The last week and a half has been a complete whirlwind. It has only been by the Grace of God and the amazing love and support of our friends and family that we have gotten through everything.
As most of you know, we lost our grandpa- dad- father- in-law..etc..in a horrible farming accident last August. You can read about that here. A good 6 months, maybe longer, before my Grandpa passed away we started noticing that my Grandma was not acting her normal self. When they would come visit she would just sit on the couch and not really visit or engage in conversation, she would just sit and stare off into space. Mom also noticed that she wasn't calling as often as she normally did. Both Mom and Grandpa were really worried about her and wanted to get her into a DR but didn't know who to go with or where to start. They were also having issues getting Grandma talked into it, as she had informed them she DID NOT need to see a Dr. A couple months before Grandpa passed away, we all really started noticing a change in Grandma, she had really became distant and didn't really have much to do with any of us, very unlike her. She had also informed us she was going to quite her job at the post office. We were all shocked, as she had worked at this job for about 10 years and had loved every minute of it. We just figured she was tired of it and wanted a break but we still found it rather odd. Her last day was on a Friday and my Grandpa was killed the following Monday night.
Why we were in Colorado dealing with everything following Grandpa's death we realized just how bad Grandma had gotten. It was a shock for all of us. Mom was also pulled aside at the funeral by several friends who were around her daily. They told mom she needed to get Grandma into a Dr ASAP, that something was bad wrong. A good friend of her's that she worked with, that worked at another post office in a near by town told mom that in the past several months grandma had been calling her for help daily on how to do stuff she had done for years no problem. Not only was she calling for help on how to do stuff, she would forget in the middle of the conversation why they were on the phone and what they were doing. Joyce was really worried and so were we. Mom took her to her Dr in La Junta, Colorado. The Dr diagnosed her with severe depression. We didn't feel that was the problem, or all the problem anyway. But we decided to give the depression medicine a try. She continued to get worse, not better. She went to live with my Uncle Dewayne and Aunt Debbie end of September-first part of October and stayed with them till December. They got her into a Dr there in New Mexico.She could tell something else was wrong but didn't know what. They tried a different depression medicine and her thought was maybe a stroke as well because her left side was getting weaker and weaker. She wanted to do a cat scan/ MRI to see if we could figure out what was wrong. Grandma refused to do either one. We also thought maybe it was altimers or a type of it because she was getting really forgetful and couldn't finish her sentences or remember what she wanted to say half the time This had been going on for a good 6 to 7 months, possibly longer, and getting progressively worse with time. But Grandma was tying our hands behind our backs by refusing to a cat scan/ and or MIR.
She came to live with us again end of December- first part of January and we noticed a huge decline in her in just that short amount of time. She was getting to where she wouldn't talk at all, wouldn't really do anything but sit on the couch and watch TV all day long, something she never used to do. When we would talk to her or try to get her to engage in conversation, she would just stare at you with a blank, very confused stare. By the middle of February she had gotten to where she couldn't walk very well on her own. We got her a walker. Within a week or two after that she got where she couldn't support her own weight at all so we went to a wheelchair. We knew something was badly wrong and we wanted to get her into a Neurologist ASAP. We had one scheduled but had to cancel due to bad weather. We had another one scheduled for the first of March. At this point she couldn't do anything on her own anymore. It was full time care for mom. She couldn't walk- talk- feed her self- go to the bathroom- dress her self and she was barely feeding her self. We were hoping and praying we were going to finally be getting some answers as to what was going on.
Her Neurologist appointment was in Wichita, which is about a 4 hour drive from Garden. We went as far as Stafford the night before and stayed with our good friends Richard and Cheryl. It was good to see them and catch up a little bit. We woke up bright and early the next morning and drove the rest of the way to Wichita, which is about an hour and a half drive. We found the place no problem and made it to her appointment a few minutes early. We didn't have a very long wait and they took her back pretty quickly. They were in and out in just under 30 minutes- which I thought was rather quick. I could tell Mom wasn't pleased when they came out but could tell she didn't want to talk about it in front of Grandma. When we got home late that night, mom informed me that the neurologist took one quick look and automatically diagnosed it as severe depression. He told mom we needed to double up on the depression medicine and that would take care of all her problems. We weren't convinced in anyway that, that was the problem. We felt there was something else going on and were kinda upset he didn't run any sort of tests to rule anything else out. Mom decided to go ahead and give the double up her depression medicine a shot and see what happens. Within a couple days she had gotten much much worse, not better. Mom and I became very worried and everybody from here that was around her, knew something was bad wrong and it was NOT depression. She was getting weaker and declining by the week. Mom took her off the depression medicine and we noticed a little change. She was more alert and with it. she also got a little stronger, but still couldn't really walk. We gave it a good 3 weeks to make sure it was all out of her system. As a result she became a little depressed again. But we thought that it might help to not be drugged up. She was doing more grieving, which was good, as she had not done much of that since Grandpa's death because of putting her on depression medicine right away. We thought if it was really just severe depression and maybe a little mental ( as we had been told several weeks before) then maybe just making her talk about grandpa and face this death head one, would help her snap out of it and help clear her head. Mom made her talk about what was going through her mind and got her to have several good cry's. We noticed that after she would have a good cry,she would snap out of it a little bit and be more alert and with it, as to what was going on around her. Mom decided to give this several weeks and see if we didn't notice a huge improvement. At this point she had become so weak and unsteady that we were afraid to leave her at all. The most we ever left her for was an hour or two tops. We really wanted to do a cat scan/ MRI and not give Grandma an option. She was getting one and that was finale. We needed to know what was going on! We were tired of being tossed from Dr to Dr and being told it was just severe depression. We weren't saying that wasn't it at all... we figured she was a little depressed. Who wouldn't be after just loosing your Husband of almost 50 years. But we knew there was something else going on beside that. Mom talked to a lady at Church who's husband had gone through the same thing. They had been tossed from Dr to Dr, neurologist to neurologist who said the same thing- its depression. They knew it was NOT depression either and finally found a really good neurologist out of Denver but came to Salina once a month. He actually listened to them and actually ran some test to try to figure out what was going on. She said it was such a relief to know they weren't crazy and that something really was wrong. As this is how we were beginning to feel. We felt like we were the only ones noticing something major wrong and was beginning to question our sanity...
Mom called this neurologist and we had an appointment scheduled for May 11th. We didn't want to wait this long but we didn't know what else to do so we put it in Gods hands. Her Dr in New Mexico had her put on the high priority list, as she felt it was getting to be a life threatening thing when she heard how fast she was declining. We prayed that they would have a cancellation and we would be able to get her in much sooner then that. However, God had another plan in store for us....
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment