Incident report
By Mike on Tuesday 22 April 2008, 15:06 - Journal - Permalink
Greg visited mum this morning and found a member of staff who actually saw the 'incident'.
Here is what she said: mum and dad quarrelled, but it was not serious. Neither of them raised their voices. Mum's centre called dad's simply because it was clear that neither mum nor dad were enjoying themselves any more, and dad would be better off doing something else. The member of staff was astonished that this had been described as an 'incident'
When the story was reported to Greg is had been embellished with hyperbole - and conjured up for him something resembling a scrap. Chinese whispers are dangerous things. How dangerous we do not know. If we wish to dig further into this we need to hear what the Zyprexa-prescribing doctor was told. Was the pill intended to prevent further 'incidents', or was it just to treat the apparent increased confusion and agitation seen in dad. Either way, why was such a powerful anti-psychotic drug used? Why was it that the staff at the hospital all seemed to think that dad had become psychotic prior to admission? Why, after all, was a drug that is contra-indicated for the old, the demented and the prone to heart problems ever prescribed in this case? What, given that it is contra-indicated, are the noted adverse effects? Our priority right now is getting dad's immediate future sorted out, we may yet return to follow the trail of his admission to Emergency.
And on that other subject, here is the news. Dad's ACAT assessment was done today and is a case of fence-sitting. He has been assessed as borderline, as far as I can understand. We have two choices still. Put him in a hostel, with its lower staffing levels, and risk having him over-drugged, but at least keep him in an environment that seems like a club rather than a hospital. Or put him in a nursing home where he will get more attention and may be encouraged to move around, but suffer the loss of environment and proximity to mum. Neither of these options may be long term.
On Thursday, Greg and I will go to see the extra service section of the nursing home in the village, and we will also move dad's room contents to what could be his new room in a place just like, and next door to, mum's
Chances are that dad will not be there for long, I think. I can't help feeling dad's not going to get much better, that he has leap-frogged mum and is likely to be wheel-chair bound now. Of course, I hope I am wrong, but Alzheimers and optimism make uneasy bedfellows.
Comments
It may be that your Dad was better able to cope when still at home with your Mum because somewhere he still felt he had a reason to cope. I only mention this as once my Dad was admitted to the nursing home, my Mum went downhill very fast. She had begun to be very suspicious before, but once she was alone in their flat she deteriorated very quickly. When she fell and was hospitalized she was relatively mentally together the day of admission, but a day later she was ranting, accusing us of stealing her and Dad's savings, and never really had a pleasant word to say to me after.
I am thankful that she made her peace with my daughters (who she had been really horrible to on several occasions) and my husband, but I still grieve that she never spoke kindly to me again. We were not helped at all by the fact that her GP refused to tell us anything about her medical condition(s) despite my husband phoning and even visiting him - they just quoted "medical confidentiality" to us, so we didn't even know she had dementia until she had to go into a nursing home following her hospitalization.
I hope that things get easier for you and your family, and will be thinking of you all.
Best wishes from Liverpool
I was trying to find an email my older brother had written that almost word-for-word copied what you wrote in this post. Though the drugs had different names, they were anti-psychotics, exactly wrong for treating Alzheimer's and if we refused to allow them to administer them to my father, they would kick him out. We refused, and brought him back home for four more years.
It's simply uncanny how common these stories are. And we're just a bunch of readers on the web who've stumbled across each others blogs. What of the thousands of nursing home/elder care administrators who see this happen constantly in their profession? Where is their professional outrage? Where is their professional voice in all of this? Why do they bow their heads and allow this to go on in their facilities? This isn't just Australia, it's America, too, where prescriptions for highly inappropriate anti-psychotic drugs are being used on Alzheimer's patients knowing fully well they don't help them, they don't calm them, they knock them out. Then they fall. Then they wind up in hospital. Then they wind up in bed in a nursing home. And once you're in bed and unable to move, there's the really, serious, awful issue of pressure sores. If understaffed, overworked caregivers were given a choice between taking care of a mobile, challenging Alzheimer's patient OR a sleeping, non-mobile Alzheimer's patient, which do you think they'd choose? And which do you think would be easier to ignore? The sleeping patient or the highly agitated patient running around looking for something that doesn't exist?
These are the questions that hang the darkest cloud of shame over a profession we've romanticized - nursing. Much like the "What Would Jesus Do" campaign that launched years ago, for those of us with demented loved ones in nursing homes perhaps there should be a "What Would Florence Do" campaign for nurses and aides in nursing homes. Florence Nightingale would be rolling in her grave if she knew what was happening under the noses and watchful eyes of nurses in nursing homes.
The average life span of people who enter nursing homes is two years.