No more hair

More news!

Kara was approved for another week in the SNF.  She still has no roommate, which has been nice.  She had blood drawn today, and her liver enzymes continue to be elevated.  Hopefully this is not indicative of any new or yet undiscovered problem.

Our family brought an Easter picnic to Kara and spent the afternoon in her room.  Kara is very content and loves to play with her musical worm and octopus/sun/spider thing.  Today she even socialized during a "musical event" in the day room.

Tomorrow Kara will be getting a much needed haircut.  When she was in the hospital, she would thrash her head back and forth in pain.  Also, no one could brush her hair because she can't sit up.  As a consequence, Kara's hair is matted into one giant dreadlock.  It has reached a point of no return, and will probably be chopped off, which is particularly unfortunate because she has bald patches.

Finally, we have ordered a hospital bed for Kara's room at home, to hopefully make her discharge as smooth as possible.

Kara is very happy.

We are more than pleased with Kara's care in the SNF.  She seems happy all day, every day.  And Kara even annoyed her roommate away so she has her room to herself!  We haven't seen her this happy in months - meaning she was probably in a great deal of pain since her hip dislocated in December.  Hopefully Kara will only continue to improve.

We have never had the same skin tone! (This was probably when Kara was two and I was five or six.)

Kara has left the hospital!

Kara was discharged this morning around 10 am, and is now in a rehabilitation facility in Salinas.  At first it was overwhelming to leave a 19-year-old somewhere designed for geriatric patients, but the staff were warm and accommodating and Kara was content with her new environment.  We decorated her wall and bulletin board and brought her toys.  The nurse in charge of admissions told us that she is from Ohio where she worked in a residential facility for developmentally delayed minors and that she was very happy to work with Kara.  This definitely helped us relax.

Kara is residing in a short term rehabilitation wing, so the other patients seem to have their faculties intact and it really isn't the depressing environment I had anticipated.  Kara will be working with an occupational therapist and a physical therapist 5 days a week, so hopefully she will regain some of the skills she has lost throughout this whole ordeal.

As of today, Kara has only been approved for five days in this facility, with a discharge date of Tuesday, April 26.  Since an extension until her cast is off is unlikely, we are preparing our home for her to return soon.

And yet again we wait

Kara's placement is still not confirmed, so she has not been discharged.  IF everything is approved, she will likely be transferred tomorrow or Friday.  If not, she will come home.  Once at home, Kara will officially be ineligible for any skilled nursing or home nursing in the future.

We have a broken system.

Nevermind?

JUST as we are packing up to leave...in walks Kara's case manager.  We have a placement as of tomorrow.  So Kara will NOT be coming home, but rather will go to a skilled nursing facility.  It's not one of our favorites, but it's a start.

We will still keep our eyes open for a better facility if necessary.

Mission failed

As we keep getting rejected by nursing homes, we asked Kara's case manager to look for in-home nursing care to help us out.  Apparently there are no available caregivers anywhere in Monterey county.  So we are out of options.  To make matters worse, Kara just got a roommate that is screaming which is making her cry.

We are going to try to get the hell out of here tonight and just bring Kara home and see what happens.  Hopefully I won't have to quit working to help my family, but I don't know how we are going to do this.