Her cognition was worse after the hospitalization. This is documented; it’s called post-operative cognitive dysfunction in older patients and it can be temporary or it can indicate something more significant. In her case it was the latter. The physician told me, in the careful language they use, that her baseline had shifted and we should “adjust expectations” for her recovery trajectory.
Adjusting expectations meant: she was not going to be what she had been before the fall. We were going to manage from a new baseline.
The new baseline required changes at the house. A second railing on the staircase. A shower chair because the bath had become dangerous. The hospital bed in the back bedroom on a more permanent basis. Theresa’s Saturday mornings increased to Saturday and Wednesday. I reduced the part-time work to about ten hours a week, which I could manage remotely in blocks around her schedule.
I did not track the financial impact of the reduced hours in the folder because reduced hours is not an invoice. It is just the gap where income would have been.
In June, two months before she died, she had what the doctor called “a clearer period.” A week when she was more present, more like herself. She wanted to go outside. We sat on the back porch on a Tuesday afternoon and she drank her tea and she pointed out which perennials had done well that season and which ones had “decided to be difficult,” which was her phrase for plants that weren’t performing.