My mom got sick and was admitted to the hospital with sepsis and neuropathy in her legs and hands. The hospital said they were transferring her to rehab for the neuropathy after she recovered from the sepsis and pneumonia (that she ended up catching in the hospital). The "rehab facility" ended up being a run down, dirty, poorly run nursing home that no one agreed to. The unhelpful patient coordinators at the hospital made that decision, even though mom's mental state was fully alert. My sister and I signed her out and 2 days later readmitted to the hospital to be discharged to home care versus that nursing home. Mom did not have a primary care doctor, so we brought a home care coordinator on board to get therapy to come to the house. Most of the places either wouldn't take my dad's work insurance and mom didn't have Medicare, or the coordinator wasn't doing her job. Pretty sure she stopped trying and stopped caring. I, with online and phone calls help, ended up getting home care started. Only for the first day the home care nurse started, she and the coordinator felt she wasn't alert and responding properly and called the ambulance. Mom was not happy about going back to the hospital, and was pissed at me about it. She was admitted with hypercapnia and put in the ICU on a BiPap overnight. She was slowly getting better and we were waiting for a step down room to open to get her back home. A room finally opened up, only for her to contract pneumonia for the second time in the hospital. This time, it was a nastier, more drug resistant strain. She ended up back in the ICU hooked up to a ventilator. It was too much for her body to handle. We, me in particular, are left with so many questions and what-ifs, and wondering if anything could/should have been done differently. I know this was a long post. Unsure of what my question is or if I was just looking to vent. I'm grateful for and was blessed with an extremely close relationship with her. Regretting maybe taking that for granted at times.
You are doing a great job of advocating for your Mother. Including sending her back to hospital when needed to, despite her wishes against (& possible lack of insight).
That's what is in your power to do: Advocacy. Many issues, including recovery, are not.
1. Pneumonia. Patients that are unwell & laying in bed a lot get pneumonia. It's not the viral type they carch from others (eg walking pneumonia). It is due to their own body. From taking shallow breaths. The lungs don't inflate fully & get soggy & mucky (for want of better words). Then the bad bugs grow.
2. The rehab. It is very unfortunate this rehab was not of the standard you expected or needed. While your Mother may have not chosen to go there, & patients do have rights, a patient cannot choose to stay indefinately in a hospital. To stay in acute care beacuse they prefer it there. I come accross this in my work every week. But I like the staff here.. I like the food.. I think I'll stay for a while.. Hospital is not a hotel. Those that are medically stable move on.
There can be of course be a big differences in what a Doctor deems 'medically stable' & what family deem as 'recovered'. Many times family want a LO to stay in a hospital or rehab until they have recovered 100%. Sadly, many people just cannot return to their previous fuction level due to illness, disease, accident. Or just the natural aging process.
This, now, is still the crises stage for your family. So it will bring much emotion & test your probelm solving skills. Not everything goes to plan. We are all human. Sometimes there are regrets & moments of 'what if I had done it differently'.
Just carry on.
Do your best.
This too will pass.
I'm sorry. As you probably know, it can be very hard to recover from Sepsis ( some people never really do), having that and pneumonia as well, it's understandable it was too much for her body to handle.
Your sister and you have done the best you could. Mom knows that!! 🙏🏾🙏🏾
You don’t say if Mom has history of lung problems , COPD, or CHF .
However it sounds like she has some condition making her susceptible to pneumonia . This is common in the elderly and your Mom is compromised . Mom had sepsis and that has left her weak as well .
Sounds as if Mom is declining in general .
Sorry .
And you are trying to put out one fire, and another fire is starting
.I don't think taking your mom out of the first rehab made anything worse, or probably nothing better.
I had a lot of would of could offs when my dad died.
Would he of gotten better in the hospital, if we weren't band from the hospital because of covid. We could of been there to talk him into one more test.
Bottom line, looking back, he was just plan done with needles, with doctors, with being poked at. He was just tired of it all.
I'm so sorry 😞 🙏