3 October 2024
Last night Joyce fell again. This time she was in bedroom and had tried to sit on the bed but slipped to the floor.
I was able to get her up using her walker (the first time we have used it, in fact) and she was able to sit on the bed. She said her shoes slipped on the hardwood floor. So we took them off and put on hospital socks with a no-slip surface. She was able to stand up and walk around normally.
That night she was able to change for bed and use the restroom without any issues.
Sounds promising but this morning she put the slippery shoes back on over the socks. So we'll see what happens.
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YESTERDAY AFTERNOON Zainad, the occupational therapist, visited. We were hoping she would show Joyce how to put on her new compression stockings. But she needs to bring two tools (one to put the sock on and the other to take it off), so we didn't get that accomplished.
Zainad has Joyce take off the hospital socks has been wearing since the compression stockings were too binding. And she has her put one of them back on and her shoes over that but it doesn't go well. Zainad promises to contact a doctor to see about wrapping her legs in Ace bandages instead.
Then she takes Joyce to the kitchen table to do some memory tests. Occupational therapy can help with memory loss too she says. And Joyce needs it She can't remember the five words (face, velvet, church, daisy and red) or subtract 7 from 100 (103, she says) or draw a clock with the time at 11:10 (ten after eleven), although she does cheat and look at the grandfather clock, which Zainad didn't notice when she asked her to draw the face of a clock.
She sets up some appointment for next week at 9 a.m. or so.
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THE TEMPERATURE, which had been above 90 the last two days, dipped into the 80s today.
During the course of the day, I had to reschedule appointments for Joyce with a social worker, physical therapist and head-and-neck doctor. I should set up a form on my Web site so they can do all the work themselves.
Joyce liked Tessa the physical therapist.
She came this morning to do an assessment but she also got a few balls rolling. One was to see if Joyce's Supplemental Medicare through Kaiser provided transport to appointments. Nope. So she applied to San Franciso Muni's Paratransit program which sends a van around for the patient and caregiver. That, however, takes anywhere from three weeks to 45 days.
And Joyce has an appointment with Dr. Tong on Tuesday. Her head-and-neck appointment for that afternoon was canceled but we still have to see Dr. Tong for a debridement and the bus might be too much for Joyce.
The other thing she did was give me some information about CareNav, a network of support services for caregivers that ranges from providing a short break to nursing home placement.
Recovery from my concussion is clearly going to take a while. So it's nice to have another resource besides friends (one of whom kindly took me grocery shopping yesterday so I didn't have to walk over there two miles in the heat).