We interrupt This Quiet Time

With a Blog Post!! No pictures but I can put some words down for you.

The past two days have been spent taking care of family. We have a family member here in the Loops that has been dealing with Dementia. To make a long story short she has been getting progressively worse over the past few months.

Things have come to a head the past few days and her current home situation is longer viable for her. She has been an insulin dependent diabetic for years and has managed herself very well. She has deteriorated to the point where she can longer manage her medications on her own and she has been getting lost in the community she has lived in for years. It was important for her safety that we get her some immediate care.

The only way to get her into the system is to take her to the emergency room at the local hospital, this is a grand adventure due to bed shortages. I took her to then ER today and sat in the waiting room there from 9 in the morning to 3:30 in the afternoon. It took over 6 hours to even get a doctor to see her.

I don't blame them for the delay. When there are people out there bleeding on the floor a dementia patient takes the back seat. I can't say I understand why the ER is the only way to get what is basically a psych. case into the hospital but it is. Once I finally got her admitted it got even more illogical to me. She needs to be moved to a room upstairs to empty the bed in the ER, she is now occupying, but wait...there are no available beds upstairs.

So where is she now? She is admitted to the hospital, but still taking a bed in the ER. This means that everyone else that comes through those doors that needs immediate care can't get it because now there are no beds in the ER because there are cases in the ER that are not emergencies that have no where else to go.

The good news: now that she had been admitted to the hospital they can't release her back into her own home once it is determined she is a danger to herself. This means she is officially IN THE SYSTEM and is on her way to get the assisted living care she really needs.

I guess in this case the end does justify the means.