Waiting for the miracle self-healing thing to work.
She is still on her side on the carpet, under a heated blanket.
We are giving her water to drink, and yesterday managed to get her to eat a small dried persimmon and a bit of a rice ball.
Interesting. The whole "I'm sick so I don't eat" mantra was less yesterday. I put a nicely warmed up rice ball on a plate and put it 10 cm from her nose..
"What's that? I ate, didn't I? I ate dinner, didn't I?"
Really, she had no idea whether she'd eaten or not - and once the food was there within easy reach and she could put some in her mouth - she did :-)
But we are changing her diapers because she hasn't sat upright or walked since Saturday night. Now it is Tuesday morning. Diaper change was fairly easy. She just lay there and let us do it - a messy job...but we never had a baby, so this is our shared couple-experience...
By coincidence: last night student came to class and told me that over the recent public holiday her 81 year old mother had tried out a family member's balance ball...at 11 pm!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!...and lost control of the ball - falling 5 steps down the house stairs!!
She was badly winded and in pain. But finally managed, with help, to stand and walk to her bed. Next morning she couldn't move at all and was taken to hospital. Broken lumbar. Is now in hospital 3 weeks and wearing a corset.....
Hoping......it isn't this. But I wouldn't be surprised.....
I told Dear Son this story and we talked a bit.
He said that if she isn't moving any more by tomorrow...he will take other steps...
goood.
Waiting....
Showing posts with label Injury. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Injury. Show all posts
Tuesday, 16 May 2017
Thursday, 25 September 2014
Carpet dwelling
I've just changed my mother-in-law's diapers and given her lower body a towel wash.
I think we've pretty much crossed all the personal boundaries that exist.
Yesterday was more and more of Okaasan prone on the carpet of her room, curled up under a blanket, or sitting, or propped up on one arm - looking at her legs and rubbing her arm. Glancing a little at the TV. Drinking a little water, eating a little rice and soup. At some points stretched out face down on the carpet, trying to push herself up on her arms like a baby - and lacking the strength to do it. Falling back and staying there for another 20 mins, off and on.....
She doesn't have the power to drag herself, or the understanding how to move her body to another part of the carpet using her buttocks or rolling.
He stayed home all day, I came home three times between classes. We carried her to the toilet 3 times in the morning using the chair.
But in the afternoon she refused help and said:"I can go there myself" or even "It's ok, I went to the toilet!" - all the time prone or sitting in the same 1 meter of carpet space, at slightly different angles.
She slept deeply.
And now, Thursday morning a soaked and smelly carpet and a full diaper to change. Trying to get her to roll her body a little so I could tug the diaper out from under her, washing her and then gently easing clean diapers over her feet and up her legs.
The breakthru is that she accepted wearing diapers. She allows us to put them on and take them off. It's embarrassing, but at some level she knows it is necessary.
And he says we will wait "a few days".
In the past when she falls or has self-diagnosed "rheumatism" she has laid low for a few days, hardly eating etc - and then gradually got better. Last summer she went from unable to walk to being able to stand herself, and then crawl around the kitchen table....and then, after weeks and weeks - to recovery.
So he is prepared to wait. Because he too believes that if you wait, the body will cure itself.
I know, I know, I know.....
I will give him "a few days"? Play it his way? Or will I just call the day service people? Call the ambulance?
If she is still almost immobile on the same spot of the carpet...by Monday?
These are questions I don't know the answer to myself. As the initial crisis of Tuesday night has passed, we have entered a holding pattern which is kind of manageable. She MAY have some internal injury we don't know about, but she is marginally brighter that yesterday and can move her left arm around - but can't put weight on it.
So a holding pattern.
Trying to keep her clean and dry on her lower body, trying to keep her warm and fed. Trying to keep her feeling positive.
So strange that this has all come out of the blue.
Tuesday morning I got her to have a bath, she ate lunch and at 3 pm set out with a ring to sell it....took herself on the subway downtown. By 6 pm she was holed up in her favorite coffee shop with pain and fear.
I think we've pretty much crossed all the personal boundaries that exist.
Yesterday was more and more of Okaasan prone on the carpet of her room, curled up under a blanket, or sitting, or propped up on one arm - looking at her legs and rubbing her arm. Glancing a little at the TV. Drinking a little water, eating a little rice and soup. At some points stretched out face down on the carpet, trying to push herself up on her arms like a baby - and lacking the strength to do it. Falling back and staying there for another 20 mins, off and on.....
She doesn't have the power to drag herself, or the understanding how to move her body to another part of the carpet using her buttocks or rolling.
He stayed home all day, I came home three times between classes. We carried her to the toilet 3 times in the morning using the chair.
But in the afternoon she refused help and said:"I can go there myself" or even "It's ok, I went to the toilet!" - all the time prone or sitting in the same 1 meter of carpet space, at slightly different angles.
She slept deeply.
And now, Thursday morning a soaked and smelly carpet and a full diaper to change. Trying to get her to roll her body a little so I could tug the diaper out from under her, washing her and then gently easing clean diapers over her feet and up her legs.
The breakthru is that she accepted wearing diapers. She allows us to put them on and take them off. It's embarrassing, but at some level she knows it is necessary.
And he says we will wait "a few days".
In the past when she falls or has self-diagnosed "rheumatism" she has laid low for a few days, hardly eating etc - and then gradually got better. Last summer she went from unable to walk to being able to stand herself, and then crawl around the kitchen table....and then, after weeks and weeks - to recovery.
So he is prepared to wait. Because he too believes that if you wait, the body will cure itself.
I know, I know, I know.....
I will give him "a few days"? Play it his way? Or will I just call the day service people? Call the ambulance?
If she is still almost immobile on the same spot of the carpet...by Monday?
These are questions I don't know the answer to myself. As the initial crisis of Tuesday night has passed, we have entered a holding pattern which is kind of manageable. She MAY have some internal injury we don't know about, but she is marginally brighter that yesterday and can move her left arm around - but can't put weight on it.
So a holding pattern.
Trying to keep her clean and dry on her lower body, trying to keep her warm and fed. Trying to keep her feeling positive.
So strange that this has all come out of the blue.
Tuesday morning I got her to have a bath, she ate lunch and at 3 pm set out with a ring to sell it....took herself on the subway downtown. By 6 pm she was holed up in her favorite coffee shop with pain and fear.
Wednesday, 24 September 2014
Pain pain pain
So.
Was going to be a blog posting about Okaasan suddenly announcing: "I have no money, I'm going to take this ring downtown and sell it!".
But, instead.
Early evening she was still downtown and we started the phonecalls to her to remind her to come home for dinner.
I have leg/knee pain and can't stand or walk.
Get a taxi?
I can't go downstairs from the coffee shop.
Ask the staff to help you.
I can do it myself. I have to go to the toilet.
...............
Ok now? Ask the staff to help you, get a taxi home.
I can't stand. I need the toilet.
Repeat over the next 30 mins. Same conversation.
Finally I drove downtown to get her.
She was sitting outside the coffee shop. With lots of pain in her left knee and arm. I helped her, agonizingly into the car.
The coffee shop staff said she'd come in around her usual time, and mentioned "falling". But had somehow gone to the second floor of the coffee shop as usual! And then got stuck.
Came home.
It's my rheumatism. It suddenly comes. Fall? Me? No, I didn't fall. It's rheumatism.
DS helped her from the car, painfully, agonizingly the 5 meters to the front door steps.
To the entrance hall chair.
Where she sat.
And sat.
I don't need dinner. I can stand myself. Just give me time. I don't need any help.
So we sat in the kitchen and ate our dinner.
Okaasan sat in the entrance hall.
The cats peered at her round the door frame.
We finished dinner. Washed up. She was still in the entrance hall.
Remembering the past situation we decided to lift her ON the chair.
Between the two of us we can just about do it. Okaasan weighs..what? 55 kg maybe?
With her screaming in agony and moaning we huff and puff the chair across the entrance hall, thru one door and to the toilet door.
I can do it myself! I can stand!
Okaasan then sits on the chair 1 meter from the toilet - for the next TWO hours.
Refusing help. Fighting help.
We go upstairs and watch a DVD. Come down sometimes to give her drinks of water. Get only refusal of any offers of help.
Come 10.30 pm our movie has finished.
We push the chair right up against the toilet, Okaasan is trying to hold onto the towel rail to pull herself up. Can't.
Finally. Finally - DS puts his arms under her arms and hauls - really hauls her onto the toilet.
Screams of agony.
I am making telephone gestures to him and mouthing the word H-O-S-P-I-T-A-L-!! and he is shaking his head.
Then another struggle to get her off the toilet. He is standing behind her - between her back and the toilet, I am trying to position the chair as close as possible at the front. Then we are dragging the chair, lifting the chair out of the toilet - into the kitchen - into her room...and Okaasan is finally finally slipping/falling off the chair, onto the sofa and down onto the carpet.
Crying out in pain constantly.
It was a looong evening.
From 7.45 pm to midnight.
And then, just now we were all awake at 6 am and we've done it again.
Carpet to chair. Chair carried/dragged to the toilet. And all the way back again.
But - we have managed to persuade her to put on the old people diaper pants. Because he can take the day off work today. I can't. He can't get her to the toilet alone. It's the first time she has agreed to let us put her into them.
I know. Hospital would be a really good idea.
Maybe she did fall downtown. There are no external wounds. Her knee looks swollen. And this time her arm or hand - or both - are painful. It suggests she fell and put out her arm to break the fall.
But it's the old story. Utter refusal by Okaasan and her supported by DS to even consider help.
At one point last night I was half way up the stairs to the telephone to call the ambulance myself. Trying to remember the emergency number in Japan - then she cried out and he shouted at me to come help again, and I was back downstairs in chair-lifting mode.
And so - here we are again.
I actually wish this would happen when he isn't here. Then I could just call the ambulance myself and get professionals involved. I don't care if she is angry with me. I don't understand why he lets her decide the course of inaction.
So. Here we are.
Was going to be a blog posting about Okaasan suddenly announcing: "I have no money, I'm going to take this ring downtown and sell it!".
But, instead.
Early evening she was still downtown and we started the phonecalls to her to remind her to come home for dinner.
I have leg/knee pain and can't stand or walk.
Get a taxi?
I can't go downstairs from the coffee shop.
Ask the staff to help you.
I can do it myself. I have to go to the toilet.
...............
Ok now? Ask the staff to help you, get a taxi home.
I can't stand. I need the toilet.
Repeat over the next 30 mins. Same conversation.
Finally I drove downtown to get her.
She was sitting outside the coffee shop. With lots of pain in her left knee and arm. I helped her, agonizingly into the car.
The coffee shop staff said she'd come in around her usual time, and mentioned "falling". But had somehow gone to the second floor of the coffee shop as usual! And then got stuck.
Came home.
It's my rheumatism. It suddenly comes. Fall? Me? No, I didn't fall. It's rheumatism.
DS helped her from the car, painfully, agonizingly the 5 meters to the front door steps.
To the entrance hall chair.
Where she sat.
And sat.
I don't need dinner. I can stand myself. Just give me time. I don't need any help.
So we sat in the kitchen and ate our dinner.
Okaasan sat in the entrance hall.
The cats peered at her round the door frame.
We finished dinner. Washed up. She was still in the entrance hall.
Remembering the past situation we decided to lift her ON the chair.
Between the two of us we can just about do it. Okaasan weighs..what? 55 kg maybe?
With her screaming in agony and moaning we huff and puff the chair across the entrance hall, thru one door and to the toilet door.
I can do it myself! I can stand!
Okaasan then sits on the chair 1 meter from the toilet - for the next TWO hours.
Refusing help. Fighting help.
We go upstairs and watch a DVD. Come down sometimes to give her drinks of water. Get only refusal of any offers of help.
Come 10.30 pm our movie has finished.
We push the chair right up against the toilet, Okaasan is trying to hold onto the towel rail to pull herself up. Can't.
Finally. Finally - DS puts his arms under her arms and hauls - really hauls her onto the toilet.
Screams of agony.
I am making telephone gestures to him and mouthing the word H-O-S-P-I-T-A-L-!! and he is shaking his head.
Then another struggle to get her off the toilet. He is standing behind her - between her back and the toilet, I am trying to position the chair as close as possible at the front. Then we are dragging the chair, lifting the chair out of the toilet - into the kitchen - into her room...and Okaasan is finally finally slipping/falling off the chair, onto the sofa and down onto the carpet.
Crying out in pain constantly.
It was a looong evening.
From 7.45 pm to midnight.
And then, just now we were all awake at 6 am and we've done it again.
Carpet to chair. Chair carried/dragged to the toilet. And all the way back again.
But - we have managed to persuade her to put on the old people diaper pants. Because he can take the day off work today. I can't. He can't get her to the toilet alone. It's the first time she has agreed to let us put her into them.
I know. Hospital would be a really good idea.
Maybe she did fall downtown. There are no external wounds. Her knee looks swollen. And this time her arm or hand - or both - are painful. It suggests she fell and put out her arm to break the fall.
But it's the old story. Utter refusal by Okaasan and her supported by DS to even consider help.
At one point last night I was half way up the stairs to the telephone to call the ambulance myself. Trying to remember the emergency number in Japan - then she cried out and he shouted at me to come help again, and I was back downstairs in chair-lifting mode.
And so - here we are again.
I actually wish this would happen when he isn't here. Then I could just call the ambulance myself and get professionals involved. I don't care if she is angry with me. I don't understand why he lets her decide the course of inaction.
So. Here we are.
Friday, 17 February 2012
Helping ME, to help YOU.
Badly in need of Tom Cruise's persuasive powers here.
Okaasan is still laying on the living room carpet in piss-soaked pants, refusing to eat and rejecting offers of help.
This is the third day now.
Both she and Yujiro subscribe to this: Don't Eat and It'll All Get Better idea, and Okaasan adds dollops of Don't Need Help, Just Let Me Be.
And so she lays there on the carpet, half covered with the heated table blanket, unable to stand up quickly enough and get to the toilet. The stench has reached the kitchen.
Still don't know what is wrong. "My neck hurts" could be anything.
Yujiro just lets her be, while he worries about our computer troubles and his own so-so health. I was out working all day and got home after 9 pm.
He said he'd given her some water to drink and helped her sit up to drink it.
Now is Friday morning and she has been like this since Wednesday.
Tomorrow he goes off for 2 days of ski work. I am going out all day with friends to try dog-sledding.
HOW much longer are we going to let this situation slide on?
As we went to bed last night I told him that if she isn't able/wanting to stand up and come to the kitchen table for at least a cup of tea by tonight - we should be getting outside help and he should be cancelling work this weekend.
I so, so SO want to call an ambulance and get a team of nice capable, bossy professionals to come in and sweep Okaasan off to hospital.
It is SO hard though to know at what point to intervene and help Okaasan. She is so proud and independent. So confident that she knows best in health matters. Hides obvious needs like toilet failures and gets angry if we try to do something for her.
I just peered into her room from the kitchen and I can see that Okaasan has managed to get to the clothes drawers and get out a clean shirt and put that on, and she has moved her position around on the carpet. That's a good sign.
I will go in a bit later with a bowl of hot water and a face cloth and get her to wash her own face and body. It's the least I can do.
It is so Not Good to see her like this. But stepping in to help is hard. He lets it slide on. I think today is make or break day.
Okaasan is still laying on the living room carpet in piss-soaked pants, refusing to eat and rejecting offers of help.
This is the third day now.
Both she and Yujiro subscribe to this: Don't Eat and It'll All Get Better idea, and Okaasan adds dollops of Don't Need Help, Just Let Me Be.
And so she lays there on the carpet, half covered with the heated table blanket, unable to stand up quickly enough and get to the toilet. The stench has reached the kitchen.
Still don't know what is wrong. "My neck hurts" could be anything.
Yujiro just lets her be, while he worries about our computer troubles and his own so-so health. I was out working all day and got home after 9 pm.
He said he'd given her some water to drink and helped her sit up to drink it.
Now is Friday morning and she has been like this since Wednesday.
Tomorrow he goes off for 2 days of ski work. I am going out all day with friends to try dog-sledding.
HOW much longer are we going to let this situation slide on?
As we went to bed last night I told him that if she isn't able/wanting to stand up and come to the kitchen table for at least a cup of tea by tonight - we should be getting outside help and he should be cancelling work this weekend.
I so, so SO want to call an ambulance and get a team of nice capable, bossy professionals to come in and sweep Okaasan off to hospital.
It is SO hard though to know at what point to intervene and help Okaasan. She is so proud and independent. So confident that she knows best in health matters. Hides obvious needs like toilet failures and gets angry if we try to do something for her.
I just peered into her room from the kitchen and I can see that Okaasan has managed to get to the clothes drawers and get out a clean shirt and put that on, and she has moved her position around on the carpet. That's a good sign.
I will go in a bit later with a bowl of hot water and a face cloth and get her to wash her own face and body. It's the least I can do.
It is so Not Good to see her like this. But stepping in to help is hard. He lets it slide on. I think today is make or break day.
Friday, 1 July 2011
I injured myself?
Okaasan has another face injury - but doesn't know why.
A smallish cut just above her right eye, and the area around it is a little swollen.
But, of course, she doesn't remember how or why.
She says it doesn't hurt and we don't think it is serious...but we wonder how....
Maybe...just maybe...I think she poked herself in the face with the laundry drying pole? I found a rose bush planter a little shaken up 2 days ago, and some earth on the ground - I thought cats or crows had pushed it over.
Now I wonder whether Okaasan knocked the rose bush planter over when she was trying to move the laundry poles? And poked herself in the face as well?
Could be. Who knows?
Anyway - she is off again today for maybe the last dentist visit.
I am 2 days away from welcoming students to my garden for English Tea Party with roses, scones and carrot cake - hear THIS...I tracked down Clotted Cream in Mitsukoshi Department Store yesterday (it's the Harrods' of Japan and very pricey) - the small jar of Clotted Cream cost Y1,500!!! That's $15!! No way is it enough for 10 plus people....so I will make up some fake scone topping with Mascorpone cheese and whipping cream.
A smallish cut just above her right eye, and the area around it is a little swollen.
But, of course, she doesn't remember how or why.
She says it doesn't hurt and we don't think it is serious...but we wonder how....
Maybe...just maybe...I think she poked herself in the face with the laundry drying pole? I found a rose bush planter a little shaken up 2 days ago, and some earth on the ground - I thought cats or crows had pushed it over.
Now I wonder whether Okaasan knocked the rose bush planter over when she was trying to move the laundry poles? And poked herself in the face as well?
Could be. Who knows?
Anyway - she is off again today for maybe the last dentist visit.
I am 2 days away from welcoming students to my garden for English Tea Party with roses, scones and carrot cake - hear THIS...I tracked down Clotted Cream in Mitsukoshi Department Store yesterday (it's the Harrods' of Japan and very pricey) - the small jar of Clotted Cream cost Y1,500!!! That's $15!! No way is it enough for 10 plus people....so I will make up some fake scone topping with Mascorpone cheese and whipping cream.
Friday, 30 January 2009
Okaasan injured.
I came home tonight, by taxi to make sure I got home quick enough for the 6.45 pm family dinner time.
But Okaasan was not here.
She said she'd fallen over today on the ice and had hurt her knee a little, and so didn't want to eat anything. (This is her cure all for everything: don't eat!).
We quickly ate our dinner and then I went in to check on her.
She was sitting in her pyjamas watching Tv with a cold compress on a badly swollen right knee. She said she slipped on the ice and fell, but after that she continued walking downtown (about 1 km) and all round the shops. Then she felt it was painful, so she came home by street car!
This is one tough old lady.
Anyway. We'll see. her son did terrible ligament damage to the right knee and continued ski instructing for a few hours, so we will have to see what its like tomorrow.
I hate to say it. But this could be the small injury we hoped for which will get her into a hospital...and from THAT we might get her some medical attention for her memory etc...
But Okaasan was not here.
She said she'd fallen over today on the ice and had hurt her knee a little, and so didn't want to eat anything. (This is her cure all for everything: don't eat!).
We quickly ate our dinner and then I went in to check on her.
She was sitting in her pyjamas watching Tv with a cold compress on a badly swollen right knee. She said she slipped on the ice and fell, but after that she continued walking downtown (about 1 km) and all round the shops. Then she felt it was painful, so she came home by street car!
This is one tough old lady.
Anyway. We'll see. her son did terrible ligament damage to the right knee and continued ski instructing for a few hours, so we will have to see what its like tomorrow.
I hate to say it. But this could be the small injury we hoped for which will get her into a hospital...and from THAT we might get her some medical attention for her memory etc...
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