One Journey After Diabetic Coma

(Tricia) It seems impossible to believe, but today marks exactly one year since I woke up to find Linda unresponsive and had to call 911. In the past year, Linda has been hospitalized seven times at five different hospitals, and she has undergone rehab at two skilled nursing facilities. She has had six bouts of C.diff. She has awakened from a coma, removed her own feeding tube (!), relearned to walk and talk, broken her hip, gone through two hip surgeries, suffered through and healed from a pressure ulcer, and was given less than two months to live by her doctors two months ago. She might have lost ground from where she was before she broke her hip, but she’s still here, watching movies, eating pancakes, and giving us all a hard time when she wants to be left alone. Say what you will, she’s one tough individual! We can’t count on what the future will bring, but we most certainly can’t count her out. And then there’s COVID. Ed and I are still in semi-quarantine in the back of the house,...

(Marilyn) Tricia hasn't been feeling too good and she tested positive for COVID.  So she has been staying quarantined in a guest bedroom and dealing with the nurses from afar.  Ed is feeling better.  I have stayed quarantined at my houre and I plan to stay quarantined for another four or five days.  And I will wear a mask when i visit Linda again.

(Tricia) It took a couple of days, but the COVID tests are finally showing what I already know: Typhoid Ed passed COVID on to me! The first couple days were fine, but yesterday and today, I have felt worse and worse. The coughing and fatigue started yesterday. I knew that catching COVID was inevitable, but I just wanted it to hold off a while longer. Even so, Ed, Linda, and I all have our vaccines and the single boosters, so that is at least offering some protection. I have been extremely worried about Linda because on Sunday, before we knew Ed had tested positive, we had been in the same room with Linda unmasked. Once Ed came home on Monday morning, he quarantined to the back, and I began masking and keeping my distance out of precaution. Even so, I still had to take care of Linda for a few hours on Monday and two hours on Tuesday, when we did not have caregiving coverage. I just hope beyond hope that double masking, hand washing, using bleach wipes, and keeping as much distanc...

(Marilyn) Tricia doesn't feel good.  Her home test has come up negative twice but she found information that said not to count on the home tests -- supposedly if you have all the symptoms after spending time with someone that has Covid you should assume you have it and you should quarantine.  Thank goodness she has a day nurse and a night nurse as long as she keeps her distance.  We sure don't want Linda to get it. I'm staying close to home for five or six days.  

(Tricia) As soon as Ed came home to let us know of his positive COVID test, I took one of the tests we had on hand. The first test came back negative, thank goodness! However, the instructions say that if a person is asymptomatic, as I am, I need to take another test in 24 hours just to be sure.  So, I'm going to be nervous until I take the second one tomorrow.  I'm going to test Linda this afternoon. Ed and I had been planning on getting our second COVID boosters this week--too little, too late where that is concerned. However, if I test negative tomorrow, I'm making an appointment immediately for the booster! This, after all of the excitement on Friday when we lost power for six hours. It always stays interesting. Exhausting, but interesting. As Marilyn said, the caregiver who was here went home soon after Ed got here, so I've been on my own for most of the day. It's actually good practice, because at some point, we're going to have to reduce the number of hou...

 (Marilyn) I was visiting with Linda this morning, with the nurse, and Ed came home and announced he just tested positive for COVID.  The nurse and I left the house immediately.  Tricia went around cleaning doorknobs and handles with alcohol wipes while Ed waited outside.  When Tricia got everything she thought she would need from the bedroom, Ed came in and he is now self-quarantining.  Tricia has some of the home testing kits so she can test herself and Linda.  I'm going to call my doctor to see what, if anything, I should do. The hospice people say "we do not do Covid."  So now Tricia has to take care of Linda by herself.  At least there was a routine in place so if Linda can avoid the diarrhea it won't be as bad as it could be.(Easy for me to say....) We have covered the gamut of things that can go wrong, don't you think? I will report more later today or tomorrow.  

 (Marilyn) Temperatures have been close to 100 for the past few days and today wasn't going to be an exception.  Storms last night knocked out power at Tricia's house  --  and the power company could not predict when it would be back, so Tricia was frantically trying to figure out what to do about Linda and all her equipment. She got battery operated fans and she reserved the rental of a generator.  But power came back at noon, thank goodness.   Linda's bed sore is almost healed so that is great news.  And she hasn't complained about her hip in a while so we're not sure how that's doing. She is on antibiotics and usually that makes her loopy.  But she hasn't gotten too loopy this time around.  She is just really tired.  This is truly a day-by-day thing.

 (Marilyn) Linda has been more and more alert and "with it," leaving us scratching our heads. At a time when we've been cautioned to not get our hopes up she is all of a sudden trying to get out of bed, eating good, etc.   But then yesterday she said she was hungry and Nurse Sara brought her breakfast and she refused to eat.  When Sara left the room, Linda looked at me and said, "I don't want to take food from Sara because then she would be able to tell people that she was able to make me do something."  Now, that's the Linda that I recognize. Anyway, they tell us that there could be a "spurt of energy" close to the end, so we just wait and see.  And be VERY careful about her attempts to get out of bed. She does not need another broken hip.  

(Marilyn)  I thought I'd update a bit because Tricia and Ed really have their hands full.  Linda presents a new challenge every day.  And they always roll with the punches.   A week or so ago the hospice nurse cautioned us that we should prepare ourselves.  But we don't see it.   I go over every day or two and Linda and I watch a movie or reminisce -- until she dozes off.  And we try to have lunch all together (Linda, me, Ed, Tricia and the nurse).  We take it a day at a time. Today Linda wanted to get up, so Tricia and the nurse used the Hoyer lift and got her into her wheelchair.  She complained about pain in her back, pain in her knee, pain in her foot, etc.   She insists she can walk, so we tell her, okay, let's see you walk.  Then, of course, she can't.   She has infections and is on several antibiotics.   I could go on, but you get the picture.

(Tricia) We had a few difficult days early last week, but the Flagyl, the antibiotic the hospice doctor prescribed for Linda's C.diff, is doing its job. Within a few days, Linda began to stabilize, and today, she is eating and drinking again. In fact, she has gone back to asking to feed herself again--she has a lot of trouble with stabbing the food or getting it to her mouth, but gets absolutely furious if anyone tries to help her. Given long enough, she can manage to get a few bites to her mouth. Eventually, when she gets tired, she'll do what she hates to do most--ask for help. :-) Unfortunately, the few days that she was down completely with C.diff took their toll on her. She lost more mobility in her right leg (the side where she had her hip surgery). Before last weekend, we could bend it to at least a 60-degree angle, but now it can barely bend at all anymore. So, I have now added yet another phrase to my medical vocabulary too late to do any good: muscle contracture. I k...