I wonder if anyone can identify with this latest chapter in mum's story.
Having cracked a pelvic bone in a fall at her care home recently my mum was in hospital, one way or another, for three weeks. Firstly for three days in one hospital then sent home, far too early in my opinion. She was taken back in to a different hospital after only two days, still suffering with severe pain from the injury & by now dehydration. Two weeks later she was discharged from there only to fall again & cut her head. She was taken again, as a precaution, to the second hospital where she stayed for five days on an emergency frailty unit. Throughout all this of course I wasn't able to visit & had to rely on very sparse & hard to access information by phone.
My concern though is this. Before the first fall mum was very alert, articulate - albeit within her own world where she lived with her parents & went to work every day - and quite independently mobile. Since returning from hospital however she no longer speaks coherently, although seemingly understanding what is being said to her & tires easily. She's been up & around, with supervision, at the care home, and her carers tell me they're seeing gradual improvement from when she returned there ten days ago. But this decline in her speech & general cognition seems to have taken place rather rapidly & as a direct result of her hospital stay. I don't know what to think - is this only to be expected with Alzheimer's disease? Is it connected with the trauma of being away from her usual surroundings & in a hospital, where she would not have had anything like the level of interaction at her care home. Along with all the tests & poking & prodding etc? Has the dehydration episode caused damage, or has there been something like a TIA that has gone unrecognised? Although whilst in hospital she did have a head CT scan which presumably didn't reveal anything significant. We are currently awaiting a blood test, carried out by the district nurse last Friday, to rule out anything there which may be out of balance. I don't want to think it's a case of ''Well, what do you expect at this stage?'' if there's actually something that's caused her to deteriorate disproportionately.