Several months ago, my mom fell and fractured her hip.   She had to go through a couple of months in a rehabilitation/skilled nursing facility to rebuild her walking skills, and then work on strength and endurance, and learn how to take some care of herself.

The other issue is that my mother is over 70 with some dementia and the anesthesia/surgery made this worse for awhile after the surgery.   For awhile, she couldn’t remember anything longer than 30 seconds.   Slowly, but surely, she started to return to her presurgery self.   This meant that she had some dementia, could remember who people are, and would remember answers to her questions for longer than several minutes or even longer.

Friday night at 9:30pm, my dad rushed my mom to the ER.  She had what he thought was a urinary tract infection, which turned out to be something different, but immediately treatable.   They gave her an antibiotic and sent her home with a prescription.

By the time they arrived back in their neighborhood, my mom had started hallucinating.   She was seeing kids in the street and told my dad to watch out for them.    She saw children in their fireplace, too.   It was creepy and disturbing for me.   I can’t imagine what it was like for my dad, who had to watch the whole thing unravel and figure out what to do next.

Mom went to bed.   It was 3:30am on Saturday.   My dad could finally go to sleep at 4am.    My dad, who normally is up several times during the night taking my mom to the bathroom, finally got some sleep.    My mom slept most of the day.

When she woke up around dinner time, she did not know who my dad was or generally any answers to any questions my dad had.  She wouldn’t eat because she “didn’t want to take your food”.    Back to sleep she went, tearfully.

I’m not sure what happened between then and the time she woke up again.   She walked into the kitchen and asked for dinner, cracked a few jokes, and recognized my dad.   She knew that she was in the skilled nursing facility before, but couldn’t remember going to the ER last night.   This is probably a good thing.

I think back to what a clinician in the skilled nursing facility said.  Any change, any trauma, anything different will be a big disruption to the patient.   Maybe the trip to the ER and the work they had to do to make her better, was overload for her.    Maybe she worried she would have to go back to the facility, or she WAS back at the facility, and that was all it took to set off this stream of unsual thoughts.

Minds are so complicated.   When you think of everything it does, really, every waking and sleeping moment, it’s quite amazing and complex.   My mom’s goes to interesting places sometimes that are not so great, but it was a relief to have her come back to herself for now.

Keep praying.  It’s working.