Thank Goodness It's Friday!

I'm so glad it's Friday! This has been a very stressful week. They moved my sister into Skilled Nursing and she is doing better. My concern is they are not used to handling a person with Alzheimers Disease. I went in yesterday and she had no pain med. This is a woman with a broken bone..broken entirely in two...and it is not set. It's in a brace to hold it in place in hopes it will mend that way instead of having surgery. I asked her nurse about it. This is the same nurse who asked my brother-in-law if she could stand. That is all a matter of record. She is in the fetal position, in the last stages of Alzheimers Disease. She hasn't stood for a year and a half. She hasn't walked either. He worried about it that night and called the head nurse and went through all that with him.

So when I went in last night and discovered she wasn't getting any pain medication, I asked her nurse about it. She said "we don't know when she's in pain". I said (as nicely as I could) "Let's assume she is because this bad break occurred four days ago and the bone is broken completely in two. I would assume that would be painful or at least ache. Besides, when my husband was dying the Hospice nurse told me when their brow is knit like that, that's a sign they are in pain." She immediately gave her some pain medication.

Today I noticed her IV wasn't wrapped. Phyllis tends to chew on her IV and also tries to pull it out. Over in Acute Care, they wrapped it in an elastic bandage to keep her from doing that. They also gave her respiratory therapy every hour for five minutes. She is now getting it three times a day. I wondered if that was enough to keep her from developing pneumonia. The Patient Care Nurse will also check that out.

I'm concerned that they don't have that many Alzheimer's Patients and are not familiar with the routine. At least out at Windsor's Winston Unit, that was all they did and they knew what to expect.