Lord, Give Me Strength!

It's been a while since I've made a substantial entry. During the last couple of months, I've had to deal with some major situations in my life.

I have a family member who is seriously ill. Drusilla is an elderly lady with diabetes, degenerative joint disease in her back, an artificial hip, osteoporosis, arthritis, and macular degeneration. She already had an uphill battle every day she woke up dealing with these ailments. However, she always made it a point to get up and do something.

For the last few months, Drusilla has not been eating like she should. In fact, she's been eating so little, she started losing weight -- too much weight. Well, Drusilla's diet took its toll, and she is now bedridden. Her low blood sugar prompted a call to 911 and a trip to the emergency room. They admitted her to the hospital, where they discovered she also had pneumonia.

I've been helping Drusilla's husband Fred take care of her. Soul Sister strongly suggested that the visiting nurses service be utilized; she said taking care of a bedridden person would be too much for just two people, especially when one of them has to work for a living. However, Drusilla insisted she did not want visiting nurses or to be put in a nursing home. Fred and I worked hard to respect her wishes.

After three weeks of trying to care for her, it became painfully obvious that the two of us just could not do it. Fred is an elderly man himself. I work a full time job with a long commute. Anyone who has cared for a bedridden person will tell you it's a physically demanding and time-consuming job. You're caring for a human being, so you can't rush anything if you want the patient to be clean and comfortable. You have to mentally put yourself in their place and imagine how you would want to be treated and cared for.

Well, at the same time this is going on, my coworker ended up in the hospital herself with kidney failure. Now she's out on sick leave. We know she's not coming back, but we can't hire a replacement until she runs out of leave. We're looking at two months or more. My supervisor and I are handling the workload okay. However, my having to learn and remember to do new, unfamiliar tasks under a deadline is stressful. You never realize how much you rely on someone until they're gone. She was a pro. In any case, the timing of this situation at work could not have been worse as far as my dealing with increased stress levels.

I tried to continue my water aerobics classes, but I found I didn't have the strength or the stamina to help Drusilla with her leg exercises and other tasks on the days I attended the classes. I ended up skipping several classes during those three weeks.

By the start of that third week, I was experiencing what I originally thought were mild anxiety attacks: chest pains, tingling in hands, feet, and scalp, fleeting lightheadedness ... I knew I was under a lot of stress, so I tried to deal with the symptoms as best as I could. However, I was also experiencing fatigue and shortness of breath ... NOT a good combination with chest pains. I also had been having trouble sleeping. I know that happens to everyone once in a while. However, when you have sleep apnea and you're waking up gasping for air and feeling the oxygen deprivation in your hands, you're not sleeping.

I went to work that Monday, but I had trouble concentrating on my job. I was fatigued and wanted to go home. When I got home, I went straight to bed and stayed there until Tuesday morning. I woke up, well, I TRIED to wake up. I had so much trouble getting out of bed. Then when I finally did get out of bed, all I could do was sit. I could barely move. By 7 AM, it was obvious something was wrong with me, so I called in sick. I reset my clock so I could go back to bed and wake up when the doctor's office opened.

My doctor put me on an EKG machine (my heart was fine, thank God!), prescribed me a diuretic and ordered some blood tests. He requested a two-week follow up visit.

The diuretic worked great. It got rid of the excess fluid around my chest so I could breathe again. I've been sleeping very well since. No more waking up gasping for air.

My blood tests, however, revealed that I have diabetes. Considering my coworker and Drusilla both have diabetes and are dealing with the potentially lethal complications associated with the disease, you can imagine the impact this news had on me. I took the news better than I expected, but again ... the timing was not good.

By the time I found out the results of my blood tests, Drusilla was back in the hospital, with faithful Fred by her side. Despite our efforts, she still wasn't eating enough food, and her blood sugar started dropping again. While in the hospital, she'd eat and her sugar level would be okay for a while. Then, without warning, it would suddenly plunge. When it suddenly dropped to 16 one evening, the doctors ordered tests on her liver.

The doctors discovered her liver was depleted of stored glucose. This was because it had to compensate for the lack of nutrition her body was getting the last several months. You see, when the body's blood sugar level drops, the liver kicks in with stored glucose to bring the blood sugar level back up.

Fred and Drusilla discussed the possibility of a nursing home. After seeing what Fred and I had been going through trying to care for her, she changed her mind and agreed to go to a nursing home. However, it was only going to be for rehabilitation ... so she could walk again. If not, she'll be cared for at her home with the visiting nurses service three times a week. Fred and I will do the rest.

After all this, the big question is: why can't Drusilla eat? It's tough to answer. At first, her small intestines were blamed. Then they focused on her esophagus. Heck, we've even wondered if she had a death wish and was not eating on purpose (she said no, by the way). They refocused on her esophagus and discovered it was raw and irritated; they're still trying to find out why. They also discovered her stomach has shrunk considerably and cannot hold as much food as a normal-sized stomach. Combine that with a diminished appetite, and you can see why she's in the state she's in now. When your back is eat up with arthritis, you're in pain; you have no desire to eat when you're hurting. This opens the door to diminishing the immune system and creating more ailments to deal with.

The questions I'm anticipating include: "Didn't you see she was starving herself?" or "Couldn't you tell she wasn't eating much?" Well, for one thing, it's hard to judge how much a person has eaten when you're not around that person 24 hours a day; it was never an issue or a topic of discussion. Second, she wore baggy clothes. It wasn't until recently that we could tell she was getting thinner. Finally, she's a fiercely independent woman. She's not going to tell you she needs help or is in pain unless she absolutely has to. Remember the scene from Driving Miss Daisy when Hoke was applying for the chauffeur job? Hoke inquired about Miss Daisy's mental capabilities, and her son replied, "Oh she's all there all right! Too much all there is the problem!" That's Drusilla!!

Drusilla has been through a lot, but she's still fighting. God bless her!

As for me, it has been an exhausting summer: physically, psychologically, and emotionally.