Out of Sync

Recently, I was out of town for a few days, so I had not seen mom for one week.  When I went to see her on Monday morning, she was in the activity room sleeping while a few of the other residents were singing.

While I was gone, the eye doctor had put mom on antibiotics.  Although I was happy that her eye doctor chose to treat her cyst with antibiotics instead of surgery, I worried that adding a new medicine to her equation may cause undue side effects. 

The good news is mom’s cyst is much smaller and her eyelid is no longer red.  Mom claims her eye still itches, but she is happy that her eye condition is improving. 

The first topic mom wanted to talk to me about was her lack of sleep.  The night before she had a restless sleep; she woke up five times.  She mentioned that the nurse did not have the right sleep medication last night so she gave her something else.  Mom blames the new medication as the reason she did not sleep.  So I went to talk with Billy*, her nurse, to find out what happened.  Mom was half right.  

Billy told me that mom’s Ativan was not given at the correct time the day before because the medicine did not come to The Community* when it was scheduled to be there.  Ativan is prescribed to treat anxiety. However, mom is right that taking Ativan does help her sleep as that for many that is a side effect of this drug.  Mom’s system is so sensitive that her not receiving her Ativan on time caused her undue anxiety (hence the restlessness) which caused her not to sleep well. 

Her body was already off course so once she was given the medicine; the medication took longer to work its magic.  I explained to mom what happened.  I assured her that she should be able to sleep better now that the matter has been taken care of.

 At least, I was comforted to know that mom clearly understood that there was a medication problem so I could look into the matter for her, make sure the problem was resolved, and give mom reassurance.