My sister just sent me the following email. She copied Janis Stovall and Janice Day at Grace Manor Port Orange:
Mom was brought to the Halifax emergency room, Saturday, April 14th, at approximately 7pm, after conferring with Jeanne and Hannah regarding Mom’s inability to urinate in almost 24 hours and claims of abdominal pain. Mom was catheterized and blood was drawn. She had a CT-Scan which showed an older fracture to her pelvis, possibly an injury that occurred within the last few months. The lab work showed Mom to have hypokalemia (?), very low potassium levels, possibly due to the HCTZ. (Dr. Buck said that signs usually appear when someone’s levels were down in the 3s and that Mom had dropped to the 2s.) They started her on a saline-potassium drip and admitted her to the hospital around 3am. Mom did not get her 8pm meds. She received Ativan around 11pm. When she was moved to the 7th floor, her blood pressure had risen and she was going to receive a one-time dose of a med (I do not recall the name), but she did not because her blood pressure stabilized before it could be administered.
Dr. Buck came in around 5pm, Sunday, April 15th. Dr. Buck said that Mom will be in the hospital for at least a couple of days, as he wants to go over all her meds and lab work thoroughly, while also running some other tests.
As of this evening, he has taken her off of the HCTZ and Haldol and wants to reassess. He says he would like to take her off of everything she does not absolutely need and go from there. He has also requested that Dr. Moore, Psychiatrist from Halifax, come in to observe Mom with a fresh set of eyes.
Since she has been here, she has been fairly mild tempered, with the usual “help”, “please”, and “I don’t want to be here”. She has been sleeping quite a bit otherwise, has had a few moments where she was speaking clear enough to express her desire to “not be a burden”, and had a short bit of aggression squeezing/digging nails into my hand and grabbing my hair once. She did not eat very much of her lunch or dinner and seemed to almost be too tired to chew.
I will keep you all updated as best as I can and will try to get more thorough details as well.
Thanks.
PS Janis, FYI, your staff, overall, is pretty awesome and has been a tremendous support. I am very grateful for them and the love they (and you) have shown towards Mom during this trying and confusing time for all of us. Thanks!