March 4, 2012
Update on mother. In the middle January the doctor told mom that she was not going to make it. After discussing things with Nancy, mother told the doctor to please let her go......she was ready. He explained to her that nothing was done to keep her alive, that it was all her.
She was moved to the Acute Care Floor, where Hospice came in to take care of her. Everyday was suppose to be her last one. A couple of weeks there, she became stabilized and after 5 days of (as hospice put it) "not going downhill fast enough", they also said Medicare states that Hospice can't take care of her anymore and she will have to be taken somewhere else, like a nursing home. I'm going to make this a short story, because so much has happened since then and my dates are running together now..
Feb 21
Mother was brought over to Houston on to a nursing home after horrible and somewhat neglective care in a nursing home in Louisiana. She was in the new nursing home for 3 days and lab results came back that she had a white blood count of 37,000 (normal is somewhere around 10,000) and had highly contagious c.diff and a Urinary tract infection. She was taken to Methodist hospital, where she is now.
Mar 4
The news for her today is: Mother/Aunt Margie is feeling much better today. Several days of solid sleep looks like it helped a lot. She's back to her clear minded self. Color looks good. She wanted to talk about what has occurred over the last week; she knew how sick she had been and wanted more clarity for how she came to be at Methodist.
I truly believe that all of the prayers for her have been heard by our Lord. I especially believe that you, my Stallings family has a direct line to God and that your prayers are very powerful! My sisters were making funeral arrangemnets and I was writing her obituary, mom was on day to day, or more accuretly hour to hour. She's not strong, but is doing so much better. I do feel she will be here a little bit longer, but as we all know, there is not an expiration date on any of us.
Thank you all so much for your emails, calls and prayers.
January 8, 2012
Happy New Year to you all. Some of you already know that mother went in the hospital on Christmas day.
Here is a recap of her hospital stays and the reason she was there:
Sept 23
She had a pacemaker put in and was diagnosed with congestive heart failure, but insisted that she would live at home. I took her home from the hospital and stayed a couple of days until my sister Pamela came to take over. Mom was zipping around her house with her walker with wheels, I could barely keep up with her. She was so happy to be home. We arranged for help to take care of her while we were gone.
Nov 18
Rushed to hospital for "weaping" and extreme edema in legs, she wanted to move to a nursing home temporarily while she gained strength.
Dec 23
Days before Christmas, mother sat crying, because she hated it in the nursing home and could not get rest so Pamela checked her out and took her home.
Dec 25
Mother fell a couple of times while standing, Pamela catching her. Ambulance took her to hosp.
Gall stones and Gal bladder infection.
Dec 29
Surgery: Gall bladder removed. She made it through the surgery fine, was able to breath on her own right away.
Dec 30
I drove over to see her taking my brother along with me and releave my neice who had been there several days. Mom stayed in ICU a couple of days.
Jan 1
My sister Nancy flew in to take care of mom, staying over a month. Mom's arms had extreme swelling and her kidneys were not eliminating any fluid. One of us had to stay at hospital with her each night. She is not eating hardly anything.
Jan 3
My brother and I left heading home leaving Nancy to take care of mom, which she did, extremly well. Medicine finally started helping elimination of the fluids. Catheter was taken out and then she had a bladder infection. When that was cleared up, she then had congestion and trouble breathing along with coughing.
Jan 8
Tests were run and found out she has Pneumonia. That along with everything else, the doctor said today that her heart is failing.Mother was going to be moved back to the nursing home for a short time before she went home, but now, we are not sure if there will time for that. Mother's wishes are that when she passes, she would be at home. She does not want to be put on a ventilator to be kept alive for any length of time and more recently a DNR was added to her file. The doctors, family and mother all agree that if that came about, her sturnum or ribs could be broken and she would never recover from that. We have no idea of a time frame.......but it doesn't look like very long.
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