Dan and I got to visit with Estelle briefly this morning. She was on her way to the shower when we got there and because Dan had to be at work we did not get to stay long enough for the staff to complete her shower and get her resituated again. We did get to say hello to her and I was able to check on her hand which looked good.
The reason Dan had taken the morning off was twofold. I had received a call from the nurse there yesterday and the nurse wanted to speak to Dan. I explained that he was at work and unreachable and asked if she could please tell me whatever it was she had called about. She then informed me that my name had somehow been removed from the "contact" list and she was no longer allowed to give me any information concerning Estelle's condition. I asked to speak to the nursing supervisor but she was unavailable and the social worker was not answering her phone. I did manage to reach Dan and have him call the nursing home and it turned out that an aide had accidently cut Mom's thumb while trimming her nails and they wanted to let him know.
Dan attempted to straighten out the "contact" with the nurse but she was unable to change anything so we decided that he should take half a day off today to fix it just in case something should happen in the meantime.
We met with the social worker today and she has, once again, added my name to the contact sheet so we should be ok. It's disturbing, however, because no one seems to know what happened to the original contact page in Mom's chart or how it disappeared or why this new one suddenly (within the last two or three weeks) appeared in it's place. They insist that very few people have access to changing the information and that no information is ever changed without contacting the family first so it's a real mystery as to what may have happened.
I am only glad that it was caught before anything more serious occurred. I would have hated for Estelle to have been taken to the hospital or to have become seriously ill and not been notified and thus she would have been left alone to deal with whatever had happened to her. It is not always possible to reach Dan during the day and even when it is, it is time-consuming and he is much further away from Woodbine and the hospital than I am. What would take me 10 minutes would take him close to two hours in travel time.
Anyhow - all is well for now. Mom was awake and looking around but not talking. She did not respond to us but, again, she was half-way out the door on the way to the shower room and it generally takes her a good 10 to 15 minutes to begin talking if she's awake. Her finger looked ok - there's a small scratch on the tip of her thumb but they cleaned it well and are keeping an eye on it.
I've just gotten off the phone with the doctor's office and they've started Estelle on a five day course of antibiotics just to ward off the possiblity of another cellulitis.
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