One Journey After Diabetic Coma

(Marilyn) Today was Linda's birthday.  Ed, Tricia and I brought food, balloons and gifts to NHC and we celebrated Linda's birthday in her room.  She was crabby and after looking at her presents and eating her meal, she went to sleep and slept all day while the rest of us watched football. She constantly asks to "go home" and says she will do whatever it takes to get out of there but then will refuse to work with the physical therapists.  She gets quite mean and combatant.  Brain damage is so weird.   This morning she was crying and told us that she is being so mistreated.  We asked her how they are mistreating her.  She says they make her get up.  We tell her that's part of the therapy to get her walking again.  She says no, it's not. (If we tell her the sky is blue, she says no, it's not.)  She says they push her around in the bed.  We tell her they need to do bad-baths.  She says they tell her what to do and she does not want...

(Marilyn) Now that Linda is back at NHC, we are trying to get settled into their routines again.   Linda had one day where she just chit-chatted and sounded very normal.  That filled us with hope. But today she was in la-la-land again.  She became quite violent with the physical therapist ( hope this doesn't affect future therapy).  She said she didn't want to eat but when they put her food tray in front of her, she dug in. She had one shoe on and one off and said she liked it that way, wouldn't let anyone fix it.    There's more but you get the picture.  She makes it VERY hard to help her.

(Marilyn) I went to visit Linda this morning and boy, she was a different person.  Don''t know why, but she was lucid and friendly and talkative.  She was slightly loopy but for the most part she was kinda/sorta the old Linda. She didn't complain of pain and said she would cooperate with physical therapy, etc.  I hope Tricia gets the same Linda when she goes tonight.

(Marilyn) Well, Tricia tried everything she could to talk to administrative-type people and they dodged her all day.  And around 3:00 Linda was whisked back to NHC, kicking and yelling all the way.  As I write this, Tricia is with her into the evening hours to make her feel back "at home" again. LOL. Then Tricia was able to arrange a "Care Plan" meeting at NHC for Thursday morning to try and get to a point where we are comfortable with everything that goes on during the day. I will go visit tomorrow morning.

(Marilyn) I spent the afternoon with Linda today.  I was told that she didn't get physical therapy in the morning because she screamed at the therapists and they weren't able to get her to cooperate. However, when I got there she was calm and alert.  Her conversation was nonsense but she swore she wasn't in any pain.  It's so hard to know when she is truly in pain or when she is just sort of "anticipating" nonexistent pain.  Still not sure where we will take her next.  Tricia tried to make a bunch of phone calls today but got nowhere.

 (Marilyn) I spent the day with Linda at BJC.  She was impossible.  She screamed "in pain" every time somebody looked at her.  She refused to take medications.  At one point her heart rate got up over 200 and there was a stampede of hospital people high-tailing it to Linda's room with lots of equipment.  After 30 minutes or so they got her heart rate back down and the emergency people stood down. They took x-rays of Linda's back and found that she has a compression fracture of the spine.  And they are unable to say if it is a recent fracture or one that happened a while back.  She also has a bed sore on her back that is extremely painful.  And since she can't roll over it's hard to relieve the pain. At times it seems like she is intentionally being difficult but then we remember she has brain damage, so who knows what's going on.... Interestingly, if I got Tricia on the phone with Linda, somehow that made Linda at least get more reasonable. ...

(Marilyn) Tricia stayed with Linda for HOURS yesterday and would probably have spent the night if they would have let her.  During our conversations we realized that we THINK Linda hasn't been getting one of her heart medications.  Tricia will probably figure that out today but if that is the case, OMG,  Tricia deserves a medal for her superhuman efforts in Linda's behalf. In the meantime, I had a good night with my doggies.  If they keep behaving I think I will try to visit Linda tomorrow.