How is my Mama doing?

As many of you know, on September 30th 2017 my mom moved in with my husband and I.  

She was very sick with congestive heart failure, AFIB and supposedly COPD.

She was on 23 prescription medications that went into her pill organizer boxes plus pain meds that she manages herself.

It was daunting to manage and heartbreaking to hear her slurs her speech, have very active dreams and watch her balance be off and see her fall.

She wasn't hear long before my first call for an ambulance happened.  

Her sodium had dropped to a dangerous level and she was incoherent and couldn't stay awake.

In December I took her to the ER where she was admitted for 5 days with exaggerated lung congestion and again, low sodium.

The doctor put her on a very strict fluid intake where she lost 20 pounds of fluid in those 5 days at the hospital.

He had already been evaluating all of her medications and had eliminated a couple of them.

Upon her release, and to this day, her fluid intake is restricted to 1500-2000 ml per day.  

She does best on 1750 ml per day, but her body handles some mild fluctuations.

She has continued to drop fluid pounds and has lost 40 pounds in fluid alone.  This has helped her tremendously!

From then until now, we have closely worked with her prescriptions and have them now dropped to only NINE prescriptions, three of those being prescriptions supplements!  

I have also consulted with the doctor with the addition of several other supplements and we often time treat minor conditions with essential oils, herbs and home-made syrups. 

She feels better.  She looks better.  The slurry speech is gone.  She hasn't fallen down since December.  She is doing SO WELL! 

Mom's need for oxygen support has dwindled down over the months, and we have been lowering the liters needed as her body has gotten stronger.

Mom turned 77 years old on March 15.  On that day, she had a doctor's appointment.  I had told him that she was down to just 1/2 liter of o2 and was still saturating at 97-98.  He gave her permission to go without and see how she does!!  

WITHOUT OXYGEN SUPPORT???  WOW!!!!!

She took that thing off as soon as we got home!  

She was trucking out to the mail box to get the mail and running all over the house and doing fine!!

On March 19th, we left for a trip "back home".  She had set up a BIG party with all of our family and her friends "back home".  We stayed in a hotel and had a wonderful time!

She only used her oxygen twice over the entire 4 days for a little support while she rested and recovered.  Apparently she does not have COPD...or diabetes as she is off those meds too!

There were 36 people at her party!!

Over the months as well, she has had cataract eye surgery and can now see much better.  She has her first set of hearing aids and can now hear much better.  

We have begun the process of getting her teeth fixed and she is now ready to see the dentist to have some teeth pulled and new partial dentures put in.  (Two of her front teeth had abscesses in them and are in very bad shape.)

OH!  And she got  her first smart phone!  

It is so adorable to go into her room in the morning and see that she is texting family "back home".  

You can teach an ol' granny new tricks!  LOL

So life with mom is good.  We still have a lot of appointments and will over the months as the new hearing aids are adjusted (they are really high tech and very cool!) as well as many appointments coming up for the partial dentures.  I understand it will take about 8 months before those are adjusted to feel just right.  

My heart is very, very happy!

Here is mom toasting a drink to herself at her birthday party.

She drank the whole thing and we didn't have to scrape her up off the floor!

And with her cake:

Isn't she just the cutest???  

We love having her here and love that she is doing so well!

XXOO