Mom's Coming Home

Assuming the numbers come out all right today, my mother will be coming home for a while. They have a value that represents the amount of methatrexate in her system. When that number hits 0.20 she can go home. It was 0.33 yesterday after being 2.something on Monday.

She will need to go back to the hospital in about a week and a half for her second dose of methatrexate. That being the nastier drug, needs to be monitored by the hospital. Her other chemo drugs can be done on an outpatient basis.

I think this is a good thing, but it also concerns me.

On Monday evening she was still pretty confused. There are a lot of things that she remembers clearly that never happened. What if she continues to be this confused while she's home alone with Dad? What if Dad falls asleep one night and Mom decides she's going to go visit her sister who lives next door... when neither of her sisters have ever lived next door. What if she walks outside and then can't figure out where she is? What do we do then?

We all feel the same way about this. My father included. So when the topic of discharge came up he spoke to the doctors about it. He was told that in most cases the patients confusion decreases when they are at home in their normal environment. They expect that to happen in my mother's case. The doctor was convincing enough to alleviate most of my father's anxiety on the issue. I wish I had been there to hear it too, because hearing it second hand is helping, but not that much. I am really worried about the next few days.

Fingers crossed.

So two weekends ago we were unable to visit my mother in the hospital because Jen caught the flu. Last weekend it looked like I was coming down with it too and that pretty much screwed us again. This weekend, as we just found out minutes ago, my step daughter has strep throat again. We can't catch a break.