Nursing Home Under Investigation......(More nursing home drama)

08-21-2012 at 10:22 AM 

We received a telephone call from a nurse late one night that scared my mother half to death. Anytime the nursing home calls after hours it’s a fright. The nurse was calling to report that my grandmother had a bruise on her left upper arm and asked if we knew anything about it. We did not but the nursing home should because she is on “supportive care” and is not to be out of their sight at anytime according to the staff nurse on her wing.

We paid her a visit that afternoon to see the bruise and to make sure she was ok. The bruise was on her outer left upper arm and measured approximately 5 inches long by an inch wide. We immediately ruled out physical abuse because the bruise was not consistent with that. We guessed she either fell onto something or something fell onto her. It doesn’t take much for an elder to bruise but this was a large bruise and may have looked worse than it really was. The big issue here is that if the staff doesn’t know how it happened than what really is “supportive care”? The last time I had visited her I was told I couldn’t take her to her room because she couldn’t be alone, yet, if she wasn’t alone and out of site of the nurses on duty why don’t they know how she was injured? We my never know.

The next time I visited her was a few days later when my mother and I visited her. She was sitting in her room ALONE with the exception of an old lady who wore a helmet on her head and walked like the Hunchback of Notre Dame who occasional walked into my grandmothers room and, I’m only guessing here, into the walls.

She looked at my mother who was sitting on her bed across from where she sat in her chair. She didn’t know who my mother was. My mother asked her over and over again, “Who am I?” My grandmother answered, “I don’t know who you are. When am I going home?” Then, I walked in. “Hi Cher!”, she said as her eyes lit up. “When am I going home?” I asked her who was this woman sitting next to me and that she was my mother. My grandmother asked in the form of a question, “Bobbie?”, but was not convinced she was really Bobbie. I told her it was her daughter and my mother. She knew who her daughter was but her brain wasn’t recognizing or remembering her daughters face. As far as my grandmother was concerned she could have been one of the staff. She had my mother in tears.

I assured my mother that my grandmothers’ brain had a hiccup and would remember her at any time. And, she did. My mother kept asking her who she was and when she finally recognized her she called out her name as emphatically as she did mine, “Bob!”

It didn’t come as a surprise that she didn’t recognize my mother because this has happened before and it never lasts. But, seeing what we have seen with others’ that live in the home “we haven’t seen nothing’ yet”.