More Mom -- Update

It was just the 3rd week of March when we were convinced that we were losing T's mom -- all of us trying to prepare ourselves for the worst.  Then, seemingly miraculously, Mom recovered and came home.  She's not been as good as she was before the last crisis, but she was surely doing better. 

The diagnostic work that doctor's did in the wake of the last scare showed that there is something called organizing pneumonia in her lungs.  The prescribed treatment -- massive doses of prednisone.  We are glad for the hope of a diagnosis and a treatment plan, but both Master and I have had parents treated with heavy doses of prednisone, and we were both nervous about the likely side effects:

amnesia, anxiety, benign intracranial hypertension, convulsions, delirium, dementia (characterized by deficits in memory retention, attention, concentration, mental speed and efficiency, and occupational performance), depression, dizziness, EEG abnormalities, emotional instability and irritability, euphoria, hallucinations, headache, impaired cognition, incidence of severe psychiatric symptoms, increased intracranial pressure with papilledema (pseudotumor cerebri) usually following discontinuation of treatment, increased motor activity, insomnia, ischemic neuropathy, long-term memory loss, mania, mood swings, neuritis, neuropathy, paresthesia, personality changes, psychiatric disorders including steroid psychoses or aggravation of pre-existing psychiatric conditions, restlessness, schizophrenia, verbal memory loss, vertigo, withdrawn behavior

Saturday afternoon, as we were preparing to leave for an evening with friends, T got a call from her niece reporting that Mom was behaving very strangely.  Clearly the niece was concerned -- maybe even frightened.  T hung up the phone, and we all talked it over and came to the conclusion that it would be wise to have them take Mom to the emergency room.  T called back and suggested that -- and so it was. 

She headed out and met the family there and they did a thorough work up; checking for kidney issues and urinary tract infections and stroke and heart failure...  Every test came back negative, thank goodness, and they sent her home with anti-psychotic medication to manage the prednisone side effects. 

Once again, we all breathed a sigh of relief.  There's no telling how many more of these we've got ahead of us, but for today, we still have Mom, and that makes this lovely spring day seem even brighter.

swan