It has been a rough week. Mom had her surgery last Tuesday and they sent her home Wednesday night. It was far too early for them to send her home. Not only was she incoherent, she was combative, and couldn't walk without starting to fall over. I about yanked my shoulder out of the socket catching her from falling.

Unfortunately they did not take me seriously at the hospital the night before when I told them how bad it would be if they sent her home early. If there is a next time I am going to the pre-op appointment and making it very clear that this is not okay. This has happened every time, it is just a little better if she is in the hospital those first three days.

She was also trying to manipulate everyone into giving her too many pills. Not the painkillers, but her diazepam (which is Valium). She took 6 in one day by getting my husband and son to give her two (that's her dose) when I had already given her two. She was beyond incoherent that day. I instituted a write down everything time and date pad so that can't happen again. I had asked DH to do that from the start, but he had not (I was still in massive pain, so didn't do it myself at that point).

She did not regain her ability to speak in complete sentences until yesterday. She's still a little slow, but at least now she is making sense most of the time, about 80 percent, which is where she normally is nowadays. She was able to walk without help on Saturday.

DH did take off Thursday and Friday, but he had to go back to work today. There is overtime being offered again this week (he couldn't get any last week because of helping me with Mom and needing take sick leave). It wasn't an easy day as she wanted a shower, which took an hour to do, but she was very cooperative. It is just hard to give a shower to someone else, even with a bench seat and a detachable sprayer. Easier than without one. She needed it though. It had been a week (she had to wait that long).

She still isn't wanting to eat much, but I got her to eat Jello (3 times) and a cheeseburger (she had some frozen) and some milk. Not the best of nutrition, but it is better than nothing.

I am starting to feel better now that I had an Embrel shot again. It was getting really bad with the pain without it. If I had any doubt it was helping before this, it is totally gone now. Things still aren't worked out completely with my shots, but on Thursday the doctor gave me two shots to take home, so I took one that day and I have one more, and if it takes longer than that to get my prescription moving, than I can get more. According to my doctor, everything has been approved with the new insurance since last week, but I have not heard anything from the pharmacy yet about the shot.

DH is going to see if he can't move things along for me as I don't have time to be on the phone right now between taking care of Mom and shuttling DD to appointments. I can get more samples if I need to, but I sure wish they would have told me that before I went 4 weeks without.

I am still not sure if we will be able to leave Mom long enough on Wednesday for DH and me to go out for my birthday, but I hope so. I so need to get away for a couple of hours and just not have to focus on anyone else.