital beds were. There was little
natural light. The room didn’t seem that
clean. Mom was dead to the world when
first we came across her. She was
sleeping so soundly it seemed ashame to wake her. Naturally she was groggy. Mom was mentally confused lapsing from
reality to some parrellel world where Dad was still alive and she even made
reference to Grandpa and Grandma. She
asked where we were parked and could we go to the car now. When I was by myself with Mom she asked if I
could drive her home and asked if anybody else was in my room and maybe she
could stay there. The nursing staff
didn’t seem that attentive. We had to
lift Mom ourselves and reposition her in bed and adjust the bed. Her hospital gown kept coming undone. Mom complained continually of pain in her
stomach. She took two things of Malox
but that didn’t seem to help. It wasn’t
till after one thirty that she got a pain pill when by now her ribs were
hurting. Some of the nurses were chatty
like that blonde who was almost as tall as I was. But they didn’t appear to be tending to her
needs. At one point I used the
bathroom. One thing I noticed was that
the bathroom was spacious unlike the cramped room where you always seemed to be
tripping on something. They announced
pizza in the cafeteria just before noon.
At some point they brought in a chair for Mom, which was the only chair
in the room. She was in the chair close
to an hour and continually complained of discomfort. Mom was supposed to get her lunch between
twelve and one but it was an hour late and the food was cold and there was
nobody else to help feed her and she seemed to have no appetite when Paul
helped her. She complained the food was
cold, and I’m sure it was. She didn’t
seem to want to watch TV. The next door
bed has visitors the whole time. An
attendant spilled some coffee meant for Mom even though she doesn’t drink
coffee. I’d like to see her out of that
place to somewhere where she can get more attentive service. I was getting cabin fever as the hours
ticked by. First it’s twelve, and then
one and then two. By the time we left it
was ten after two and we had been there for over three hours, which was the
last thing I was expecting. It’s kind of an emotionally draining
experience and I don’t know how Tim and Paul do it. Paul said something about how Marie is a
better conversationalist than he is, though Paul did a pretty good job of
keeping the conversation humming. Mom
did notice my mustache. After we left we
weaved our way through the streets and came up Katella where there were a lot
of restaurants. I had it in my mind I
wanted to eat at a Subway. I wasn’t in
the mood for a sit down place where we would be there over a half hour. I wanted food quickly. We went down Gilbert to Cerritos and up to
Beach where I thought there was a Subway but it wasn’t there any more so we
went to Taco Bell. We got one of their
five dollar specials. We both had a
large taco and a smaller cheese shell taco and a thing of Nachos and a different
kind of burrito and a large Pepsi for five dollars. I ate my food eagerly. We were ready to return back here just about
three. I told Paul it was an educational
experience. Paul expressed concern what
to do next. I thought we should have her
at the “skilled nursing” unit at Roundtree and see what happens after a month. I guess you have to make a decision then where
to continue to hold on to her room.
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