My grandmother Dorothy is a feisty and spry woman. She is in her early 80s, and has survived a lot of stuff in her life - in the mid-1950s she took 4 young children aged 12,10,8 and 6, and left Texas and an abusive alcoholic husband to move to California. She later re-married and had 2 more children. (Her first husband eventually made it into AA and turned his life around, BTW). Grandmamma survived breast cancer when she was 42. She watched her oldest son die of Hodgkins disease when he was 25. She was there when her youngest daughter died of metastatic breast cancer at age 45. She also lost her another son a year later to complications of diabetes. Besides surviving breast cancer, she also survived an operation for a meningioma (benign brain tumour) a couple of years ago.
Two weeks ago, she was taken to the hospital for increasing episodes of fainting and memory lapse, and it was determined that she was suffering from inadequate blood flow to the brain because her heart was not beating regularly. A temporary pacemaker did her a world of good, so the plan was made to put in a permanent one. This has become a fairly routine heart operation, but in her case it was anything but.
Due to anomalous circulation, the catheter that was to have been threaded up to the heart perforated and Grandmamma ended up with bleeding into her lungs. They were able to get that under control, eventually, and to put in the pace maker, but her recovery has been problematic. A recent attempt to place a PICC line (kind of like an IV that can stay in longer) was also not well managed, despite the docs having been given the heads up that Grandmamma's blood vessels never read the anatomy textbook. So she is still in ICU where she has been for nearly 2 weeks. The other thing is that she is very sensitive to drugs of all kinds, and despite the family's request to start with the low dose and titrate up, she had several times been given doses of sedative and pain medication that has knocked her out for 12 hours or more.
My mom and my aunt (both in their 60s) have been alternating 24 hours at the hospital to try to prevent any more screwups. They are both getting tired as well.
Please pray as God leads you - my aunt and grandmother are both mormon, my mom is a Christmas and Easter Anglican, and I would ask for prayers not just for their bodily well-being but also for their souls. Oh, and prayers for our mixed up health care chaos would not be out of order. I know that the nurses and docs are probably doing their best, but I also know that the pressures to continually do more with less have a real and negative impact on the quality of care, especially of the elderly.
