What does it take?

After a good night's sleep, I'm up to give the report for yesterday. After Dr. Elhaddi came in (you got that report yesterday hot off the press), it was hospital stay as usual...except...

Well, we did have a couple of little hiccups...

The CNA got Mom up to give her a bath. I'm not sure why she thought the CNA had to take off her oxygen to give her the bath. It was probably because it was still the Groucho Marx oxymizer and they didn't want that to get wet. At any rate, after Mom was settled and back in bed, she confided in me that she had never tried so hard not to pass out while sitting in the shower. Of course not!! As we learned yesterday when Dr. Elhaddi turned down her air, she cannot be off of oxygen for much longer than a minute before her oxygen drops way low...

which was the other hiccup...

I got Mom settled on the sofa by the beautiful picture window so she could soak in the sun and feel part of the outside world. Then I went downstairs to get some lunch to go so that I could bring it up and eat it in Mom's room while she ate her lunch. I was gone probably about 25-30 minutes. When I got settled down in Mom's room to eat lunch with her, she told me that she was getting really shaky and that it felt like when she was in the shower earlier that morning (insert warning bells!!)... I looked at her and realized that her face looked pretty ashen and had a blue tinge to the lips like the day in St. Mark's when I'd found her on the floor without her oxygen. She had her oxymizer on, so I followed the tubing to see if it was disconnected somewhere. Sure enough, near my feet on the floor, the extender had come off the tubing. She was not getting oxygen!! I quickly connected it. I don't know how long her oxygen had been off, and I don't know how low her oxygen got because her oxymeter wouldn't reach to where she was sitting, which is why she didn't have it on. So we had to wait until she could take some deep breaths and get her oxygen back up enough to get back to her bed. You can be certain when the nurses came in, we got all the tubing extenders taped together so that it wouldn't happen again!! I found out later that when Steph had stayed with her the night before, there were a couple of times that the extenders had come disconnected and she'd been sitting right by Mom and realized that she wasn't getting the oxygen to her nose, so she had to trace down and find out which extenders had come disconnected. All these incidents made us and Mom realize how scary it is when she doesn't wear her oxygen!! Note to self...and to all of us!! How grateful we were there to discover it in time!!!
One thing I learned (you never know unless you ask questions...)
The respiratory therapist came in to take the humidifier off the oxygen, since it was supposed to work with only dry air. I asked why she had to wear her Groucho Marx oxymizer instead of a regular cannula. She informed me that the oxymizer acts as a concentrator, like the R2D2 machine that she has at home, only it's portable and allows her to be more mobile. She said that the white puff on her cannula is a reservoir that holds and concentrates the oxygen coming from the wall, making it richer and purer for her to breathe. It makes her get twice the amount of oxygen that she would have gotten from a regular cannula. In other words, if the liters were set to 5 on the wall, she's really getting 10 liters of oxygen. DONG!! Didn't know that!! It makes it doubly important that she get the wall liters down to 2 or 3 before she can go home. We can have her take the oxymizer home with her, though, which will really help to not have to use as much oxygen out of R2D2... Just FYI...
We had some nice visits yesterday from Bruce & Jeannie, Royce & Mardette, Jeannie Erekson, the Dicksons, the LDS greeter from the hospital, Curt, and Diane. Visitors really brighten Mom's days...and mine too! She also got hospital correspondence and cards from friends and loved ones! Thank you SOO much for your love & concern!!
Mom got her fingernails painted yesterday, and Wendy was SO kind to come last night to spend the night with Mom. What a sweetheart!
Well, off to get ready so I can go back to the hospital. Have a good day! I know we will!