Life imitating...work.

For the past five and a half weeks, I've been on my psychiatry rotation. I've dealt with patients with a myriad of diagnoses. Some live with their families or on their own. Some live in nursing homes or group homes. Some did live with their families or on their own will have to move into a nursing or group home upon discharge. That's always hard to take. It means that the families of these people can no longer care for them. It's a difficult decision but one that sometimes has to be made.

As I've been dealing with this regarding my patients at work, I've also been dealing with this in my family. My grandmother has some form of dementia. We don't know what it is...she refuses to let them do any "tests." Her health is failing, too...to the point that my grandfather took her to the emergency room this last week and she was put in the hospital for several days. Unfortunately, my grandmother became very agitated at the thought of going to the big University Medical Center and convinced my grandfather to take her to the smaller local hospital. They still don't know what's wrong. My grandmother knows my name when I call, but if I call her in the morning and again in the evening, by the evening, often she has completely forgotten the morning phone call. She is confused and emotionally labile much of the time. My grandfather is at a loss of what to do.

I have an aunt with a mental illness who regularly goes off of her medication. She stopped again a couple of weeks ago and disappeared for a few days causing us to file a missing persons report with the police. She has reached the point where she can no longer live alone. For the past several years, she's lived in a retirement/assisted living community. That's really no longer feasible. She needs someone to administer her medications to her twice a day...every day. How do you tell an adult that they essentially need a babysitter?

My uncle with frontotemporal dementia had to take early retirement. He and my aunt just sold their dream house to move into an apartment because he can't function like he used to. He no longer drives and just doesn't have the ability to perform many of the activities he used to love.

So live is imitating work right now...I don't like it, but I know God has it in His hands and even though I don't always feel like He hears my prayers...I know He does.