My Sweet Mother-in-law

The Sunday after Thanksgiving Mom went with Gene and Dot to visit their daughter Holly in her home. She has a sunken living room. For sometime now Mom has held on to someone as she walks. Gene said this time she went ahead of him and Dot as they were greeted at the door by the grandchildren (6, I think, maybe just 5) and the dog. Anyway, she didn’t know about the two steps leading down to the living room and didn’t see them either. She fell. She learned a day later that she broke her fibula and chipped her tibia. In other words she broke her leg just above the ankle. She hobbled around on it at Gene’s until Tuesday and then he took her up to Stan and Kathy’s in Roy. There everything is on one level. (Gene’s house is split level.) Stan took her to the doctor (Gene had taken her to the family emergency center but Stan took her to an orthopedist.) He told her he wanted in a wheelchair or on the bed. No weight on her leg at all until he saw her again in four weeks. He also gave her a black boot to wear to stabilize her leg/ankle. That would be after Christmas. Stan & Kathy changed their schedule around (mostly Kathy) so they could have her there and take care of her. We stopped and saw her on the 27th of December. She looked pretty good. Of course she just sat there. I knew that her muscles would atrophy; it doesn’t take very long for that to start in. After four weeks she was able to be up on it and use a walker. She said it was good to be able to be up and around. However, she still wasn’t able to be very active. After another four weeks she went to the doctor again and he told her he wanted her to have a couple of weeks of physical therapy three times a week. That she did. She got to take her black boot off that day. Kathy took her to Wal-Mart (on her request) and she told me that she asked her a number of times if she needed a wheel chair. Mom kept saying, “No, I’ll be all right just using the cart.” Well, she all but collapsed. (This had happened a number of times when she went to Wal-Mart or Fred Myers or some other big store when she was with Paul in Pocatello. I had suspected that her heart might be doing funny things when she exerted.) Anyway, someone called 911 and the paramedics came. Besides checking her over, they did an EKG and it showed that she was having PVC’s (I suspect maybe even short bursts of V-tach—that’s three or four PVC’s together). Since PVC’s don’t profuse blood, it is just has if her heart quite beating during those times. I wasn’t surprised to learn this. They offered to transport her to the hospital and have her checked out but she refused. The next day, Stan’s son Jim who is an EMT came by with a friend who is a paramedic and took and EKG again and her rhythm was normal. So it just happens when she exerts or does more than she is used to. She says she has lived a good life and she doesn’t want to run a lot of tests and spend a lot of money when they probably wouldn’t be able to do that much for her anyway.

She came home Friday, February 9th. We have all been concerned about her going home. She complained of being so lonely and not even speaking out loud until Karl called her in the evening to talk. My tho’t was that she would be super lonely now because she has had children, grand-children and great-grandchildren around her since the end of November. And Kathy has taken care of her needs. She had to do no cooking or cleaning or laundry or anything for 2 ½ months. And she would have been getting weaker too since she wasn’t able to do much. We expected her to call us around 5:00 or 6:00 that evening. By 9:30 we still hadn’t heard from her so we called her. She could only talk to us for about five minutes. She sounded so exhausted. She said she was exhausted too. She said they had gotten to Grace about 4:00pm and stopped at the bank and post office. Stan spent the night there and Paul & ElDene had just left. She said she would call us tomorrow. She said that Stan would stay until she found out that she could shower OK without difficulty. Stan & Kathy had a shower chair that she used down there. Altho’ she does have a bar on the wall to help her in and out, she doesn’t have a shower chair (It isn’t hard to get one.) And she wondered how she would navigate the shower. She called us about 8:00 Saturday night. She said Stan stayed until about 5:00 pm. We had talked to Paul earlier and he had told us what her plans were. But we let her tell us anyway. Evidently she and Stan & Kathy had talked about what her options were while she was still down there. She told us she was going to sell the rest of the farm and the house and move down to Clinton, about two miles from Stan, into an extended living center. Stan had a copy of the floor plan and knew about how big it would be. There she could have an apartment to herself with a washer and dryer, a kitchenette and a bedroom and living room. There she would be able to be independent if she wished and felt like it and could have others close by who could look in on her and keep track of her. There would be meals provided if she didn’t feel like cooking. And it’s about $500 a month less than the one in Soda Springs would be. Down in Clinton, there would be her sons, Stan, Gene (who lives in Sandy), and Kent (who lives in SLC) close by and her daughter, Jewel too. She also has a number of grandchildren who live in that area also. All of Stan’s children and most of Gene’s and Jewel’s live in the area too. We could stop by when we go down to see Michael and Kim and their families and my mother as well. And it wouldn’t be too far for Paul to drive down occasionally either. We were much relieved to hear her plans. I am so thankful that she realizes how frail she is and how far from help she would be if she should fall or have some other trouble. When I asked Paul how she looked, he said that she had aged at least five years in those 2 ½ months. I think she will be able to be happy there. Many of her friends have either died or gone elsewhere to live close to their children so she wouldn’t be actually leaving anything behind except the house and its responsibilities. She will be close to the Ogden temple and most if not all those extended care facilities have transportation to take people where they need to go. Like I said we are very relieved that she came to this decision. Before when we’ve tried to talk to her about what she might do she has always said, “I don’t want to talk about that right now.” I’m glad that she has at least been thinking about it.