Another LOOOOONG Tuesday (15 Mar, 2011)

Even though today was very successful in terms of getting all her errands done, it was too much for her. We left for town at 9:30AM and we got home about 3:30PM. Mom immediately got into her green chair and fell sound asleep.

As I was making trips down from her car to bring in her groceries, I noticed a package on the porch right outside the sliding glass door. It turned out to be some delicious soup made by her nearest neighbor, along with some muffins. I heated it up and fed mom some dinner, and afterward she told me, "Even though I love going into town with you, my heart is telling me that it is too much." As usual when she gets extremely tired (and/or in pain), she gets very impatient and cranky, so it probably wasn't the best idea for me to try to figure out what she meant. But after some testy discussion, I think she was saying that she no longer wants to do errands on the same trip as her doctor appointment. She wants to go into town, see the doc, then come home because she no longer has the stamina to do anything else on the same trip. I can understand that. But I asked her about her appointments with Kubac, because the whole point of hospice is to keep her comfortable and stable at home and remove the necessity of going into town every week for doctor visits. But she was way too cranky for me to bring up that subject and she just did her stubborn little girl routine of "I am going to see Kubac once a week, period." The only progress I made was to get her to admit that it's psychological for her. I have a feeling that it might not be too long before she is no longer able to climb the stairs up to her car, so it may soon become moot. Even today she had to stop a couple times before she got up to the parking area, and at one point she started to lose her balance and fall sideways but I caught her, after which she told me to "stop hovering." When we got into the car I told her that I was not "hovering," and that she has to understand that the one thing that will sidetrack her wish to stay at RP until the end is if she falls and breaks a hip. She gave a kind of surly response. (sigh...) Yes, everybody loves her, but she has her difficult moments, like all of us.

Anyway...our visit to Dr. B at the wound clinic was great. Denise (the Hospice RN) and another RN from Hospice came to see how Dr. B handles mom's shin wound. At one point, the small exam room contained mom sitting on the table, Dr. B and her assistant Maria working on the wound, both Hospice RNs watching closely, and me leaning against the door jam. I was standing there listening to the jargon and at one point I left to go find a pen so I could write it down. That happened to be right at the goriest part of the wound debridement, so everybody assumed that I was getting the vapors, and when I returned with a pen and paper, they told me there was a water fountain nearby where I could get a drink or sit down. HAHA. Little did they know I had just written down Denise's question regarding hyperproliferation on the granuloma. When I told them I was capturing the terminology, Dr. B amplified on the hyperproliferation and said, "When you get it in a horse, you call it proud flesh!" Dang, my medical education continues. (And by the way, mom's wound doesn't have it, whatever it is!)

Anyway, mom's wound had again improved greatly over the past week, and there is no infection. Mom and the other two RNs stared at this horrible looking wound with great interest and someone pronounced it "beautiful"! Then everybody in the room cracked up and Dr. B commented that normal people would think they were crazy!

At some point, the subject of "the other" wound clinic came up, and how they had worked on mom's other wound for ten weeks with no success and then Dr. B had cured it in less than a week. Dr. B said, "I try not to do anything half-assed. She has already had half-assed, and if I take on a patient, I am going to do it right!" Dr. B is FANTASTIC. Exactly what medicine should be.

Following the wound clinic, we went to Sherm's for groceries, Diamond for roof repair caulk, BiMart for a prescription, the bank, and finally the gas station. Even though I made a point of getting her either a wheelchair or a cart so she didn't have to walk into or out of any store, uh, yeah, I guess that was a little too much.