So, mother woke up on Saturday morning and for whatever reason (like she turned both of the air conditioners in her apartment off before she went to bed, got dehydrated and overheated and panicked....I'm just sayin...) her blood pressure went up dangerously high.
She pressed the emergency button and the nurse came to check on her, gave her the morning dose of blood pressure medicine and decided to send her to the hospital for good measure. When the ambulance arrived, mother had already started to feel better and she REFUSED to get in the ambulance.
Now on the one hand, it turned out alright because we would have spent the day in a hospital emergency room for nothing. On the other hand, a person REALLY should get into an ambulance and go to the hospital when a medical professional calls one to come get her.
When I arrived at Green Grove, she was sitting in her recliner getting all sorts of attention, retelling her story over and over. Of course the story was a little different each time she told it because she really couldn't remember what happened. We had a long day sitting around until the house doctor arrived. I looked at magazines and played Scrabble on the iPad (gosh I love that thing) and she talked and talked and talked and talked. One minute she told me how lucky she is to live at Green Grove...so very blessed. The next she told me how loud the air conditioners are and they are making her ears hurt and how the "old" people around there just like to stay in their rooms and she doesn't have enough people to talk to.
We looped through the funeral plans and whether or not all of her affairs are in order because she is "ready to go." I was patient as I could be but did finally have to get snarky so as to get that particular topic of conversation out of the loop. About the 10th time she asked about her affairs, I assured her that they were in tip top order and that she could go anytime she feels like it. That prompted an indignant, "Well, I'm not planning to go anytime soon!!!" (But she didn't mention it again.)
I have to laugh because she was up and down all day, but when a visitor came in she got all quiet and shrank down a little smaller in the chair, pulling the quilt up a little higher under her chin. When they called to say the doctor was coming down, she said something about the living room being a mess, jumped up, started carrying doodads into the bedroom and at one point while folding a towel, actually reached over and, standing on ONE foot, pushed a partially open drawer closed with the other foot. (The foot on the side of her body she said hurt so bad because of arthritis.) By the time he got to the door she was back in the chair under that quilt.
The doctor's advice..."stop getting so worked up." Go Figure!
Before I left, I laid down the law about the air conditioners....it ended up being 105 yesterday with the heat index. I taped the thermostats down so that she can't move them. Since the noise bothers her then she's to turn on the one in the living room at night and the one in the bedroom during the day. One will cool both rooms just fine. I put notes on both and stickers with arrows pointing to the "off" setting and the "cool" setting. Then I talked to home health services about making sure she kept them on AND I put a note on the door so they would remember to check when they come and go.
Then, I told mother that if she so much as THINKS about not following my instructions that it will not be pretty....if she gets cold she can cover up....but turning the air conditioning off is NOT an option.
So, as I left, she asked, "How much money do I have?"
I wonder if she's thinking of making a break for it?
