My Trails

Even cold in Arizona!

This is a quick note to chronicle the last two weeks. Several days before I had planned to return to Tempe for Christmas, Mom had a serious reaction to a new medication she was taking. During the night caregivers at her apartment noticed she was severely bleeding and called the ambulance to take her to the hospital.

One of the bad side effects from this new blood-thinner medicine she was on is gastrointestinal bleeding. Several people have died from it. As you can imagine we were very concerned for a few days as she continued to bleed. Finally, the bleeding stopped. The GI Dr. did a scope procedure on her and decided not to do any further treatment. Sometimes anesthesia for elderly people can be more life- threatening than the problem itself.

Mom is back in her apartment now. She is still very weak and sometimes confused. We have discussed several times whether she needs to live somewhere where she gets more consistent care, but being in her own place is comforting to her and to move her to a nursing home would be stressful. It will be a hard decision to make but one that needs to be made soon.

I’m camped in Bulldog Canyon again. It is only a short drive from Mom’s apartment so quite handy for me. When she was in the hospital I camped the other side of Phoenix at Buckeye Recreation area. Even though it was closer to the hospital it was still a long ride to go see her. I actually stayed one night in the parking lot of the hospital.

After Christmas I will return to the Quartzsite/Yuma area. I have met a lot of people over the years that will congregate around Q in January and I’m hoping to see some of them again. Then I will travel to Yuma and spend some time with Richard and Dianna. I still have some dental work planned while I’m there but that’s as far ahead as my plans go. And even those plans could change.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 20th, 2016 at 10:54 am and is filed under Adventure. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.