Vanilla Bean
Master Chef
I'm sorry I didn't respond to this sooner. I'm so sorry, Susan! My prayers are with you right now and your familly! God Bless to you!
Well as my mom stubbornly held onto life this past week (she wanted to get better) the doctors decided it was time to bring out the big guns. She is on steroids. This will dry up her lungs. Although she was exhausted yesterday, she was up and walking today and going to the bathroom by herself. She has been lucid as well--knowing that she is sick and in the hospital. She keeps telling me that she is getting good care and I am spending all day there with her so she won't be scared.
The big guns have their problems--her blood sugar will rise and she will need more coverage and that alone will cause confusion--and so will the steroids. Further, we will have to deal with the nausea that accompanies so much antibiotic and steroids.
But she will have a better chance of surviving now. I imagine it will be good day, bad day, etc. especially until she gets her strength back.
June, the hard part of letting go is that she didn't want to be a vegetable and she isn't one, yet. She may get confused but she knows me and her friends and enjoys a quality of life. If she were totally confused and did not know me, it would be a much easier choice. I am just struggling with trying to follow her advance directives--that is why she has them. I never wanted to be in the position of having to choose. I wanted her to tell me and then, do what she said.
Oh yeah, you're right about the steriods, Susan. When my mom had a hemothorax in December, one of the things they treated her with was high-dose steriods. It made her blood sugar skyrocket and she was getting insulin many times a day (and she's not diabetic.) But the worst part by far was the mental side effects. She became paranoid and fearful and irrational and even angry at times. I had to stay with her day and night because she was terrified that something would happen if I left. But she has 8 cats and 2 dogs that had to be cared for!
My family came immediately when she had a cardiac arrest and they stayed for almost 2 weeks, mainly to take care of her pets. I didn't leave the hospital at all for 8 days because she was so frantic if I even mentioned it. After that, I left for a couple of hours each afternoon because I had to see my little boy. There was always someone there with her, but she was still freaked out until I returned.
The worst part was the night before she got released. My family had gone home that day and I had to leave to feed and let her dogs out. It was time to leave (it was 10 pm) and I wouldn't be back until morning because there was an ice storm that night and I was worried about driving in it. (I wouldn't have left at all except for the animals.) Apparently she became frantic in the night and was convinced that she was bleeding into her lungs again. She actually made the nurse wake a doctor up in the middle of the night and give her a chest xray at 3 in the morning! (That may have been one of the reasons they finally agreed to release her the next morning.)
Anyway, this is a long story but the gist of it is, high-dose steroids can really cause bizarre thoughts and behaviors. It took a week longer after she came home for those panic attacks to begin subsiding. So if your mom really appears to go totally "off her rocker", it may not be permanent or a progression of her dementia.
June, the hard part of letting go is that she didn't want to be a vegetable and she isn't one, yet. She may get confused but she knows me and her friends and enjoys a quality of life. If she were totally confused and did not know me, it would be a much easier choice. I am just struggling with trying to follow her advance directives--that is why she has them. I never wanted to be in the position of having to choose. I wanted her to tell me and then, do what she said.