Over the last weeks, my father was having a hard time figuring out that he was in the hospital. When he knew he was in the hospital, he was often confused about where he was in the building, and was worried that the nurses wouldn't be able to find him.
I remembered what the pastors had said about not fighting over those things. It's hard, though, when you don't realize what's going on in a conversation. Sometimes a daughter or a visitor or even a wife will be trying to help a patient, but get pretty darned lost as to what's going on.
What's especially hard is knowing how unhappy your patient is, all hooked up to tubes and IV's, knowing how much he wants to get out of the hospital and just go home. But he can't. He can't have a drink. He can't get up and go to the bathroom. He can't have a snack. He can't move be moved to a different room just because he feels like it. The patient is convinced that his family members (and even the nurses) don't care about him, won't give him what he wants, and are way off-base as to what he needs. But he is wrong: they are doing what's good for him even though he's uncomfortable and not getting his way.
No matter what he imagines about where he is, no matter what he thinks about the family's "lack of love" in refusing to check him out of the hospital, those thoughts are just confusion borne of the situation and the medications and the lack of sleep and other things that interfere with good sense. Sometimes when a patient is confused and in pain, his feelings and his experience seem much more important than what his caretakers insist is necessary for his recovery.
Sunday, November 25, 2007
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This is something I've had to learn. If someone can be reoriented using only gentle persuasion, then that's good. But otherwise you just have to take the time to figure out where "they are" and convince them within that about what needs to be done.
ReplyDeleteI think hallucination is the hardest thing I've had to deal with at work, even more than dementia.