Crap!

Mom is still in hospital. She is in the rehab unit, but not doing much rehab. We had a peg tube put in on Wednesday because she was not getting her meds down and it is absolutely essential that she get her blood thinner (Predaxa) down. She also was swallowing very little. She can swallow, but after a few times swallowing, she just forgets how and it just sits in her mouth until we get her to spit it out. It is very frustrating. Speech therapist has never seen a swallowing issue like this. Now they are weaning her off the IV nutrition while using the peg tube, but not allowing her to swallow anything. We didn't know it would be this way or we might not have agreed to it. She has a living will which specifies no heroic efforts. Doc assures us this is not heroic, but we want her to be able to keep working on swallowing food. They assured us that she could eat by mouth some and get her meds through the tube. So far, this has not happened and it is Christmas now and the staff is limited. The only thing she has to look forward to is eating...now we have taken that from her. She did some therapy yesterday, but was asleep when I got there after my root canal. I couldn't even make her wake up enough to tell me good night. She got gout in her good foot, which made her not be able to stand up. They gave her a steroid shot which helped that, but also sent her blood sugar through the roof. We are all frustrated.