In December 2006, we spent New Year’s Eve at a hospital with my Mom. She experienced all the symptoms of a stroke and gave us a scare. Mami has always been a healthy strong, loving, and outgoing person. She and my Dad spend most of their time hosting friends, taking care of the grandkids and going on road trips. It’s no surprise her hospital room was filled with flowers and people for three consecutive days. The stroke was ruled out and the doctor at the time said he had no medical explanation of what happened. He thought for sure she had a stroke, but found it impossible for her to have recuperated within 24 hours. At the end of the day, we were so happy she was well and ready to go home!
This year, Thursday, January 10th I was at a meeting in Downtown LA when a friend came to inform me that Mami had been taken by the paramedics to the hospital with symptoms of a stroke. The drive to San Diego seemed longer than usual. When I arrived, I found a pale vulnerable person standing outside the emergency room, mi Papito. It was Dad waiting for me to arrive. Mami was lying in bed, she was drowsy, disoriented, and weak. When I asked her to touch her nose with her index finger, she poked her forehead. I was devastated. She could not answer basic questions and the emergency room was significantly understaffed with no one around to ask if they had run any lab work or if any other relevant tests ordered. It was horrible.
My dad looked at me for direction and support – quite frankly, I didn’t know more than him. When the doctor came to see her I asked her if they had run lab tests and ordered a Cat-Scan, MRI or whatever tests were done on people with her symptoms. I wanted to be reassured she was not having a stroke. At first, I thought the doctor was ignoring me, she was short and didn’t look up, she just wrote in her note pad occasionally looking at the monitors. The words that I remember coming out of her mouth were, “She is normal. She is breathing normal, her blood pressure is normal and her heart is beating normal, she is just weak.” I was so disappointed that she had not answered my question; I had to ask again if she had run all the tests to ensure she was not having or had a stroke.
Mami was slurring something and I felt so helpless. I did not know what else to ask the doctor. My mother was not acting normal; she was not being her normal self. I was so scared. Finally, Dad asked me if the doctor had received the lab results and he wanted to know what the ammonia level was. The doctor informed me that she had not ordered lab tests to check for ammonia level. She said they only ran those tests if the patient had some history of having that. Dad explained that he mentioned to the paramedics when they picked her up that last year she had a slight high level of ammonia in her blood. I was shocked to learn the doctor had not read the notes from the paramedics. Upon conducting the blood tests, Mom had a significantly high level of ammonia in her blood stream. Once they began to give her medication to lower the ammonia, she began to be herself again.
It is difficult to deal with such a reality: my parents are aging. It finally hit me and forced me to realize that the two people that protected me and provided for our family were now depending on the care and decisions my sister and I made.
These experiences are awful, but are part of life. We have researched extensively how people cope with aging parents, what questions to ask doctors, what is appropriate health care, what Medicare covers, what other medical assistance and support groups are out there. I have found many internet sites to help me find answers. However, two have been the most helpful and informative: the Foundation for Health and Aging (FHA), and Children of Aging Parents. Also, I’ve learned a little bit about Geriatric Advocacy efforts and I am hopeful that with our collective work there will be reform to assist seniors obtain adequate and affordable health care.