Demoralizing week
More overtime, and the first two hours of it went towards making up the deficit from Sunday morning, so I worked like an extra five hours this week and am only getting overtime for the last three. This morning I was warring with myself - I won't make any overtime next week because of the holiday and the night I'm taking off, so I felt like I needed a second extra hour this morning, but I was just so damned tired and hungry...
Also demoralizing was this being the second week in a row of data entry work stacking up and up and up. Last week we were out someone on vacation, but this week is because one of our people transferred to another department, and we have to train a replacement. Because of the production figures telling us how much per shift we're expected to get done, and because of the running tally of how many records are in the queue waiting to be entered, it is blatantly obvious that the amount we were behind as of this morning is the amount of work a single person in our group would have done this week. (Hopefully we get extra people coming in tonight like we did last Saturday night. At least I got a good nap in this morning, so I can also hope not to oversleep again. I'm still expecting a long shift tonight, though, and no overtime rate to console me for the extra hours spent.)
And when I went to Grandma's Thursday morning with her lunch, I found her lying on the floor. In the kitchen, just outside the bathroom door, with her cane lying inside the bathroom. She was conscious and in no distress, so I set things down before starting the task of damage assessment. Asking about how she wound up lying on the floor was futile - she was repeatedly astonished at having it pointed out to her that she was on the floor, and kept asking me where the various doors she was lying besides led to. I asked her several times if anything hurt - especially her neck, back and hips - and the first time I asked she said her bottom hurt, but a few minutes later that nothing did, so I suspect I arrived not too long after she fell, and her rear had been sore from her landing. She was moving her head, arms and legs, so I thought those were good signs, and moved onto assessing whether she could get up - or at least sit up, maybe with my help, or perhaps just roll to her side. I texted my aunt explaining the situation, and a few minutes later went ahead and called her. She said she was coming right over.
My aunt arrived, made her own quick assessment of Grandma's condition, and called paramedics. Grandma was complaining about being cold (which, she's always cold), so my aunt put a blanket over her. My cousin arrived (small daughter in tow) a few minutes later, and a fire truck shortly thereafter. Paramedics trooped in, checked Grandma over, got her up off the floor and into a kitchen chair, and pulled out a big fancy monitor to get her blood pressure and oxygen level.
There was a lot of milling around and questioning. As my aunt and I pointed out, she has dementia, so asking how she fell was of no use (a few minutes after being set in a kitchen chair, she was astonished to be told she'd been on the floor), and she couldn't have answered the questions about what year it is or who the president is last week, either. More paramedics arrived with an ambulance, and they brought in a gurney but changed tactics when Grandma said she didn't want to go to the hospital. The paramedic who took charge of the group (four or five of them, by that point) said that her blood pressure was excellent and they didn't want to take her to the hospital against her will - but that if as her family we wanted her checked out, A) it would probably be a good idea (in case of undetected internal injuries), B) she'd probably be a lot more cooperative with family than with strangers, and C) she was stable enough to go in a car and it would be much more comfortable because the ambulance gives a rough ride. (Like in the back of a pickup truck, he said.) Legal liability was also mentioned.
So the paramedics cleared out, my aunt and cousin were making arrangements to drive Grandma to Baylor, and I was sent home. Later that night, I was in bed when Mom woke me up (an hour and a half before my alarm was set to go off) to inform me that Grandma was still in the ER, her blood pressure had gone all wonky, and Mom was heading over to see her. "You know she's got a DNR? It's a good thing you saw her today..."
So I checked my phone a few times that night at work, half-expecting to be texted bad news (Mom having already passed along that Grandma was probably going from the ER to the ICU), but I didn't hear anything further till Mom got home from work Friday night and called her sister. Grandma was getting transferred to a room at some point and Mom would come for another visit today. (In fact, I think she's at the hospital now.)
Still no diagnosis, so far as I know. Part of the mystery is whether she fell and hurt herself somehow, or whether she got dizzy or light-headed for some internal reason and fell because of it. (Why I kept asking about whether her hips hurt - a common thing being for elderly people to fall because their hip breaks, rather than breaking it in a fall.) Her blood pressure is more stable, but she's had some heart issues in the past. (Her BP medication dosage got halved a few weeks ago.)
So anyway. It's been an exhausting week, and the thing I may be most thankful for next week is just having a few nights off...
Crossposted from Dreamwidth with
comments made.
Also demoralizing was this being the second week in a row of data entry work stacking up and up and up. Last week we were out someone on vacation, but this week is because one of our people transferred to another department, and we have to train a replacement. Because of the production figures telling us how much per shift we're expected to get done, and because of the running tally of how many records are in the queue waiting to be entered, it is blatantly obvious that the amount we were behind as of this morning is the amount of work a single person in our group would have done this week. (Hopefully we get extra people coming in tonight like we did last Saturday night. At least I got a good nap in this morning, so I can also hope not to oversleep again. I'm still expecting a long shift tonight, though, and no overtime rate to console me for the extra hours spent.)
And when I went to Grandma's Thursday morning with her lunch, I found her lying on the floor. In the kitchen, just outside the bathroom door, with her cane lying inside the bathroom. She was conscious and in no distress, so I set things down before starting the task of damage assessment. Asking about how she wound up lying on the floor was futile - she was repeatedly astonished at having it pointed out to her that she was on the floor, and kept asking me where the various doors she was lying besides led to. I asked her several times if anything hurt - especially her neck, back and hips - and the first time I asked she said her bottom hurt, but a few minutes later that nothing did, so I suspect I arrived not too long after she fell, and her rear had been sore from her landing. She was moving her head, arms and legs, so I thought those were good signs, and moved onto assessing whether she could get up - or at least sit up, maybe with my help, or perhaps just roll to her side. I texted my aunt explaining the situation, and a few minutes later went ahead and called her. She said she was coming right over.
My aunt arrived, made her own quick assessment of Grandma's condition, and called paramedics. Grandma was complaining about being cold (which, she's always cold), so my aunt put a blanket over her. My cousin arrived (small daughter in tow) a few minutes later, and a fire truck shortly thereafter. Paramedics trooped in, checked Grandma over, got her up off the floor and into a kitchen chair, and pulled out a big fancy monitor to get her blood pressure and oxygen level.
There was a lot of milling around and questioning. As my aunt and I pointed out, she has dementia, so asking how she fell was of no use (a few minutes after being set in a kitchen chair, she was astonished to be told she'd been on the floor), and she couldn't have answered the questions about what year it is or who the president is last week, either. More paramedics arrived with an ambulance, and they brought in a gurney but changed tactics when Grandma said she didn't want to go to the hospital. The paramedic who took charge of the group (four or five of them, by that point) said that her blood pressure was excellent and they didn't want to take her to the hospital against her will - but that if as her family we wanted her checked out, A) it would probably be a good idea (in case of undetected internal injuries), B) she'd probably be a lot more cooperative with family than with strangers, and C) she was stable enough to go in a car and it would be much more comfortable because the ambulance gives a rough ride. (Like in the back of a pickup truck, he said.) Legal liability was also mentioned.
So the paramedics cleared out, my aunt and cousin were making arrangements to drive Grandma to Baylor, and I was sent home. Later that night, I was in bed when Mom woke me up (an hour and a half before my alarm was set to go off) to inform me that Grandma was still in the ER, her blood pressure had gone all wonky, and Mom was heading over to see her. "You know she's got a DNR? It's a good thing you saw her today..."
So I checked my phone a few times that night at work, half-expecting to be texted bad news (Mom having already passed along that Grandma was probably going from the ER to the ICU), but I didn't hear anything further till Mom got home from work Friday night and called her sister. Grandma was getting transferred to a room at some point and Mom would come for another visit today. (In fact, I think she's at the hospital now.)
Still no diagnosis, so far as I know. Part of the mystery is whether she fell and hurt herself somehow, or whether she got dizzy or light-headed for some internal reason and fell because of it. (Why I kept asking about whether her hips hurt - a common thing being for elderly people to fall because their hip breaks, rather than breaking it in a fall.) Her blood pressure is more stable, but she's had some heart issues in the past. (Her BP medication dosage got halved a few weeks ago.)
So anyway. It's been an exhausting week, and the thing I may be most thankful for next week is just having a few nights off...
Crossposted from Dreamwidth with
comments made.