So I have a new phone and a new tablet. Which is kind of a pain in the ass, because now I need to get these new devices functioning the way I used my old ones. There are setups for transferring old to new. But these easily bog down. The phone is doing okay, but my tablet was supposed syncing overnight.  I couldn’t detect any progress this morning, so I shut that down and started doing some of that manually. Sheesh.

My Mom is in the hospital. This is a weird one this time. After our (first) visit to the Verizon shop to deal with old bad devices, we stopped off at the nursing home to discover that Mom had been taken to the hospital. They had tried to contact me, but of course my phone was dead then. Their description of why Mom went was a bit convoluted. Apparently she asked to be taken to the hospital. The nurses said she was very weak.

When we arrived at her room in the ER, Mom was laying with her eyes closed. Since her middle years she has suffered on and off from an excess of saliva which she calls her “flow.” It is related to her Myasthenia Gravis. We continue to be mystified as to why she doesn’t just swallow this excess saliva, but insists on spitting it out. When I came in the ER room, her chin was covered with spittle. As I moved to wipe it off, an attendant pointed out that Mom could do that herself and I spotted the wash cloth near her hand. With a little encouragement, sure enough, she raised the cloth to her mouth, so she wasn’t too weak to do that.

Later the nurse administering the EKG asked her why she didn’t swallow the saliva (!) since she could easily drink the water she asked for. After that, Eileen said she thought Mom was doing just that.

At this point they were running the usual battery of tests. They weren’t even sure if they were going to admit her. We said goodbye and left. Later I received a phone call (new phone) and the nurse told me she was being admitted and would be on the Spine and Orthodontic level in room 191.

In the afternoon, we again visited her. Mom was laying with her eyes closed and had her right hand near her mouth as though to swab the saliva. Unfortunately, she had one of those clip on heart monitors on that hand and was thoroughly drenching it. I tried to communicate with her. “Help” she said in between spitting. I pointed out that “help” was at hand in the people around her. That she was in the hospital to get help.

The attending nurse said they were in the process of determining a “plan” for Mom. The staff doctor assigned to her had not reviewed the case yet. They didn’t feel they could send her back to the assisted care nursing home in the shape she was in. She apparently is unable to get herself to the bathroom and back (probably due to weakness).

Eileen and I are going to go over and see if we can learn more this morning. Mom seemed very miserable and non-communicative yesterday. The people at the nursing home seem to be at their wit’s end with her present condition. It may be that we are looking at a change in care for her, i.e. moving her to a more full time care facility.

It also may be that she will feel better and be able to return to her nursing home life. Hard to say at this point.

My brother pointed out that she could easily be suffering from depression. My question is, if she’s not communicating, how would one know?