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Feb. 27th, 2007 10:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickHad a non-interesting day today. I was going to take grandma to the eye doctor but she woke up with her right hand and left foot obviously swollen. We called her doctor because grandma is really old and frail. Instead of the eye doctor, we went to the ER and got some kind of sonogram thing to look for blood clots. There were no blood clots.
No. Then we went home and waited for her afternoon appointment with her regular doctor. We made an appointment with the regular doctor to see what was going on with the swelling thing. Stuff hadn't been swollen and now it was swelled up and changes like that, you go see a doctor for. At least, you see a doctor for that if you're very old and under the care of your grandchildren who do not want to be blamed for your death because they didn't bother to get your suddenly swollen extremeties looked into.
The reason I waited with her was that her visiting care person didn't come in -- grandma was supposed to have blown the day going to the eye doctor with me so that she wouldn't be home to NEED a visiting care person. (The visiting care people are not free like butterflies and sunshine and orgasms from masturbation. The visiting care people cost money. As a result, when grandma will not be at home all day, we tell the visiting care people not to show up because grandma won't be there and ain't no way we are paying them to show up and do nothing.)
It takes all day to go to the eye doctor because he's for grandma's macular degeneration and he's a specialist some 90 miles away from where grandma currently lives. The reason we're seeing him is that he's the guy she's been seeing for this and she is damn near blind in one eye and DOES NOT want to be blind in the other eye as well. Changing doctors at this point would be more stressful for her than driving her a hundred and eighty miles round trip for eye doctor visits is.
We rescheduled with the eye doctor for next Wednesday at 10:15 AM. That happened to clobber my eye appointment here, so I called M and had her reschedule my eye appointment for some day that wasn't Wednesday next week and wasn't Tuesday (because I have an eviction hearing on Tuesday).
Then we went to the doctor's office. The doctor looked at grandma's hand and said, "Arthritis." Yeah. Okay. The doctor looked at grandma's foot (which I had not seen until we got to the doctor's office and I took her slippers and socks off) and said, "This toe is infected." Well, yeah, dude. It's all shiny red and there's an old injury with a welt of pus underneath it. You can see the yellowish gunk stretching the skin. This is not fucking rocket science. So he lances the toe (grandma is NOT amused) and tapes a wad of gauze over it and sends her home with some instructions and oral antibiotics. She's to come back next week on Thursday so that he can look at the foot again.
Now, grandma would scream bloody murder if any layperson tried sticking a safety pin into a pus-filled infection on her toe. While she might have once punctured her own pus-filled infections with safety pins and abraded 'em and cleaned 'em out and stuck some neosporin and a bandaid on 'em, at her current age and health level, she wants a doctor for that kind of stuff... so we go to the doctor and he puts a lance (which is a sharp, medically approved tool for making a hole in a pus-filled infection) in the PFI and abrades it and cleans it out and sticks some neosporin and a bandaid on it... and charges Medicare for doing so. Oh, well.
So why does grandma have an infected toe in the first place? Her feet are partly numb. She doesn't walk a whole lot so mostly she gets around (in a very narrow-doored modular home) via a wheeled chair called a "transfer chair". It isn't a proper wheelchair because the wheels are about 4" tall and there is no way for her to propel herself. It's also narrower than a real wheelchair and will fit through all the doorways that it needs to fit through. Probably her foot got banged while she was being pushed somewhere. It's quite possible that she didn't feel it at the time. Nobody noticed it because she resists changing her socks -- they are not dirty yet. She doesn't SAY anything when stuff hurts, either, because she doesn't want to be a bother. *sigh* And, since her skin is like tissue paper, you don't have to bump anything very hard to cause an injury. (Grab her arm to stop her from falling and you'll tear the skin on her arm. It shreds, kind of. When grandma was at the rehab/nursing home, with an unfamiliar environment and different people handling her all the time, I got calls about skin tears about once a week. Where she is now, in a predictable environment that she is comfortable in and used to, she gets skin tears less than once a month.)
While we were at the doctor, grandma bitched about her shortness of breath and lack of stamina. She gets tired very easily. She asked the doctor if this was because she was getting old. The doctor told her that it was because she was out of shape. Yeah. I'll get right on that, doc. I am not sure what I am supposed to tell grandma to do about her fitness level. She can barely walk. Half the time she is walking, she looks like is about to fall over. She does not EVER walk for transportation anymore. She walks (slowly, with a lot of whining and with someone following right behind her to shove the chair under her butt) to keep enough muscle tone to transfer. So, about that fitness? Not sure what I can do there.
Anyway, it was a long day I did get the corrugated ribbing cuff finished on one of the HoHI, though. The other cuff needs about half an inch on it.
No. Then we went home and waited for her afternoon appointment with her regular doctor. We made an appointment with the regular doctor to see what was going on with the swelling thing. Stuff hadn't been swollen and now it was swelled up and changes like that, you go see a doctor for. At least, you see a doctor for that if you're very old and under the care of your grandchildren who do not want to be blamed for your death because they didn't bother to get your suddenly swollen extremeties looked into.
The reason I waited with her was that her visiting care person didn't come in -- grandma was supposed to have blown the day going to the eye doctor with me so that she wouldn't be home to NEED a visiting care person. (The visiting care people are not free like butterflies and sunshine and orgasms from masturbation. The visiting care people cost money. As a result, when grandma will not be at home all day, we tell the visiting care people not to show up because grandma won't be there and ain't no way we are paying them to show up and do nothing.)
It takes all day to go to the eye doctor because he's for grandma's macular degeneration and he's a specialist some 90 miles away from where grandma currently lives. The reason we're seeing him is that he's the guy she's been seeing for this and she is damn near blind in one eye and DOES NOT want to be blind in the other eye as well. Changing doctors at this point would be more stressful for her than driving her a hundred and eighty miles round trip for eye doctor visits is.
We rescheduled with the eye doctor for next Wednesday at 10:15 AM. That happened to clobber my eye appointment here, so I called M and had her reschedule my eye appointment for some day that wasn't Wednesday next week and wasn't Tuesday (because I have an eviction hearing on Tuesday).
Then we went to the doctor's office. The doctor looked at grandma's hand and said, "Arthritis." Yeah. Okay. The doctor looked at grandma's foot (which I had not seen until we got to the doctor's office and I took her slippers and socks off) and said, "This toe is infected." Well, yeah, dude. It's all shiny red and there's an old injury with a welt of pus underneath it. You can see the yellowish gunk stretching the skin. This is not fucking rocket science. So he lances the toe (grandma is NOT amused) and tapes a wad of gauze over it and sends her home with some instructions and oral antibiotics. She's to come back next week on Thursday so that he can look at the foot again.
Now, grandma would scream bloody murder if any layperson tried sticking a safety pin into a pus-filled infection on her toe. While she might have once punctured her own pus-filled infections with safety pins and abraded 'em and cleaned 'em out and stuck some neosporin and a bandaid on 'em, at her current age and health level, she wants a doctor for that kind of stuff... so we go to the doctor and he puts a lance (which is a sharp, medically approved tool for making a hole in a pus-filled infection) in the PFI and abrades it and cleans it out and sticks some neosporin and a bandaid on it... and charges Medicare for doing so. Oh, well.
So why does grandma have an infected toe in the first place? Her feet are partly numb. She doesn't walk a whole lot so mostly she gets around (in a very narrow-doored modular home) via a wheeled chair called a "transfer chair". It isn't a proper wheelchair because the wheels are about 4" tall and there is no way for her to propel herself. It's also narrower than a real wheelchair and will fit through all the doorways that it needs to fit through. Probably her foot got banged while she was being pushed somewhere. It's quite possible that she didn't feel it at the time. Nobody noticed it because she resists changing her socks -- they are not dirty yet. She doesn't SAY anything when stuff hurts, either, because she doesn't want to be a bother. *sigh* And, since her skin is like tissue paper, you don't have to bump anything very hard to cause an injury. (Grab her arm to stop her from falling and you'll tear the skin on her arm. It shreds, kind of. When grandma was at the rehab/nursing home, with an unfamiliar environment and different people handling her all the time, I got calls about skin tears about once a week. Where she is now, in a predictable environment that she is comfortable in and used to, she gets skin tears less than once a month.)
While we were at the doctor, grandma bitched about her shortness of breath and lack of stamina. She gets tired very easily. She asked the doctor if this was because she was getting old. The doctor told her that it was because she was out of shape. Yeah. I'll get right on that, doc. I am not sure what I am supposed to tell grandma to do about her fitness level. She can barely walk. Half the time she is walking, she looks like is about to fall over. She does not EVER walk for transportation anymore. She walks (slowly, with a lot of whining and with someone following right behind her to shove the chair under her butt) to keep enough muscle tone to transfer. So, about that fitness? Not sure what I can do there.
Anyway, it was a long day I did get the corrugated ribbing cuff finished on one of the HoHI, though. The other cuff needs about half an inch on it.
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Date: 2007-02-28 07:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-01 02:25 am (UTC)We had the same issue with my Grandma before she passed away. She spent her last 2 1/2 years in a long term care facility, and by the end, there were notes all over her room about not using adhesive tape on her skin because it was so fragile. She's lucky to have you there to help out with her care.