CHAPTER 199 STROKE AND GOLDEN LIVING 2012
In 2012 I began two long projects:
“When God Walked Among Men”, a narrative harmony of the Gospels. This would be a combined study of the Life of Christ harmonized from Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, with commentary.
the making was an autobiography of my own life with the working title of: “Impressions of my Life: Autobiography of a Recherche Poet”. Recherche means Exquisite, Rare or Choice. Makes me sound like a cut of beef, doesn’t it? As of the writing I am on Chapter 199 of my first draft. I intend to rewrite it bringing in more history, if I can keep on living.
I also did another collection of essays at the end of 2012: Life the Brutal Teacher.
my mother who always called. My mother and I kept in constant contact, calling each other every week at least once. I seldom spoke to my dad on the phone. We made regular period visits to me parents and that was when I saw and talked to dad. He no longer worked because th doctors had taken his driver license away when he turned 90 after a bad case of Edema that our him in the hospital. He could no longer drive or do much of anything. My mother did all the driving now and she had become my. Dad’s caretaker.
I took his call. It was not an April Fool’s Joke. “Larry,” he said. “Your mother had a stroke and you need to come right up here.”
I called Lois and we left right away. His call sounded as if she just had this stroke, but when we got there we discovered she had it on April 1. He had waited four days to inform me. She was already in the Phoenixville Hospital.
I picked up dad. He could only walk now with a Rollilater, that is a walker with a fold down seat, in case the user gets tired they can then sit to relax for a while or they can sit had have someone push them. We drove to Phoenixville He had a placard that went over the mirror so we could park in a handicap space near the front door of the
hospital. We went in and were told she was on the sixth floor. Wouldn’t you know her room was the furtherest down the hall. Dad walked, but halfway he had to sit down and rest.
We finally got there and they sent us to the fifth floor. While dad visited mom, Lois and I asked about and finally got a nurse who could find her doctor.
Mom had an ischemic stroke in the brain stem. This can be very devastating. T first her speech was kind of garbled, but it did come back to pretty much normal in a few days, but her left arm and leg were effected. She could no use her left hand at all.
The nurse returned with he Doctor in tow. He briefly went over her condition with us.
Mr. Meredith, he said all very serious. “I suggest your mother be given a feeding tube.”
“On her final directive she said no feeding tube,” I told him.
die. It is a simple procedure. We cut right through the belly and insert a tube from outside right into the stomach, It is called a percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy. ”
I would learn about this procedure I the future pertaining to myself and ALS.
“She was very specific she didn’t want a feeding tube,” I said.
carry weight when the patient is beyond reasoning on their own for what the want. She was given this operation and now was being feed through the tub a fowl looking glop of stuff, but one containing the nutrition needed.
Once they did the tube insertion they were anxious to get rid of her. Hospitals are like that. As soon as they can they ship you out. It was clear my mom could not be sent home, we hd no facilities to look after her. A social worker came to me and ended me a long sheet of paper.
“You need to select Rehab Center,” she told me. “Here is a list of such facilities. Choose three and return your choices to me and we’ll get her into one”
What did I know about Rehab Centers. Absolutely nothing, but they gave we three days to find one for mom.
I did not find one. They put her in Golden Living, a facility directly across from the side of the hospital.
my wife and we went there, While I parked they went up. They were seated in chairs near her bed when I got there. They first thing she said to me was, “Larry get me outta here!”
There were three beds in the room, just pull curtain between, but at the moment all were open. My wore was proper up on pillows and covered so one couldn’t see more than her head. Her voice was scratching, but understandable. The stroke had not effected her speaking, although at first it was sometimes hard to make out. It got better over the next few days and then she spoke almost normally.
The damage was down the left side of her body. Her leg and foot king of twisted inward and would prove of no use. Her left arm tended to flop when she tried to move it and her left hand was curved up like a claw and no grip.
The room and the hall looked clean, except the hall was littered with old people, most sitting in wheelchairs and bend over from the waist with their heads hanging down. Several were gathered at the far end of the hallway, where we had entered because the elevators were there, watching a single TV on a stand. No one had spoken to us, except one aid that had shown us to her rom and then left.
were not in the room. We discovered the one lady prowled about the rooms stealing from other patents drawers. The third patient in the room did not do this, but we quickly saw, when she did come in, that she was quite crazy. She would smile and babble away and not make s lot of sense.
We mother did have therapists, a physical one and an occupational one. The came to her every day and sometimes transported her via-sheelchair to a gym. The gym had dumbbells, hand bars on the wall, and small steps in then center of the room.
But there was little my mother could do with any of this stuff. The Therapists told me the problem was she could use her left leg and her right was too weak to allow her to stand.
They worked with her a few weeks and then Medicare said she was plateaued and cut off coverage. Her insurance with Aetna would not cover her treatment either so she got no more therapy. She just lay in her bed next to the crazy lady and the thief.
Meanwhile, I began a nursing home search.
