Latest / The Wicked Daughter - Caring For Your Aging Parents, One Meltdown at a Time / E014: What a Difference Rehab Makes: From Hospital Bed to Rehab

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E014: What a Difference Rehab Makes: From Hospital Bed to Rehab · The Wicked Daughter - Caring For Your Aging Parents, One Meltdown at a Time

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: A month earlier, Mom was on a respirator.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_01: A respirator.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: We were talking about whether she was going to make it through.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: And now she was getting ready to leave the hospital.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: Not for home, not yet.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: But for a long term care facility where she can continue recovering.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: And honestly, neither one of us knew what to make of it.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: We were happy.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: We were hesitant.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: We were scared.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_01: And we were absolutely thrilled.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_01: A month earlier I wasn't thinking about what facility mom would go to.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: I was sitting beside a hospital bed, watching a machine breathe for her.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: Now we were talking about whether mom would be eating in bed or sitting in a dining room.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: Talk about a plot twist.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: The woman who had been on a respirator was getting ready to go to a long-term care facility for rehab.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I was trying to process all of it while doing what caregivers do best.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_01: Worrying about 12 things at once.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: Because of course, even when things are finally going well, there's still paperwork.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: And medical records.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: And wound care.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: And transportation.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: And apparently one last opportunity for something to come out of left field.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_01: But this time, there was something different.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: We were starting to believe this might actually be real.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I wasn't sure either of us was ready for how much mom was about to change.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: There was something else happening that I almost couldn't believe.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: The acute care hospital had been slowly weaning mom off the oxygen.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_01: And one day, she didn't need it all day.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: The nasal tube was still there, the oxygen was still available, but she wasn't actually using it.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: All day.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I have to tell you, that felt like a miracle.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_01: Because we had been told mom still had aspiration pneumonia, and that it could take months to clear.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: Months.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: At some point I had completely convinced myself that mom was going to spend the rest of her life dragging an oxygen tank around.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: I had already accepted it.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_01: I can just picture it.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: Mom with her oxygen tank, me managing the oxygen tank, probably tripping over the oxygen tubing at least once a day.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: And now she didn't need it.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: Not all day.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: And after everything we'd been through, the respirator, the ICU, the oxygen.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: Mom was breathing on her own.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: I know it sounds like a small thing, but when you've spent weeks watching numbers on monitors and listening for alarms, small things become very big things.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: And this was a very big thing.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: But we weren't quite out of the woods yet.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: The podiatrist had done the debridement on mom's foot, and it went well.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: But then she mentioned Mom might need a wound vac, or at least ongoing wound care.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: And most facilities should have wound care.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: So of course I immediately checked the facility we'd found.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, they had wound care.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: But really?
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: You couldn't have mentioned this before the procedure?
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: You know, back when I was researching rehabs and trying to figure out where mom was going to go?
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: Because apparently the professionals know what's happening.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: They just have absolutely no concept of when the person making the decisions needs to know about it.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: They're thinking about the procedure.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_01: I'm thinking about where is mom going?
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_01: Will they be able to take care of her?
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: Do I need to start the entire rehab search all over again?
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: It's another one of those things about caregiving that nobody prepares you for.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's not just getting the information, it's getting it when you actually need it.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: Apparently, that's a very advanced concept for doctors to comprehend.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: But fortunately, not everything coming our way was a surprise.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: Because while I was busy trying to keep up with the latest medical development, mom was actually getting better.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: She had needed a skin graft, but her foot was healing nicely.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: The hematoma was improving.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: It was shrinking.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: The X-ray and ultrasound showed good blood flow on her foot and her leg.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: For once, I had some news that didn't come with a new problem attached to it.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I was more than ready to take the win.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_01: Because apparently, being medically cleared for discharge does not mean you simply get wheeled out the door.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: First there are records.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: Lots and lots of records.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: The rehab needed all of Mom's medical records.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_01: So I went back to the first hospital and waited two hours while they printed seven hundred forty eight pages.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: And that's when I was reminded that for all of the incredible things modern medicine can do, some parts of healthcare are still determined to make a caregiver's life as difficult as possible.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: No electronic transfer, no convenient little download, and no disc.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: Just me standing there with enough paper to qualify as a small publishing company.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: Well, at least I got some weight training in.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: Two days after the foot procedure, the transfer paperwork was submitted.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: Now we just had to wait for a bed.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: And transportation.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: Because naturally, the final stage of getting your parent out of the hospital is waiting.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: Again.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: But the next afternoon, Mom was transferred.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: The facility asked that I give them an hour after she arrived before visiting, which made perfect sense.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: They needed time to get her settled and get everything in place.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: So I waited.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: And then I went over.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: I walked into Mom's room around 4 30, and immediately I panicked a little.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_01: Not because anything was wrong.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: Because nothing was there.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: No monitors.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: No pulse monitor.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: No respiration monitor.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: No oxygen saturation monitor.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely no machines.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: No blinking lights.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: No alarms.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: Nothing.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: After six weeks of constant monitoring, it was very unnerving.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: I felt like I was walking a tight rope without a net.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: Now I knew this was a good thing.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: I knew the nurses would be checking her vitals several times a day.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: But my caregiver brain didn't care what I knew.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: My caregiver brain was standing there going where are all the machines?
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: Apparently, after six weeks of hospital life, I had become emotionally dependent on blinking lights.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: I had to remind myself this is what normal is supposed to look like.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: And then dinner arrived.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm gonna tell you something I never expected to say about a long-term care facility.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: The food was good.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: Actually really good.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: There were menus for the week ahead.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: We could choose what mom wanted.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: There was a dining room.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: There were soup and salad choices, multiple hot entrees, cold lunch choices, dessert, healthy breakfast choices, small portions, but plenty of variety.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought, okay, maybe this place wasn't going to be so bad.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe the biggest adjustment wasn't going to be for mom.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe it was going to be for me.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_01: Because I had spent six weeks thinking about hospitals, doctors, nurses, monitors, procedures, what can go wrong.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: And now we were talking about menus.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_01: That's when I knew things were changing.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: The next morning I went in to help mom eat breakfast.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: And she was doing better.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: A lot better.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: I still cut up her food, but she was able to eat mostly on her own.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I sat there watching her, thinking about where we'd been.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: A month earlier she was on a respirator.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_01: Now she was feeding herself.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: Not perfectly, not completely independently, but herself.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: And that felt huge.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: She hadn't slept well.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: She was tired.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: That was understandable.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: It was another new place.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: But she was eating.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: And then came the part I really wasn't expecting.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: PT and OT came in.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: I assumed they'd start slowly.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe some exercises in bed, a little movement here, a little movement there.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: Mom was still incredibly weak.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: She still couldn't put any weight on her broken leg.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: And after six weeks in a hospital bed, I figured getting her out of that bed was going to be a goal for somewhere down the road.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_01: Apparently, PT and OT had a different timeline.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: They figured out how to transfer mom from the bed to a wheelchair without putting any weight on her broken leg.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: And then they did it.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: They got her out of bed.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: I was shocked.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, I was thrilled.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: Was she independent?
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely not.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: She still needed help with almost everything.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: She was weak.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: Really weak.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: But after six weeks of watching mom lie in a hospital bed, seeing her sitting in that wheelchair felt enormous.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: It was one of those moments where I was thrilled and a little afraid to be thrilled.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: Because caregivers know this feeling.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: You've been through enough ups and downs that even good news comes with a little voice in the back of your head saying, Don't get too excited.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: Because when you've spent six weeks in crisis mode, you don't just flip a switch because something good happens.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: You're happy.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: You're hopeful.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: You're waiting for the other shoe to drop.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: Can I actually let myself believe this?
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: Because we'd had good days before.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: And then something would happen.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: So even while I was watching mom sit there in that wheelchair, part of me was still waiting for the next phone call.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: That's what crisis mode does.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't just make you worry when something is wrong, it makes it really hard to relax when something is right.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: And yet, mom was up.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: She was moving.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: And for the first time in a very long time, I could actually see something happening.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_01: Not a new test, not another procedure, not another problem we had to solve.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: Progress.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: Real actual progress.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_01: So I gave mom a tour around the facility and discovered something else.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: Mom needed real clothes.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: Apparently, if you're going to eat in the dining room, a hospital gown is frowned upon.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: Who knew?
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: The next day I brought clothes from home.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: We tried pants.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_01: The bandage on her foot pretty much made that impossible.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_01: So I ordered some simple dresses from Amazon and had them delivered directly to the rehab.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_01: Because nothing says I'll be here a while more than adding the rehab to your Amazon account as a new address.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: Apparently, we'd reached that stage of caregiving.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: And then Saturday came.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_01: And that's when something else changed.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: Visitors.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_01: Mom had some friends visit her in the hospital, but there weren't nearly as many.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_01: She was tired.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_01: She'd been through so much.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_01: And when she was in the ICU, she couldn't have visitors other than family.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_01: Once she moved to the acute care hospital, a few people did visit, but nobody was familiar with the place.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't somewhere they'd ever been before.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: But then mom moved to the long-term care facility, and suddenly it seemed like everyone knew this place.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_01: I'd tell somebody where mom was, and they'd say, Oh yeah, I forgot about that place.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: Or, oh I thought they only had independent living.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_01: Or I didn't know they had long-term care.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_01: Or I forgot they had rehab there.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: Oh good to know.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_01: Now because apparently the facility I'd spent days researching was a local secret.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_01: A secret that approximately half of Mom's friends already knew about.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm not saying I was annoyed.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just saying I might have appreciated this information before I researched half the county.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: But honestly, I was thrilled.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_01: Because now people were coming to see Mom.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: People who knew her before the accident.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: People who knew her as mom, not as a patient.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: And that mattered because caregiving can get very small.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_01: And then someone walks through the door who knew your parent before all of this.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: And for a little while, mom isn't a patient.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: She's just mom.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I hadn't realized how much I needed to see that too.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: I had been in crisis mode for so long that I'd forgotten what it felt like to see mom simply being mom.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: Not being assessed, not being monitored, not waiting for a procedure, just having people come to see her.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I was so grateful for every single one of them.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: And then there was another little milestone.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: The aide had mom's dinner all cut up for her by the time I got back.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: And mom fed herself.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_01: I'm telling you, I can get very excited about some pretty small things at this point.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: Mom fed herself.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: Breaking news.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: And yes, I was going to update the family news network.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: Because apparently some things deserve their own press release.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: The next day was Sunday.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: I arrived before lunch, and Mom was in the gym doing OT.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_01: She was exhausted, but happy.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_01: She could have eaten in the dining room, but she was too tired.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: And that was okay.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: She'd done enough.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: That night she had stuffed mushrooms, chef salad, herbal tea, and coffee cake.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I told her you might not want to leave.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: Honestly, I wasn't completely kidding.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_01: Over the next week we started getting into a routine.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_01: And this was the part I hadn't expected.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: A routine felt wonderful.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: Mom was usually bathed and dressed before breakfast, should have breakfast in bed, then OTMPT would get her into a wheelchair and take her down to the gym.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_01: She'd work out, should get tired, should go back to bed, rest, have visitors, recover.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_01: And then one day she went to the dining room for dinner.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: Salmon cake, mango salad, white rice.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought, okay, mom, I might actually join you one night.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_01: Because now she wasn't just surviving the day, she was participating in it.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: And little by little she started eating dinner in the dining room.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: Then lunch.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: Then eventually all three meals.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: Wound care came around every other day to clean and change the dressing on her foot.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_01: Her ankle and her leg continued to cause her pain.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_01: We still had months of recovery ahead.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_01: But somehow, the woman who had spent six weeks in a hospital bed was now getting dressed, yes, with some help, but still real clothes.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_01: She was getting into a wheelchair, going to therapy, eating in a dining room, seeing her friends, and feeding herself.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't the life she had before the accident.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: We weren't magically back to normal.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: There were still problems, there were still things to figure out, there was still that foot.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_01: There was still recovery ahead.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_01: But there was something I hadn't seen in a long time.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: Momentum.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe that's what I needed to see too.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_01: Because when you're caregiving, it's very easy to become so focused on the next crisis, the next phone call, the next decision, the next thing that could go wrong, that you forget to notice when something is actually going right.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot was going right.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: I just had to slow down long enough to see it.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: A month earlier, mom was on a respirator.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_01: Now she was sitting in a wheelchair eating salmon cake in the dining room.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: And for the first time in a long time, I wasn't waiting for the next crisis.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_01: I was watching mom get better.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_01: And that felt pretty darn good.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: Around here, we're calling that a win.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: Until next time, take care of yourself too.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um the wicked daughter, caring for your aging parent, one meltdown at a time.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: When your friends say cherish this time, you smile while you're losing your mind.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: Was it the pharmacy line or the rush our doctor drive?
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: So you swallow that glare with a laugh and a sigh and say, Don't fret, dear.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: We're having the time of our lives.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we're having the time, the time of our lives.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: Wicked daughter.