May 17-23
I arrived in Virginia late Sunday night. Monday morning, I got up and got my bearings, so to speak. Talked to a couple people--Angela, Debbie's occupational therapist, Lois, the nurse practitioner at UVA, and my other sister, Michelle, and brother, Allan. In the afternoon, I went to the nursing home. While this place is a lot better than the first place she was sent, my initial impression was not especially positive. I stood at the front desk, trying to find out Debbie's location for about 10 minutes without so much as an acknowledgement, while the receptionist sat on the phone on what was obviously a personal phone call. I saw some other personnel walk by in the hallway, so I asked them, and one woman walked me down to her room. She was laying in bed, but looked a whole lot better than the last time I saw her at the UVA University Hospital in Charlottesville.
In the course of the week, I met several of the staff there. Cindy (physical therapist), Brenda (nurse), and Mike (social worker) were of great help. While Cindy worked at Debbie's speed, I think the occupational therapist, Angela, doesn't know how to work outside the proverbial box. There's a specific plan this health system uses, and she sticks to it no matter what the patient's condition. Debbie gets really frustrated in dealing with her. Overall, it's not too bad, but it is indeed true of any nursing home type place--the more of a presence family have, the more attention a patient gets. Unlike the first place she was at (Highland Ridge Rehab), there were a lot more patients there who were more coherent. Well...most, but not all. There was one lady who "strolled" around in her wheelchair. One day, she came to the door and asked for someone, another day, she simply wheeled herself in, not acknowledging either Debbie or myself, and rolled up to the empty bed in the room. She first started wiping some invisible stuff off of her hands, then when we asked if we could help her, she informed us that this was where Martha Jane stays when she was there, but would be staying with this woman once she went home....
It's hard to say where Debbie stands at this point. While she looks good, and sounds pretty good most of the time, she still gets confused in some ways. She's easily tired, and on Wednesday, I felt like we were going round and round. She kept trying to eat sugar to get a burst of energy, and was not comprehending that the fatigue was from her extremely low blood counts. Just the simple statement of "You are tired because your blood count is low." was incomprehensible to her. The next day, I found a better way of explaining it--started by talking about the white blood cells and red blood cells, then explained that there are not many of either in her blood. She understood that.
Michelle came out over the weekend, and we took Max, her Springer spaniel, to see her, too. There was one point when he jumped up on her and licked her entire face that she just started laughing. This was the first time all week that I saw that.
I talked to my brother today. Debbie's stay at the rehab place falls under managed care, so each week, reports are submitted on her progress. Every week we pray (and you can too) that she doesn't start hitting a plateau. Once she does, insurance will no longer pay for her physical and occupational therapy. He talked to the Lois up at UVA, too. Her blood counts are improving. Once she leaves the rehab place, she will be going to Illinois to stay with my brother for awhile. Before she leaves Virginia, she will have to go up to UVA to sort of have a "sign-off" from her neuro-oncologist up there and is having an MRI to check to see how the tumor is behaving at the moment. If I can, I am going to take off to take her to that appointment. Lois wants one of us to be there for that. I really want to be there since I tend to be the one who "gets it" in terms of the medical information.
