Long road for two weeks

First and foremost, Merry Christmas to all.

I'll start from where I left off in my last post. My mom was admitted to the hospital on the 13th, where they treated her for her bladder infection and watched her calcium levels go down (but not enough in my opinion). On Thursday of that week, she was transferred to a nursing home for physical therapy to start walking and regaining her strength.

I went to visit her on that Friday. She was aware of where she was and not happy about it. She was not walking but would get up and walk some. She was feeding herself and asking to smoke and leave. She wasn't where I had hoped but seemed to be getting some better.

I had to go back to work so I didn't see her until Wednesday. My sister had spent several days with her and kept saying she wasn't getting any better. She took mom to the dr on Monday and they had scheduled a CatScan for Wednesday.

On Wednesday, I went back to see her. She was so much worse. I spent the day crying--I tried to not cry in front of her but the tears kept coming. She couldn't talk, walk or feed herself. She was confused but seemed to know what was going on. I had stopped at her dr's office to ask him to see her but he was out of the office. They scheduled an appt for Thursday.

My heart was so broken. Everyone in the family was so very worried and there were more tears shed than has been cried by our family in the past ten years. I stayed at my parents house on Wednesday night. Cowboy was coming down of Friday for our Christmas celebration.

Thursday morning, when I arrived at the nursing home, mom couldn't even sit up straight in her wheel chair. She was so out of it. More tears for me. I took her to the dr and he took one look at her and sent her to the ER. Thank God. Once she was at the ER, the doctor there took time to look at her records and did a few blood test and sent her on to KU Med center. Again, thank God.

Her calcium levels were up another point--normal is 10. She was at 13.8, up from 12.8 when she was first hospitalized a week before. I left to pack my things and head back home. Cowboy and I met mom at the hospital. Within one hour, they had done more test on her then had been done in the previous two weeks.

She has now been in the hospital for 4 days and is finally to talk and is starting to eat on her own. She is scared and wants to go home but seems to be doing so much better then what she was.

They are thinking that there is a tumor on her parathyroid gland that is causing it to overproduce calcium and making her calcium level to elevate to the point of toxic levels.

This has been the scariest event. I'm thankful that mom is on the mend. It has been the best Christmas present ever. I realized how much my mom means to me and my family. She is a rock for our whole family. I'm praying for a full recovery.