Friday, November 16, 2018

Update 7

This past weekend Ella had her first weekend pass. She came home Friday night and went back to the hospital on Monday evening. This was the first time she has spent the night in her apartment since August. The weekend went fairly well. I was able to go over and help her get rid of some of her clothes and some other items. She was able to attend her care group as well, which was nice to get her back into a routine of sorts. Also friends took her out on Sunday evening, which was a huge help for me!

Ella was in the hospital for the rest of the week and have another weekend pass this weekend. I will be picking her up a Friday afternoon and bring her back on Sunday evening. The planned discharge date I believe is 20 November. It may be 21 November, so this is something that I need to check.

I have been busy going through Ella’s place and trying to organize her things and help to downsize her stuff. This has been a big undertaking for me and Neil. I’m not sure if I mentioned in the last update but we did a makeover on her closet to give her a bit more room. However, we have been seriously discussing moving her into an assisted living facility. Ella has been having a hard time accepting that this may be the best solution for her. It will be a lot of hard work to find a living place that will suit her needs. She will still be living at home for a while as we make arrangements for this. We feel that this may be best as her memory is still not that great and we want to ensure that she is in a safe environment where she eats regularly as well as remembers to have all her pills. A living facility may also provide more of a social aspect that she would not get living in her own apartment. This is still a work in progress and we will be doing what we can to have her live comfortably in her own home.

I’m hoping to get my next update up after this weekend!

Saturday, November 3, 2018

Update 6

Hi everyone! First I must apologize for the length of time between posts. Neil and I were away for a few days and now we have been spending much of our time at Ella’s place trying to clean it up and organize!

Ella has been doing well at her recovery. She has been enjoying her physio, and finds now that she likes to work out. This is of course great for her. She seems to be doing well with her other therapies. Unsurprisingly, she had made friends with many of the people in her ward. Her room seems to have become the party room there. This is not only good for Ella, but I think it’s also helping the other patients in their recovery.

I have been in contact with her social worker discussing what the plans are going to be moving forward. We were really left with two choices. Either have her move into assisted living, or have her move back home and have home care come in to check on her multiple times a day. We have decided that we are going to try out the latter. I feel that it would be less stressful for Ella to move into a smaller place that she is not comfortable with. Looking at a lot of the homes, they would be quite a bit smaller than what she is used to. They also may not be in the location she likes. However, if she is having difficulty living on her own again, we will need to look into moving her.

The timeline that we are looking at right now seems a bit fast to me. This weekend we will be taking her out again on a day pass, hopefully to her place to see what we have been doing there. The hospital wants her to have a weekend pass next week to see how she does living on her own. She would be home Friday 9 November and spend the next few nights at home. They then want her to call on Tuesday 13 November morning to see how she is doing. If she figures she can live on her own, they will discharge her then and she would spend no more time in the hospital. I am planning on discussing this with the social worker again next week as I feel that she may need to go back to the hospital for a few days to see how she really feels about being in her own.  This is all tentative right now, so things may still change.

If you have spent any time talking or visiting with Ella in the past few weeks, could you pleas provide me some feedback on what your thoughts are on this. Do you think that she is in a place where it is safe for her to be living on her own at home again? Do you think the hospital should have her go home on a few weekend passes before she is discharged? Is there anything else that you can tell me that would be useful? I would really appreciate some feedback at this point.

Thank you once again for everyone’s support in this. It has been greatly appreciated.