Aunt Betty

My great Aunt Betty is in the ICU. My parents and I went and saw her today. She had a seizure a couple of weeks ago and then the other day Aunt Cindy (one of her daughters) went by in the morning to check on her and helped her to her chair. Cindy went to work then and stopped back by later that night, Aunt Betty hadn't moved for 9 hours. She was confused and disoriented. One of her medications is lasix, Cindy was sure she had been incontinent and she hadn't. Cindy called Aunt Terry and took Betty to the hospital and one of the first things the nurse did is test her O2 sat and it was 42%. They rushed her back to emergency then.

She is alert and oriented mostly when she is awake. She's having trouble staying awake though. She has said some things that are off the wall. When her food tray was late the other day she berated Terry for bringing her to that restaurant. She is still able to eat solid food. She doesn't have the strength during the day to lift a spoon. During the night though she sundowns. She then has the strength of a line backer and is trying to climb out of bed even though she can't walk. Aunt Terry stayed with her the other night and said that Betty went off on the staff about how worthless her kids are.

Aunt Terry has a friend that's a neurologist, he says there was some underlying problem that wasn't being treated for her to have full blown seizures while on Tegretol. Aunt Terry is ready for her to go, she asked the docs if there was going to be a happy ending here and they told her no. They now have gone to stages to "make her comfortable." I don't think Aunt Cindy is prepared for the loss of her mother.

I feel so bad for them. It's hard to watch it happen to people you love. I'm thankful for my mothers sake that when my Grandparents went, they went quick. We knew they were going to go and they didn't hang around to make you think they could get better.