I have had a couple of busy weeks so I have not really had many opportunities to update my journal here. Hopefully, things are settling out a little and that will let me fall back into my normal rhythms. As I mentioned in an earlier entry my mother had a nice little health scare over the last two weeks.
My mother is 72 years old. She was born on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, in Pine Ridge, South Dakota. She is Ogalala Lakota. She went to Holy Rosary in Pine Ridge and St. Francis Indian School in St. Francis (on the Rosebud). She graduated from Sinte Gleska in Rosebud and went on to a long career as a teacher at a variety of schools, finishing her career at Todd County Middle School in Mission, SD. She retired about seven years ago now. Her health has been mostly good, other than scattered incidents. She does have a chronic back ailment that has worsened in the last couple of years.
She appears to have had an acute case of pancreatitis, for which she is currently hospitalized. Last Tuesday she was taken to the emergency room at the IHS (Indian Health Services) hospital in Rosebud, and then after some discussion with her primary care physician transferred to Winner Regional in Winner, South Dakota, where is currently a patient. Since her hospitalization they have been running a battery of tests. The acute pancreatitis is the principle reason she was hospitalized, but she also experienced being badly disoriented - to the point where she has no memory of the first two or three days in the hospital.
Because she is on strong pain medication for her chronic back problem (oxycontin and oxycodone) the doctor suspects that the combined effects of the pain killers kept her from noticing the symptoms of the pancreatitis until it was acute. They have done CT and MRI scans and have ruled out a stroke, so the principle suspect right now in the disorientation is a medication interaction, though acute pancreatitis can also cause neurological symptoms such as disorientation, fatigue, and lethargy.
Mostly I had been talking with my sister (who lives close to my parents) and my step-dad. I've also had other conversations with other siblings and relatives, usually just of the concerned relative or friend nature. Mostly we've been in a wait and see mode. I spoke with my mother over the weekend and she was definitely disoriented.
However, on the good side, she called me last night with her new cell phone. For years she and my step dad have shared a cell phone (since they are usually together anyway when they leave the ranch), but she sent him out to buy her a cell phone since she is laid up in the hospital. She was lucid, alert, and very much in the moment.
We talked for a while about her illness and about the immediate concerns - her doctor is keeping her in the hospital in a "swing bed", a term I had never heard before. It means "When a patient reaches the point in recovery where acute care hospitalization is no longer necessary, but they are physically unable to go home".
My mother started physical therapy the other day as she has an unusual symptom (pain in the balls of her feet) and is having difficulty getting around. Because she lives with my step-dad the concern is that unless she is mobile, if she were to fall, he would not be able to lift her (due to his own health care issues). Depending on how that all works out we will continue the ongoing discussions about potential impacts and long term care.
I will be flying back to South Dakota for Thanksgiving anyway (leaving on the 20th and coming back to California on the 30th), so I am looking forward to some good discussions with my folks and my sister while I am there, just running over the various options and preferences. My folks live on the ranch, about eight miles off the nearest paved road, in rural South Dakota. They have talked about moving into one of the nearby towns a couple of times over the last few years, so it may be time to renew that discussion. We have plenty of options. They have good insurance, as well as medicare and IHS (being enrolled tribal members residing on the reservation).
IHS is iffy when it comes to health care, but it is health care, and what IHS cannot resolve can be covered with their own insurance and medicare/medicaid. Additionally, financial concerns are, thankfully, not a major part of the picture. If the best decision is for in-home care of some sort, then that is the route we'll take. My hope of course is that it is just an incident related to the acute pancreatitis, but I am also aware of comfortable with the course of aging. Naturally, I hope my mother pulls through cleanly and is around for another 20 years to periodically slap me on the head and keep me in line. Time will tell, like it always does.
Other than that, things have actually been going well for me. We are sliding into winter here in this part of California and I really enjoyed that storm we went through. At the start of the California winter I often say "I love the rain", LOL, but I know from experience that if you ask me that question come spring, my primary thought is "I hope this dang rain stops".
On the creative side, I have been working on a short story that turned into an interlocking set of short stories. It swirled around inside of me for a while and in the last day or two the lead character found her voice to tell her tale, so I am looking forward to finishing writing that up and I will post it here for you all to read. I have been thinking about opening another journal on blogspot in order to highlight just my creative writing - my poetry and my short fiction. I have been interspersing it here in this journal, but I was looking through it the other day and there is more than enough to put into its own journal (and I happened to discover another journal or two in blogspot that had taken exactly that approach). It will allow more of a showcase approach to my creative writing.
My thanks to everyone who sent kind words and best wishes and expressed concern about my mother - you have my grateful appreciation as your always do my friends.
