Mum in hospital after fall and dislocated shoulder worried about her progress

However, the proposed move sounds like a good idea and I hope your mum can make good progress with her mobility.

This situation is becoming an ongoing saga I'm afraid to say.

Mum was declared fit for discharge by the hospital although clearly she was not without a spell of rehabilitation in any fit state to go home. Hospital transferred her to a new rehab nursing home on 27 December. She appeared to be settling in but then I had a call from the unit on Wednesday evening last to say that she had become unwell again and was taken into hospital - yet again suffering from another chest infection - pneumonia.

I was not able to visit her until yesterday as I came down with some virus myself and was out of action for a week - just relaying on my brother to update me on progress. Have to say that the nursing staff in the new hospital were lovely and encouraging and the hospital does seem to be determined to get to the bottom of the underlying infection - more so than the previous hospital who had obviously not cleared the infection up.

So back to square one. All I can say is that despite events my mum is looking a little brighter - mentally and spiritually and was actually saying yesterday that she wanted to go home - although how we are going to manage that is up in the air at present. Not even sure if she will be re-admitted to the rehab unit as the staff there advised that they will not hold her room placement for more than 48 hours.

Just now I am at my wits end thinking about all this and not being able to make arrangements for my mum. Just want her to be able to regain a little mobility and be comfortable on her hopefully eventual discharge but can't do anything practical about it for now.

I'm not expecting miracles here but the longer she remains bedridden the worse things will get and I don't want her to get to a situation where she will never get out of that bed again. Does anyone have any practical advice here - I could really do with hearing some encouraging words of experience here and no better place than Gransnet ladies.

Oh your poor mum, and you, coming down with a virus, it usually happens when we become stressed, just when you don’t need it.
I just think your going to have to wait it out, and hope the hospital take good care of her, and she improves sufficiently to be placed in rehab again, hopefully the same place but if not they’ll be a different one 🤞

If your mum is well enough they should be encouraging her to get out of bed and to the toilet, although I know from experience their often too busy. Really hope you can get your mum well enough to be moved again. It’s such a bad time of year with all these bugs going about. Take care.

A little update ..... before I go completely insane!!

My mum finally was discharged for a second time after 3 weeks in that hospital, this time to a really lovely nursing home in her home town. She was just starting to settle in and the home had physios on standby to start work on getting her up and about again when she took another dip and was re-admitted to hospital (the original one that she went in with the dislocated shoulder).

The home manager said she suspected a urine infection (she was quite correct) caused by the catheter that the hospital had put in and which was not removed before she was discharged. Mum has been in hospital 2 weeks now - intermittently on IV fluids and still catheterized having failed a TWOC apparently - and we are still no further forward in getting her to discharge which was supposed to be a week ago. What is worse, the prolonged hospital stays are starting to affect my mum mentally ... she is starting to experience patches of confusion and sometimes struggling to to get the 'right ' words out when she is trying to explain things. I suspect some hospital induced delirium from not only the infection but also the disconnect from her old schedules and outside life. Strangely her appetite has markedly improved during the last month and she is eating a good amount and getting as much tea down her neck as the nurses are (un)willing to get up and provide her - she struggles to drink the cold water left on her table so it is not helping her fluid intake.

What is frustrating me and my mum is the fact that the hospital is not giving us any clear indications as to any progress. When I question the nurses they just reel off the notes from their PCs which I have to decipher myself - can't get to speak to the doctor or consultant in charge of my my mum's case and I have to keep repeating over and over again that before she was admitted with the dislocated shoulder she led a perfectly independent and mobile life. Just about everything she has suffered since that point is as a result of hospital-acquired infections and I suspect no real effort has been made to get her out of bed and moving in all these weeks - leaving her bed-bound with complete disruption to her previous bodily ablutions.

Has anyone been in this situation with pronged hospital stay? I am temporarily at a loss as to how to resolve this situation and get my mum out of there and into some proper nursing and rehabilitation care. She is not getting this in the hospital and frankly the medics and nurses don't seem to care. They are for more interested in ticking off their boxes and hardly engaging with the patients unless they have to performs obs or procedures.