On Friday last week my mother checked her blood pressure at K-Mart when she and my dad were shopping and it registered high. She attributed it to a machine malfunction. She was looking forward to attending an all day meeting in the neighboring county with some friends on Saturday, but they returned early because she was feeling very ill. My father was quite concerned but she didn’t want to leave home, so they got through the night somehow. When she was still bad the next morning and he was finding that he really couldn’t lift her to help, he called 911 and the paramedics confirmed that she needed to see a physician and they took her to Armstrong County Memorial Hospital in West Kittanning. She had a scan there and was immediately transferred to the Neurology Intensive Care Unit at Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh. She had a bleed in her brain in the area that controls motor and visual activity. Acute headache and nausea go with that.
She was in ICU until Tuesday night then transferred to a regular room. Today she is to be transported to the acute rehabilitation section of Indiana Hospital. My father doesn’t like to drive as much as he used to, and he does not like driving in city traffic at all, so I drove him in his car to AGH Monday through Thursday. It was pretty frustrating trying to get information, but yesterday mother’s case manager sought us out and we learned a lot and did some planning. Although mother would like to go directly home, she agrees that she needs to work on some things first.
She started complaining about hospital food on Tuesday and was quite alert on Wednesday and yesterday — the personality is still there. She will be working on being able to stand and walk on her own and will probably not regain peripheral vision in her left eye, so will need to learn to compensate for that. They put in a half-bath in downstairs last month and there is room for a bed downstairs too, so she will probably be able to come home sooner because of it. My brother and sister-in-law got them a new toilet for Christmas, they all got a good laugh out if it, but it seems to have been a good move.
I am tired, but my sister arrived from NY last night and is staying with father, so I am taking a day off. Got out a lot of frustration digging weeds out of the lawn. I replanted peas, only two of the seeds I planted the day after St. Pat’s came up, and planted the lavender that wintered over indoors into the ground by the foundation of the house, so there were some positive accomplishments too.
The viola are lovely, I picked some of their flowers to take in for mother yesterday. The forget-me-not flowers are out today and buds are showing on the Weigela. It is warm and we are getting showers and sunshine today. It feels and looks like May already.
