What a week- or two!

My poor Mom has been through it lately. She had knee replacement surgery on the 4th- Tuesday. She was doing great with her therapy and was doing more than they said they expected at this point. She came home on Friday afternoon. On Saturday morning I took her breakfast and found her severely dehydrated. I took her to the ER and they had problems getting her veins to take the needle, then when they finally on the 4th try got a vein they blew whey they tried to take blood to run tests. It was awful. We got there at 10am and they finally admitted her at 6pm. They assigned her a hospital Dr. he was supposed to be good. I asked him to test her for a bacterial infection and he said he would- that was Saturday night. He admitted her and they put her in a room. On Monday she still didn't know what type of infection she had and he told her he would run a test- he forgot to order it, again. Tuesday evening he discharged her, no antibiotics yet, and none going home with her. Actually, he didn't discharge her, he sent his "helper" to do it for him and she told Mom to call if she needed anything but we noticed when she got home that they didn't give her a card or anything with their office info or number- handy huh?! Maybe they knew we wouldn't dare call them. The other details that I left out would blow your mind so I won't even bother with them- seriously, it was that bad!

On Wed. morning, you guessed it she was back in the same shape. I didn't want to take her back for more of the same so I called our family Dr. who is awesome. They got us in right away and he got her started on some strong antibiotics and ran the tests we had been requesting since Saturday (this is Wed. morning). She was unfortunately too far gone before the antibiotics kicked in and by Wed. afternoon she was weaker and weaker and we had to go back to the ER.

She now has a new doctor at the hospital, an iv, antibiotics, she's getting therapy on her knee for the first time since last Friday when she was discharged from the hospital! It is frustrating that she shouldn't be going through all of this in the first place since she probably got the infection while she was there, she wasted 4 days of getting quality care and getting better plus running up a big hospital bill only to end up in the same shape again, but finally she seems on the road to recovery.

I'm thankful that she finally has a doctor that is concerned about her at this point, she's getting the care she deserves and the knee therapy she needs. We thought she would be coming home tomorrow afteroon sometime (Saturday) but she had more trouble with her stomach this afternoon so we'll see how things go. We don't want to rush her getting home until we know she is really over this infection.

Thanks to everyone for all the thoughts and prayers. Sorry if I haven't called and emailed as often as I'd like to keep everyone up to date on how things are going, but I've been running back and forth to the hospital, taking care of the boys, plus our cat, Mom's cat and her two crazy dogs that we adopted last month- actually just one of them is crazy but she's crazy enough to make up for how calm the other one is! lol!

Marla