Posted by mair on September 24, 2004, at 13:08:44
In reply to Re: More bad news, posted by daisym on September 24, 2004, at 2:09:07
Dinah
I'm sorry you're having such a difficult time. Diabetes has immobilized my father as well and he is big and difficult to move. Everytime he lands in the hospital, he usually has to go to a convelescent place before he can come home, just to rehab sufficiently for him to be able to lift his weight up out of a chair, because he's certainly too heavy for any one person to lift. After that he needs either a wheelchair or a walker to move around the house.
Dealing with him puts a great deal of mental and physical strain on my step mother who has a whole host of her own problems. During one particularly long stint in rehab, she told me she didn't want him home unless he agreed to certain conditions like going to adult day care a couple of times a week to give her a break, and not trying to do certain things that he really wasn't capable of doing. With our help, the social worker at the rehab place drew up a contract that my Dad had to sign as a condition of going home. It seemed to work.
I think someone here suggested that you may be able to enlist the help of a physical therapist, or someone like that. If your mother does need the amputation, chances are she'll end up in a rehab place for awhile before she can go home. I would try to get the phys.therapist to require the removal of the stuff as a condition to her leaving. It sounds like Pt would agree to it as being necessary anyway.
I'm inclined to think that trying to get her to agree to this on her own, or trying to address the problem after she's gotten home, will get you nowhere.
Mair
PS: I'm so much more fortunate than you in that my father is enough of a narcisist to love having any number of people hovering over him. As far as he's concerned, the more phys therapists and home health nurses who come by the house, the better.
poster:mair
thread:394020
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20040923/msgs/394548.html