What happens now?

[Bombaybunty]

My mother slithered out of bed and onto the floor on Monday night. My brother found her on Wednesday afternoon. She lives in a retirement property with an alarm system but refuses to wear the call button.

She is now in hospital as her kidneys are knackered.

Her mobility isn't great, she could walk short distances with a stick. I got her into bed yesterday and she can barely stand.

I'm now panicking about how she's going to cope on her own once ( or if) she improves. Will she get an assessment prior to discharge? Quite prepared to sort out careers etc but don't know where to start.

Both my brother and I live nearby and pop in once or twice a week. She has no financial worries.

What happens now?

[PurpleWithRed]

If she is still in hospital talk to the staff - she should get a full assessment and care package in place before she is discharged, they can't discharge her without making sure it is safe to do so.

[LIZS]

Yes there should be an assessment before discharge. Probably with occupational therapist and social worker. Does she own her property or is it rented? The manager may want to visit her too, to check if/how they can support her there. SW can assist with advice re. Carers although you may need to arrange this yourself. If she still needs care on discharge you may find a short term place in a care home to enable her to recover further prior to returning home and give you time to arrange carers.

[Wolpertinger]

They will try to get her back to her previous level of functioning if the reason she fell is due to illness. Prior to discharge she should be seen by Occupational Therapy and Physio. It's likely there will be some sort of intermediate care service whereby people who haven't had a care package before get an element of care and physio at home to get them home again - at the end of which if they need ongoing care it's down to you or social services to sort it out.

[Bombaybunty]

Thank you! She owns her flat but the manager is there purely for building related problems, nothing personal, so no help there.

Will try to talk to someone today when I visit, but it isn't the best time of year to catch people!

[bigbluebus]

I agree Bombay it is a difficult week for speaking to people at the hospital. Normal service is unlikely to be resumed until Tuesday.
My DM has been in hospital a number of times and due to the circumstances behind her admissions I have always insisted on a Care Package review before discharge. Mum's care package was arranged by Social Care even though she is self funding, although it may be different in Wales where she is as you can't be charged more than £60pw for carers in the home, so the LA gets the bill from the care agency and then pass the charge on to DM.

Hopefully your DM will have learned her lesson about not wearing her alarm. My DM fell last month during the night and lay there for many hours (no one knows what time she fell) until she was discovered by a visiting carer at lunchtime. She wears her alarm in the day but I hadn't realised she took it off in bed. She had got up to go to the bathroom when she fell and wasn't able to get up off the floor.

[Wolpertinger]

You should be able to establish what her diagnosis is today and how she is doing but prob not much more. What you can do is make it clear that she won't be safe at home like this just to pre-empt anyone deciding to do a bit of enthusiastic discharging if there is a bed crisis which sadly does happen. She needs to stay for the whole team to be back on Tuesday.

[noarguments]

In a similar position here. DF in hospital for a week, after some sort of infection took hold, possibly a UTI. Since he has been in, he has lost mobility, and become completely confused, agitated, delirious, doesn't know where he is, what's going on etc etc, having been entirely independent and full of marbles. Horrible to see, looks like he's aged 20 years in a week. And a crap time of the year for it to happen.
I'm hoping you're right about waiting for all the relevant teams to be back in tomorrow.

[Bombaybunty]

Well she's perked up and is coming home today, depending on blood results. Mobility is better, able to get about with a frame.
She's moaning a lot so must feel better.
The physio apparently wanted her to have two weeks rehab in a different local hospital but she refused. I'm furious that she won't go. Plan to talk to someone about it today.

I have told her that she WILL wear the call button from now on.

I feel there are some difficult times ahead.

[Wolpertinger]

Oh dear. The thing is that if she has the capacity to make her own decisions, she can't be made to do anything. She can make spectacularly bad decisions if she so chooses.

The best person to talk to is her to find out why she decided to do this. The commonest reasons are 'I thought they would put me in a home' 'I'll be fine once I get home' and 'You'll help me out, won't you'.

For the first two you need to set her straight and for the last you may need to play hard ball so that she learns the hard way that actually you have a job, a family etc etc and cannot drop everything several times a week to sort her out even though you love her to bits.