Home-made Bed Alarm

Since Mom keeps trying to get out of bed, we decided we needed to get some sort of bed alarm like they have at the hospital. Because she was hooked up to all kinds of things while in the hospital, Mom's bed had an exit alarm. So if she started to leave the bed an alarm would go off, letting the nurses know they needed to come to her room as soon as possible to stop her. I decided to use one of Dad's fishing bells as a home-made bed alarm. I attached it to the bed rail that Mom uses to pull herself up on. The concept was great, the execution not so hot. The bell did not ring even when she had all her weight on the rail! I guess that's good, since that means it won't collapse under her massive 90 pound body!


Yumiko came by today to give Mom a bed bath. Mom really enjoys getting the bed baths now. Mom said she needed to use the commode so I got to watch Yumiko transfer Mom from the bed to the commode and back. I do a similar thing but since I am about the same height as Mom, I can't easily get her back up on the bed. Yumiko said this was probably the last time Mom would use the commode; she said Mom was not too stable sitting up on the commode.

We are not sure if Mom's instability while sitting was due to the haloperidol and lorazepam that I was giving Mom to get rid of her restlessness. But Mom was just about due for the next dose of both medications when Yumiko was here; she got them about 30 minutes after Yumiko left. We are tapering off so that she has none in her system by breakfast tomorrow; we'll see how rested she is and how much strength she has gained back after a good rest.

I asked Yumiko about the bed alarm. She passed the message on to Joey. Joey will arrange for a bed alarm for Mom, but delivery will be next week because I did not ask earlier in the week. Hopefully, the bed alarm will keep Mom in her bed!

Last night Kai stayed up to change Mom's briefs. But Mom would not listen to him, she kept trying to get out of bed and use the commode. So he would call me over the monitor so I could come and help him; I was very tired today. The first night Mom listened to Kai, she also recognized him as Kai. But last night she might have thought he was one of the Ho'okele caregivers, whom she does not like to listen to. Her reasoning is she is paying them, so they are supposed to do what she tells them to do. Tonight he will try starting each interaction with, "Hi, Grandma! It's Kai! Would you like your water?" (or whatever is going on).

Kai looking in on Mom to see if she needs help.

This evening Mom complained of being unable to urinate even though her bladder was full. With the briefs it was easy to see if she had gone. The answer was, No. Previously on the commode she would go and not know she had gone. This was new. I palpated her abdomen and found her bladder was full. For a whole hour she was unable to urinate so I called the Hospice Hawai'i on-call nurse line. Shawn showed up about an hour later; in the meanwhile, Mom had urinated but she also coughed up another chunk of very bloody phlegm. Shawn checked Mom out and found nothing wrong. He said the amount of urine she produced was good, her lungs had a little congestion, and if she started always coughing up very bloody phlegm that might be a problem. (Shawn is the RN that delivered the comfort kit when we first started Mom in hospice.)

David is coming on Sunday. He'll be here until Wednesday.

Happy Birthday to Ron!