Wednesday, Oct. 26

Up at 6:30 to get ready to go to the hospital. Sis and I went, while Hubbie stayed home to run errands and take care of the cats, etc.

We arrived around 8 a.m. Mother had eaten a meal of hamburger on a bun, with French fries, and pudding. She was still out of it enough to wonder why she was being served a hamburger and fries for breakfast.

We stayed until lunch, when we came home for deli turkey sandwiches, relax, and do a few chores. We returned to the hospital around 2 p.m. It was obvious to me that Mother wasn't enjoying being by herself now. A new crew had come on that she described as "cranky." And one of the three was male. She wasn't about to let a male help her to the bathroom. So when he came in to take her vitals, I told him we'd need female help when Mother went to the bathroom, and he said it would be no problem.

I decided, though, that I would stay the night with Mother this time. She seemed relieved about this. So Sis and I returned home, where Hubbie had baked potatoes and bought a deli chicken for our supper (Nephew had returned to his and Sis's town last night after supper).

I gathered what I'd need for the night, and Hubbie, Sis, and I went back to the hospital. Hubbie and Sis visited until around 9 p.m., and then returned to our house.

There was a chair that made out into a bed in Mother's room, and the nurses brought me pillows and a blanket. It was adequate, but I wouldn't want to make a habit of sleeping on it...not that I did much sleeping anyway, since the nurses came in frequently to do their thing, the blood pressure monitor nosily inflated every 45 minutes (waking both Mother and me), and a thunderstorm raged outside.

Around 2 a.m., the storm caused a power outage that knocked out the electricity to half the hospital. Fortunately, monitors hooked to patients are switched to a generator in power outages. But the room lights, and some of the elevators were out. In fact, one of the nurses was trapped in one of the elevators for quite a while.

Tonight, the hospital experienced short staff on our floor, thanks to a number of emergency cases coming in (one nurse explained that they had more emergencies on rainy night...like tonight...and during full moons than any other time).

So it was hard to round anybody up when Mother needed to go to the bathroom. At one point, I decided that we'd just do it ourselves, and I unhooked all her stuff, got her out of bed, held onto her, and wheeled the pole of monitors to the bathroom, where I helped her get on and off the potty, walk her and the pole of monitors back to the bed, get her into bed, and hook her back up.

One of the plugs came loose though, alerting the person at the nurse's station, and a nurse soon came in to properly hook it back up. I told her what I'd done, and she sort of frowned and told me to be careful.

Around 3 a.m., the nursing assistant came in to take vitals. The bed has a scale on it for weighing folks, but since the power was out, it wasn't working. So Mother had to get out of bed and step on a scale. After she was lying back down, it was necessary to move her farther up toward the headboard. To do this, there is a square pad under the patient, and nursing staff get on either side of the bed and on the count of three lift the patient upward. Nobody else was available to help the nursing assistant do this, so I did it.

It was a very long night, and Mother and I were both glad when it was finally daylight. All Mother could think about was wanting to go home.