Part of MY MOTHER'S HOUSE, A Memoir, consists of my mother's lethal journey through the long-term nursing care system.
I tried to save her. But every new medical or institutional inadequacy or horror hit me like a body blow, leaving me too much in shock to anticipate the next event.
Sometimes I think that if I'd possessed beforehand certain crucial information, I might have been able to save her.
I would like to share this information. Perhaps it will help other people’s elderly loved ones survive a similar hell. But maybe not. No guarantees. The system is catastrophically broken.
DISCLAIMER
I
am not a health care professional. The information in SURVIVAL TIPS is
solely based on my personal experience. In it I report what I
discovered during my mother's agonizing six months in the nursing care
system and what I learned additionally after her death.
***
DID YOU KNOW...?
PAIN Did you know that many nurses are not trained in pain management? Consequently, they may refuse medication to a patient, particularly an elderly patient, suffering pain, until it becomes agonizing.
In addition, in many hospitals the nurses are understaffed and cannot respond to calls from your loved one for pain medication even if they want to.Yet it is essential to medicate for pain the moment it starts or a cycle
will set in, and the medication will take much longer to act than had
it been used at the start of the cycle.
Did you know about the PCA, or Patient-Controlled Analgesic? The PCA enables the patient to press a lever and release pain medication when the pain starts. But the PCA is constructed in such a way that the patient cannot overdose herself.
But ageism is a serious problem in hospitals. Nurses may not permit your elderly loved one to use the PCA. They assume that simply because your loved one is old, she is incapable of using this machine properly. If you believe your loved one is competent to use a PCA, be prepared to fight the system. The PCA is very important. People have been shown to heal better when their pain is under control.
DEHYDRATIONDid you know that dehydration is one of the biggest problems in long term/skilled care nursing hospitals? Did you know that a simple blood test will determine whether this condition exists? But in most cases it is not routinely given. You must specifically ask for it. But you should request the doctor put your request for this test in the patient’s chart as an order, to make sure the patient gets the test.You should then make sure the blood tests confirm that the patient is receiving enough water, because nurses in these facilities sometimes do not read the patient’s chart and the doctor may not check on her own.
PRESSURE SORESDid you know that pressure sores commonly develop in the aging who stay in long term health care facilities?Did you know that a pressure sore, technically called a decubitus, is a kind of ulcer, a wound starts as a small redness, and can become life-threatening?Did you know that in its last stage, a pressure sore goes through skin, muscle and nerves clear to the bone and is one of the most excruciating conditions a person can ever experience, and is almost always fatal when it reaches this stage?Did you know that when a patient is kept clean and dry, turned to a different position at a minimum of once every two hours, and her skin is checked frequently and treated for any indication of a pressure sore, most of the time a pressure sore will not progress to a life-threatening stage? ***
If you would like to read the full summary of what I learned, you may purchase Survival Tips.
If you you order a copy of MY MOTHER'S HOUSE, A Memoir, you will receive a free copy of Survival Tips. If you would like to do this, please click on Orders.
Thank you for visiting my website.
Alexa Wolf
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