Hello to My Blogging Friends

Hello, all. I still try to drop in on as many of you as I can, but I don't always leave a comment, so I just wanted you to know.

I've had a wild week, but the outcome was better than it could have been. Sunday afternoon my mother had a slight headache, and after church she fell asleep. She slept a good while; when she got up, she passed out, and hit her head in the temple area, really, really hard. Then things got really crazy. I won't go in to all the details, but she was delirious, vomiting, and really in trouble. After an ambulance ride, two emergency rides and a hospital stay, she is finally back home, but none of the expensive tests really told anything. However, she'd recently had a medicine increased and the last time they increased it, she had problems, but they wouldn't listen, so she may have been sleepy and woozy from that medicine. When she hit her head so hard (she has a large, multi-colored goose egg and a bright purple eye nearly a week later), we think she gave herself a bad concussion.

I'm very happy that so many caring, competent people are willing to work in health care, but unfortunately not all of them are caring or competent, and the ones who are good are still swamped, plus Mom was completely disoriented, so someone, and often several someones, from the family was with her at all times. So the whole family is exhausted and stressed, but very glad we were able to be there to help her. She doesn't remember any of it... but we do. She's not completely 100% but definitely improving.

It's a fine line between listening to your doctor and getting your doctor to listen to you. It's a delicate balance between respecting the medical knowledge being expended on your loved one and being diligent to notice and rectify mistakes. I've gotten some incredible care at the hospital for which I am extremely grateful, but the hospital is no place for sick people. Still trying to sort everything out, in other words. But to all of the hard-working, caring, competent, cheerful, compassionate, skilled, patient personnel in all our hospitals, a very big thank you from the bottom of my heart.