Well no posts on my blogs so thats good this is very private. Its been 4 months since I wrote anything. The next night I stayed at my mothers and she was in a lot of pain. She had really bad pain in her left hip and was writhing around on her bed. I gave her a pain killer and thought I'd have to take her to hospital in the morning but by 12.30am I called the ambulance. Its so weird to call an emergency number. I was really shattered to ring. It seemed like ages till they came through it wasnt but listening to your mother in pain like that is awful. When they came she was settled and they were going to just reassure I think but the the pain came back and they changed their view and loaded her into the ambulance and put in a canula and gave her morphine. I went home and told them what was happening eldest daughter offered to come up to Cas with me.
It was a friday night and looked a bit of a disaster area but things just got worse and worse. We sat beside her in Cas till about 5am but she wasnt assessed through she was fairly comfortable or at least only semi conscious with a little breakthru pain from the muscle spasms (thats what it looked like). By 5 we were exhaused and nothing was happening so we went home. I came back around ten or eleven and she'd been seen, I think around 8-9 am only 7-8 hrs after arriving.
They were thinking that she'd fractured her hip in one of the falls she'd had in the previous weeks so they had put in a catheter in her bladder and were taking her round to xray and scanning. Time gets a bit weird now I dont remember the sequence of things very well but I must have gone home for a while then and come back after the tests. They said they had no beds and things were obviously getting worse and worse in the place trolleys were lining the corridors and there were patients everywhere.
They wanted to move her to a bed at one of the private hospitals but it was quite a long way away and I wasnt happy with that, I wanted her to go to the closer private hosp but they didnt have any beds. The discharge planner had seen her and started assessing her which was ok kind of but this seemed to be before she was diagnosed and we were never really told all the procedulal shit till a lot later. At some time in the afternoon they sent over a doctor in nappies to inform me that she didnt have a broken hip and they diagnosed that she had back pain and they didnt admit people with backpain so she could go home. I looked at her 85years old out of it on pain killers but still having bad break through pain. They had given her no drugs to treat the pain other than morphine. I said to him well thats not really the issue I cant take her home in that state he looked at her and wandered off. Next the nurse in charge came to get rid of us. I got the pat on the arm and the condescending bullshit. The specialist that weekend had refused to look after her he was snowed under and the wonder boys had diagnosed backache so He wasnt interested in looking after that. She got the message I wasnt taking her home in that state and did a deal to keep her overnight and get the pain sorted. Off I went home
Come back sunday morning nothing much changed still on morphine still having break thru pain, nothing tried like valium to stop the spasms. I sat for two hours in front of the desk but no one came near me. she was crying and very upset in between sleeping. In the end I rang the friend that was visiting from melbourne and arranged to meet her at the beach. We had coffee and I told her what was going on. I went home and the hospital had been ringing where was I big panic she had failed the walking test big surprise and they werent allowed to send her home like that. We went back to the hospital and they had sent her to the private hospital. i said dont you normally tell relations when you move people oh she just left and they were just calling you more bullshit she left at least an hour before. Well that was the start of a four month nightmare of well meaning stuff ups and her decline in mental and physical health and our education into the world of caring for the aged.