Author: George Malik

I received an unwelcome call late on Sunday morning, informing me that my aunt had tested positive for COVID after three-and-a-half weeks bouncing in and out of hospitals and sub-acute care facilities.

The facility where she’s being treated has apparently had a small outbreak, and five residents have been affected, including an aunt who has been downright antisocial over the past two-and-a-half years to ensure that her immune-compromised body not encounter anyone who might have been exposed to COVID.

I took a test on Sunday (as I’d spent Saturday with my aunt) and tested negative, and I’ll continue to monitor my situation over the next couple of days…

Because I spent Monday afternoon in full PPE, visiting with a more-than-slightly-pissed-off 80-year-old who feels terrible, but is at least not dealing with the most acute symptoms of a virus that’s making her feel miserable, but nothing worse than that.

It’s been three weeks since my aunt was hospitalized for the first time, and she’s been in the nursing home/rehab facility for a week now.

She’s utterly exhausted, mentally as much as physically, from living in a facility where there is no rest from constant noise and negotiation with overworked nursing staff for basic care.

I’m also exhausted from worry, financial and health-related uncertainty, worries about what will happen when she comes home, and, after two weeks spent in a hotel and two-and-a-half weeks spent alone at home, I’m pretty bloody lonely in an empty condominium.

We have a week to go (hopefully) in terms of Aunt Annie’s institutionalization. Our insurance coverage runs out on Thursday, October 20th, and the nursing home is essentially dumping her out upon the world six days from now.

Hockey friends,

On the day that the Red Wings establish their 23-man roster (with a few players placed on LTIR for good measure), I’m headed out to the nursing home where Aunt Annie has been placed for another visit.

She’s had an incredibly difficult time adjusting from acute care to sub-acute care, and as hard as the first couple of days in the cardiac ward were, I would argue that the last four days’ worth of fighting with both the aunt and fighting with her medical caregivers to ensure that she receives a high level of care have been more exhausting.

I’m doing my best to make sure that everything’s taken care of, but there are times that my little 80-year-old can be her own worst enemy, and that’s been innervating.

So I’m still on the IR for another day or three while we get Aunt Annie truly settled into her rehabilitative routine. I desperately miss “normal” life, working for you included, and I will be back as soon as humanly possible.

Once again, my apologies for not being on the blog today, but yesterday night, we moved Aunt Annie from Beaumont’s cardiac ward to sub-acute health care (a.k.a. a rehabilitation facility); it sounds like things are still being worked out, so I need to get over there ASAP and make sure that she’s getting her pain medications and whatever else she needs.

Sometimes you have to be a pain in the ass to get things done, and as the caregiver, it’s my job to be that PITA.

I hope to be back and on Twitter for tonight’s game, but one never knows. I hope you all are doing well and I miss talking hockey with you very much.

Tomorrow marks two weeks since my aunt fell down the stairs. She is still hospitalized at Beaumont as of this morning, but we are hopeful that she will be transferred to a nursing home/rehab facility in Novi sometime this afternoon.

Aunt Annie had a heart catheterization on Monday, and it showed no blockages, but the cardiologists also diagnosed the chemical present when heart muscles have been damaged, so she’s had a heart attack of some sort at some point. We’re following up with the head of cardiology at Beaumont.

At this point, they’ve decided to treat AA’s heart failure (a condition that is surprisingly survivable!) with medication as opposed to placing a pacemaker with a defibrillator inside her. I’m not thrilled with that decision, but it’s not mine to make.

Ideally speaking, once she gets placed in the nursing home/rehab facility, and it’s up to her standards in terms of post-acute care, then a week or two of PT should help her regain her ability to get up the three steps on our porch and finally come home to Netflix and her JUUL.

I’m incredibly likely to miss the Red Wings-Penguins game tonight (7:30 PM EDT on Bally Sports Detroit Extra and the NHL Network [edit: as well as WWJ Newsradio 950]; I’m DVR’ing the game) because today is “Game Day” at Beaumont.

Aunt Annie is having her cardiac catheterization procedure at 4 PM EDT, and if the doctors don’t find anything, they’re going to discharge her tomorrow…

To nursing home care. Regrettably, she’s far too fragile to be discharged to home care, so she needs some institutional rehabilitation and PT/OT. We’ll be picking a nursing home/rehab facility that’s closer to South Lyon today, regardless of her discharge date.

My aunt’s family physician for the last forty years said something that shocked me yesterday: “Well, your aunt’s in heart failure, but I’m fairly optimistic that with the right combination of medications, we should get this looked after.”

And that is where we’re at right now. Aunt Annie is in Beaumont, and, technically speaking, she is in heart failure. Her heart’s running at about 20% efficiency, and her pulse is somewhere around 110 beats per minute as the fluid around her heart and in her lungs continue to make it harder for her heart to pump blood around her body.

Just a quick update: it sounds like dear Aunt Annie is going to be spending the weekend in the hospital, and may have a cardiac catheterization of some sort on Monday. Details are murky right now, but the Friday doctors are still making their rounds, and I’ve been asked to come to the hospital later today, so I’m kind of stuck doing caregiver stuff instead of blogging.

Not being on the blog for a third day is absolutely driving me crazy with frustration, and I miss talking hockey with you all very badly, but right now, when Aunt Annie calls, I’ve got to haul ass to Royal Oak. I am hoping to return in a day or two, especially given that AA is going to spend the weekend in the hospital before the catheterization on Monday.

It also appears that we’ve gotten good news on the hockey front: the Red Wings Tweeted out an indication that tonight’s game vs. Washington will be streamed on DetroitRedWings.com as well as broadcast on WWJ Newsradio 950…

I’m opening up the laptop at 9:09 PM at night after closing it just after 8:13 AM.

I’ve driven more than 300 miles today, and 238 of them were coming back from Traverse City. The rest of them were driving to and from Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak.

My aunt is in the cardiac unit at Beaumont. She has fluid around her heart and fluid in her lungs. That should be taken care of via diuretics and whatever the cardiologists determine when they meet with her and do an ultrasound of her heart tomorrow morning.

That was the story that I was told when I was there to see her, and I hope that things hold out that way. She’s a lot more humble than I’ve seen her in a long time regarding her health, though my dear aunt remains as insolent and willful as you would expect from the plucky 80-year-old.

Long story long, however, if she hadn’t fallen down the stairs, suffering compression fractures to her back and neck, she wouldn’t have gone to Providence and they wouldn’t have diagnosed her sodium levels as near fatally low…

Hi everyone,

I made it back safely to South Lyon, but I was surprised to not find my Aunt Annie at home. I’ve been informed that she had to be admitted to the ER at a different hospital after deteriorating last night.

She’s going to be admitted to the facility with fluid around her heart, and she wants me to come across town to see her, so I may it may not be able to update the blog at all this evening.

My apologies for any inconvenience.