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What's Goin on with Skal IRL? (Updated)
5 years ago
Alright, so I figured that, instead of throwing bits and pieces of all of this to numerous different friends I'd just throw it here instead, since many of you watch me on here anyway.
As several of you know I'm a caretaker for my 86y/o grandmother, much like my friend Ries is for hers. This comes with various responsibilities, but that the one that effects all of you is when I have to randomly get up and leave with little to no explanation. As of late that's been happening very often.
Why?
While we hypothesize that this problem likely started a few weeks ago (Looking back at things), it didnt become a major issue until recently. Plane and simple, my grandmother started hallucinating left and right. Like, hardcore hallucinating. This happened to her a few years ago on the week of my brother's wedding, so we figured that it was the same issue: a UTI. (Google it if you dont know what it is.) Collected a urine sample from her and sent it in, however her doctor prescribed her an antibiotic for the supposed infection even before the results of the test had come back. No problems there. Looking at her medical records, and educated guess would come to the conclusion that a UTI was the cause and he wanted to get the medication in our hands as soon as possible. For that I thank him. However, its 6 days later; she's only gotten worse, and the test came back as negative for a UTI.
OhBoyNowWhatIsIt.jpeg
Over the last few days she has been seeing progressively more things, having conversations with entities that dont exist where she sees them, and refuses to believe us when we tell her that she's hallucinating. She woke me up at 2:30am this morning and asked me to fix her breakfast so that she could go to her appointments. Its Monday. She has no appointments until Wednesday. Got her back to bed after she realized what time it actually was, then proceeded to listen to her talk to imaginary entities for the next 8 hours, unable to fall asleep myself, bringing my grand total of sleep to about 3 hours. In those 8 hours of time she walked all the way to the back door, unlocked, and opened it because she thought there was a little girl running around her house. For an 86y/o that's prone to falling I cant begin to explain how dangerous that is for her to be doing when she has no concept of what's actually going on.
Long story short she's on her way to the hospital right now. We decided to skip the blood work and just take her straight there, hopefully get it done there, and figure out what's actually wrong with her. So if I seem a little distant then y'all know why.
To make things clear I'm not overly depressed about what's going on or worried to stressing out or anything of that nature. I'm pretty ok on that front all things considered. With her at the age that she's at I've come to terms with the realization that she'll be lucky to last until this time next year. I've watched her steady decline over the last 6 years since her husband passed and I'm honestly surprised that she's made it this long.
While the situation is certainly not ideal right now I realize that things could be much worse. Just because I live with her 24/7 doesnt mean that she's safe. I have to sleep some time, and if she gets up in the middle of the night and wanders after some imaginary child and out her door while I'm sleeping there's no amount of calling that she can do that I'm going to hear; or worse yet if she falls and cracks her head on something and knocks herself out. She cant call then.
So yea. Things kinda suck right now, but no amount of worrying or stressing is going to fix that. All I can do is wait to see what's up.
EDIT: Little bit of an update for y'all. She's been admitted to the hospital. IDK how long for. Mother and her are still waiting for a room. They had to sedate grandma because she was getting agitated. Did a CT scan on her and found that there's blood pooling in a section of her brain, which is likely causing pressure and causing the hallucinations. I imagine they'll have to drain it and then monitor her for a few days to make sure that it doesnt com back.
EDIT 2: After some neural scanning along with a bunch of other tests and shit it looks like what was causing the hallucinations was a buildup of ammonia in the liver. From what I'm told, when folk get older they sometimes lose the ability for their digestive system to properly break down meats, and having the undissolved food sit in their system causes a buildup of ammonia. Shes coherent today and will likely be coming home around noonish. They also took her off of several medications, so that will hopefully improve her overall mood as well.
Thank you to those of you who have reached out to me over the last few days with words and actions of support. It was greatly appreciated. ♥
☕
As several of you know I'm a caretaker for my 86y/o grandmother, much like my friend Ries is for hers. This comes with various responsibilities, but that the one that effects all of you is when I have to randomly get up and leave with little to no explanation. As of late that's been happening very often.
Why?
While we hypothesize that this problem likely started a few weeks ago (Looking back at things), it didnt become a major issue until recently. Plane and simple, my grandmother started hallucinating left and right. Like, hardcore hallucinating. This happened to her a few years ago on the week of my brother's wedding, so we figured that it was the same issue: a UTI. (Google it if you dont know what it is.) Collected a urine sample from her and sent it in, however her doctor prescribed her an antibiotic for the supposed infection even before the results of the test had come back. No problems there. Looking at her medical records, and educated guess would come to the conclusion that a UTI was the cause and he wanted to get the medication in our hands as soon as possible. For that I thank him. However, its 6 days later; she's only gotten worse, and the test came back as negative for a UTI.
OhBoyNowWhatIsIt.jpeg
Over the last few days she has been seeing progressively more things, having conversations with entities that dont exist where she sees them, and refuses to believe us when we tell her that she's hallucinating. She woke me up at 2:30am this morning and asked me to fix her breakfast so that she could go to her appointments. Its Monday. She has no appointments until Wednesday. Got her back to bed after she realized what time it actually was, then proceeded to listen to her talk to imaginary entities for the next 8 hours, unable to fall asleep myself, bringing my grand total of sleep to about 3 hours. In those 8 hours of time she walked all the way to the back door, unlocked, and opened it because she thought there was a little girl running around her house. For an 86y/o that's prone to falling I cant begin to explain how dangerous that is for her to be doing when she has no concept of what's actually going on.
Long story short she's on her way to the hospital right now. We decided to skip the blood work and just take her straight there, hopefully get it done there, and figure out what's actually wrong with her. So if I seem a little distant then y'all know why.
To make things clear I'm not overly depressed about what's going on or worried to stressing out or anything of that nature. I'm pretty ok on that front all things considered. With her at the age that she's at I've come to terms with the realization that she'll be lucky to last until this time next year. I've watched her steady decline over the last 6 years since her husband passed and I'm honestly surprised that she's made it this long.
While the situation is certainly not ideal right now I realize that things could be much worse. Just because I live with her 24/7 doesnt mean that she's safe. I have to sleep some time, and if she gets up in the middle of the night and wanders after some imaginary child and out her door while I'm sleeping there's no amount of calling that she can do that I'm going to hear; or worse yet if she falls and cracks her head on something and knocks herself out. She cant call then.
So yea. Things kinda suck right now, but no amount of worrying or stressing is going to fix that. All I can do is wait to see what's up.
EDIT: Little bit of an update for y'all. She's been admitted to the hospital. IDK how long for. Mother and her are still waiting for a room. They had to sedate grandma because she was getting agitated. Did a CT scan on her and found that there's blood pooling in a section of her brain, which is likely causing pressure and causing the hallucinations. I imagine they'll have to drain it and then monitor her for a few days to make sure that it doesnt com back.
EDIT 2: After some neural scanning along with a bunch of other tests and shit it looks like what was causing the hallucinations was a buildup of ammonia in the liver. From what I'm told, when folk get older they sometimes lose the ability for their digestive system to properly break down meats, and having the undissolved food sit in their system causes a buildup of ammonia. Shes coherent today and will likely be coming home around noonish. They also took her off of several medications, so that will hopefully improve her overall mood as well.
Thank you to those of you who have reached out to me over the last few days with words and actions of support. It was greatly appreciated. ♥
☕
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