It is one thing to welcome a patient home from the hospital. It is another thing to be truly prepared for the newly discharged patient to be ready for all the adjustments they'll have face at home.
To this day Miss Brown doesn't know who was more nervous about her homecoming. She doesn't know whether it was her main caregivers, her supposed caregivers, or even she herself.
She had anticipated some sort of change.
That much her still-befuddled brain could easily figure out.
But seeing it first hand after they opened the front door, having to adjust to it, and realizing that she had to accept it, was another matter altogether. It was not as if there was any choice either. The way she'd lived, the way she'd done up her home, was now medically unsafe for someone who was now no longer fully mobile. .
Still, there were just too many changes!
Her room was no longer the same. Gone were the belongings that she used to casually stash on the window ledge. They had all been packed into the wardrobe. Gone, too, were the lanyards and strings that used to be on the door handle. They'd been stored away lest her left hand accidentally hook onto them and cause her to fall. And her clothes- the clothes that she used to arrange on her mattress- had all been dumped into boxes that now stood at the foot of her bed. She needed the support from the mattress to swing her legs down, her caregivers said, and all those clothes would only entangle her movement and hinder her. Then there was a sturdy chair at the head of the bed placed there for her to use as support when getting up.
The living room also didn't look the same as she'd left it.
Right behind the door now was the brown sofa- for her to rest after entering the house, and for her to sit and wear her shoes before going out. The dining table had been shifted from the dining area to the living area so that she could sit there, have her meals, do whatever. She needed as much support as she could get, she was told, and the glass table was better than any other furniture in the house. Then a shelf had been shifted from somewhere in the house to the living area, on which the huge TV was placed, as were the other stuff she used to casually keep around. The tall wood shelf that once stood as a divider between the living and dining area had been removed- it was too flimsy, wobbled easily and no one, they told her, was going to risk stuff from its shelves falling down on her should she accidentally crash into it.
That wasn't all.
Mornings there would come in a trained geriatric nurse to help her bathe, dress and feed. She would have to start going for therapy, twice a week, mornings and afternoons. And she would have to go to a eldercare center twice a week, just for the mornings.
Her old life was gone.
Everything had to be re-learnt. Everything had to have new methods of doing. She would have to learn how to bathe with one hand, feed with one hand, dress with one hand. She would have to learn how to do stuff all with one hand until she regained the use of the other.
But till that happened, she had to adjust. She had to adapt. She had to figure out new ways of doing things. Step by step, she would have to find her way, and in the meantime, rely on whatever help was available.
She needed it, even in the smallest activities that once used to occur naturally. It had never been this difficult to swallow, but now her throat muscles weren't working so well. So in came this thickener that the hospital had given her. She didn't really know what it was made of, but she tried it, and it was okay. Soups became thicker. Milk became thicker. Porridge became thicker. Even water, which, honestly, was the only thing she didn't like the thickener in. It made the water have the texture of starch.
That wasn't all.
Mornings there would come in a trained geriatric nurse to help her bathe, dress and feed. She would have to start going for therapy, twice a week, mornings and afternoons. And she would have to go to a eldercare center twice a week, just for the mornings.
Her old life was gone.
Everything had to be re-learnt. Everything had to have new methods of doing. She would have to learn how to bathe with one hand, feed with one hand, dress with one hand. She would have to learn how to do stuff all with one hand until she regained the use of the other.
But till that happened, she had to adjust. She had to adapt. She had to figure out new ways of doing things. Step by step, she would have to find her way, and in the meantime, rely on whatever help was available.
She needed it, even in the smallest activities that once used to occur naturally. It had never been this difficult to swallow, but now her throat muscles weren't working so well. So in came this thickener that the hospital had given her. She didn't really know what it was made of, but she tried it, and it was okay. Soups became thicker. Milk became thicker. Porridge became thicker. Even water, which, honestly, was the only thing she didn't like the thickener in. It made the water have the texture of starch.
