At the hospital.....

Just a wee update... Mum improving all the time, but I am having to keep pushing the staff at the hospital for the right care....

Mum was finally moved to a normal ward on Friday afternoon.
I got there for the afternoon visiting hour and they were just about to weigh her. She weighed 6 stone 5lb, even less than I had feared.
I raised the worry of her weight loss over the last year with the nurse, and she is going to refer her to a dietician. I've asked if she can have a blood test to check for any vitamin deficiencies etc., and I think this will be done. I will stay on their case to get it done!!!

Despite having all the appearances of a mini-stroke when we found her, she didn't get a brain scan done till Friday afternoon. At first we were told the results would take a few hours but in the end we have discovered we have to wait till Monday at the earliest because the doctors don't do ward rounds at weekends. Frustrating for us all, especially mum, who keeps asking to go home(!) but obviously can't, not till everything has been investigated.

We were told that on this ward they monitor what is eaten and what is left, which made us feel a little relieved to hear as she seems unable or unwilling to eat anything. But yesterday I arrived just after lunch and saw that mum had eaten hardly any of it, yet they wrote in her file that she had eaten it all. Ditto for Friday's food. I spoke to the nurse about it and she was reluctant to change it, but did in the end.

Then I noticed that in Mum's file it says that she was admitted with 'confusion' - nothing about being unconscious for the best part of 24 hours, or a marked droop on one side of her face, or the dysnomia (using random, wrong words).
I pointed this out to the nurse, and said that they had suspected a mini-stroke, but she said oh, we can't right in what it might be, just what needs to be investigated. WHAT the?????

This has riled me all night and I kept waking up going over it.
The doctors are unavailable to visitors so I'm not sure how to go about getting her symptoms properly listed.

It is SOOOO frustrating. I was with her through A&E and the assessment ward and now this ward too. I have given an account of what happened at every step of the way, to every shift change, the same questions, and each person wrote it down. But the info doesn't seem to get passed on.

Even the nurses now, at the weekend, are not the same who work in the week, they are agency nurses. I hope mum gets back the nurse she had Friday, she was so friendly and helpful. The nurses with her at the moment don't seem to talk to the patients at all.

She had expected to be coming home yesterday and no one had broken it to her that she wasn't. She was so disappointed.

She is OK otherwise, but bored!

There is no radio etc. but I took her a book of short stories and she finished it, so I took her a new book yesterday. Also a puzzle book, which she is working through. It's nice to see this as it means she can concentrate and write, etc.

When I was a child mum had Bell's Palsy and it left her unable to read and write and I helped her
to learn again- so I was so relieved to see she was OK with these skills now.

Today I will make a sandwich and take it in to her; maybe if it's her own bread etc. she might eat some of it. I told her, I'm bringing in cake today, and she better have a little of it because it's my birthday!!!