When we arrived we were met by our patient's daughter, who turned out to be no help at all. She directed us to the bedroom where our patient was on the floor between the bed and the dresser. She had grabbed some pillows and propped herself up a bit but she had been on the floor for a couple of hours. She is 98 years old and very open and chatty. We got to hear all about the virtues of her 'underwear with pillows' (Depends diapers) and many details of her past few weeks and other completely unrelated subjects in between me trying to ask pertinent medical questions.
It turns out that she had been trying to get out of bed to go to the bathroom and slid down to the floor. We checked her for injuries and then lifted her up and back onto the bed. We suggested she go use the bathroom now so this doesn't happen again later. At first she said she would just rest first and that she would be fine to go later. We really didn't want to have to come back in a few hours so we again suggested that she go now. She agreed and we grabbed her wheeled walker for her. Meanwhile she somehow wriggled out of her diaper and kicked it off. We mentioned it to the daughter who did nothing. So, we began to help our patient down to the bathroom.
This is where it got funny. The bathroom is directly down the hall from the bedroom about 25 feet. Our patient began moving with the walker in that direction so unbelievably slowly I felt like I was listening to a 45 rpm recording of Andy Griffith speaking played back at 33 and a 1/3. All I had to do to keep pace with her down the hall was lean forward slightly. All the while she was chatting on about this and that. It was frustratingly amusing, but I'm glad that I have a crew that just laughed it off and stuck with it to help this woman out. When we got to the bathroom we knew she might need some help. Again, the patients daughter was just standing there doing nothing. We asked her to please come up here and help her mother out. Our patient used the bathroom and began the long trek back down the hall to the bedroom where we put her back to bed and covered her up.
And speaking of rolling along:
Our next lift assist happened to be a 400 pound man who slipped in the shower. We were able to dry him off enough to get a carry-all behind him and lift him to standing. The funny part about this one was this couple's ingenuity. The wife was not as large as her husband but on her way. She was in a rolling desk chair and seemed to use that as her primary conveyance. She was also on home O2 with about a 50' tube. She had installed little hanger hooks all down the hallway and around the house to rest the tubing on so it didn't get tangled up as she scooted around the house. We were able to move our patient to a similar chair which I'm assuming he uses all the time as well. As we said goodbye and left the couple rolling around their house I noticed that everywhere you looked around the house were a variety of tongs strategically placed for reaching things from a sitting position.
That's just how they roll in my district.
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