8 June 2025
It was nearly one in the morning Sunday when the phone rang. I ignored it. It rang again. It was Joyce. She wanted to know "how to get everything closed out now."
I had no idea what she was talking about. And she wearied of trying to figure it out herself. I reminded her I'd be there at lunch time.
But I could hear some background noise. It seems her roommate had been returned from the hospital where she'd been for a week. She wasn't asleep either.
Before I fell back asleep I wondered if Joyce had been moved. Or if her charger had been unplugged. What could she have been worried about?
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WHEN I GOT THERE I saw that her roommate had indeed returned but was bedridden now. And moaning. And on oxygen with a more permanent plug-in portable unit rather than a temporary tank.
Which meant Joyce's charger had been moved. I traced the extension cord it is connected to from the bed to a power strip that had been plugged into the wall outlet Joyce had previously relied on. My mother's oxygen units (she had two) required the same arrangement.
So her phone was charged and everything in order after all.
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BUT WHEN I tried to get her up she started slipping from the bed. I told her to lie down on the mattress and wiggle her way back onto it so she wouldn't slip to the floor.
But she wasn't using her legs. I've noticed this occasionally before but with the left leg. When she stands, the left leg just slides forward and she puts no weight on it. I tell her to shift her weight onto her feet but she tries to lean back, shifting the weight off her feet. And trying to sit on air.
She did finish dressing on the side of the bed, but it was a struggle. She kept leaning back instead of forward to get her skirt over her head and her belt on. And when it came time to stand up, she kept sitting down, screaming.
It took Sheik the CNA and me to get her to stand up. And not on her own but with the walker. It's the first time she's needed the walker in weeks.
She was in bed all day yesterday. And obviously didn't sleep well. But that's not long enough to get rusty.
She did make it down the hall with the walker to the wheelchair I'd put by the fish tank. She took very small steps, though. And then fell into the wheelchair instead of sitting down into it. She's been doing that too.
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BY THEN it was lunch time. I'd brought her some Trader Joe's yogurt that I know she likes and she did eat almost all of it. Her spirits picked up too.
She had a few bites of fish, some strawberry ice cream, her prune juice and a Boost (but not the high protein one which they still haven't restocked).
She brushed her teeth and then I rolled her to the side of the bed to watch TV before I went home to finish the laundry I'd left drying.
Disturbing day, though. I'm hoping she recovers tomorrow when Neil and Daisy take her for a walk. Last week she walked all around the facility for the first time. I can't imagine she'll do that tomorrow.
But we'll see.