Saturday, January 17, 2009

Yeah, it really can happen that fast.

Yesterday at supper time we sent a resident to the ER for ridiculously high blood sugar. I had given the resident their normal evening medications at around five pm. This resident suffers from dementia, so they seemed "normal" to me. For a change, they didn't try to chew their pills and I considered this a good thing.

When we got the call from the hospital, the resident "may have had a heart attack and a stroke" and were being admitted. Yeah, it really can happen that fast and without any real warning. The high blood sugar was telling us something was out of whack, but no one thought it was pointing to a stroke and heart-attack.

The resident is in the "old-old" age group and has not been with us for very long. Assuming that until they moved into the facility, they had been living a relatively healthy life (and I would say this is the case based on the relatively small amount of medication they are on), this is the way to go. When you start to go downhill, take the extra slippery slope so you don't spend years and years being miserable before you cross over.

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