My Mother's Hospitalization (4) - Mind and Healing Power
◆ The Meaning of Keeping Records
I often get too tired from daily chores to keep records. But it is better to write them down. Even bullet points are fine. Not just for the sake of keeping notes, but to properly feel my own emotions. When people are too busy, they swallow their emotions without truly feeling them. That is not good for the mind or body.
◆ Risks of Hospitalization
My elderly mother fell and broke her femur. When elderly people are hospitalized, there are various risks. There is a possibility of developing other illnesses while in the hospital. Since she has a urinary catheter, there is a risk of urinary tract infections, pneumonia, or other infections. Also, because she is not moving, blood clots are more likely to form, which can lead to cerebral infarction or pulmonary embolism. Even more serious is the risk of dementia.
◆ Postoperative Delirium
Are you familiar with the term postoperative delirium? It is not limited to the elderly; when people undergo surgery, they can become mentally unstable. Some may show no reaction, have nonsensical conversations, or even experience visual hallucinations.
It is said that the excessive physical and mental burden of surgery, especially the effects of anesthesia on the brain, may cause such symptoms, and according to nurses, 80% of people experience this after surgery.
Even young people can experience postoperative delirium. An acquaintance of mine who developed cancer in their 20s told me that after their surgery, when they woke up in the middle of the night, they saw hallucinations of people wearing masks surrounding their bed, like a grim Halloween scene. Fortunately, they recovered after a while.
◆ The Impact of Dementia
That person was a representative of a cancer patient support group, and they said that what makes cancer surgery difficult for the elderly is that a certain percentage of them develop dementia.
I thought that once someone has dementia, they can no longer think of ways to defend themselves against various dangers, which causes the risk of other illnesses and injuries to skyrocket, and that is indeed the case.
Furthermore, as dementia progresses, if rehabilitation is needed for a fracture like my mother's, the patient cannot understand what is being said, making rehabilitation extremely difficult.
As an aside, it seems that treating fractures in animals is extremely difficult. They cannot recognize that they have a fracture, and you cannot tell them what to be careful about to avoid worsening the injury. Often, nothing can be done for animal fractures, and they are just left as is...
◆ Fractures and Mental Burden
In my mother's case, even after the anesthesia wore off following the surgery, she was still saying nonsensical things, so I was very worried about whether she would return to normal, but by the next day, she was able to converse to some extent. First, the initial hurdle was cleared.
In any case, I felt that she must not develop dementia or depression. It might be hard for healthy people to imagine, but a femoral fracture involves excruciating pain. That alone is stressful enough, but not being able to move one's body and being in a monotonous hospital room is also a significant environmental damage. I thought that even if she didn't develop dementia, there was a high possibility of her falling into a depressive state.
◆ Topics as Catalysts
Because of that, and since I am not a company employee, I have relatively flexible time. At first, I went to visit her every day.
Then, by coincidence, my mother liked plants, and I like plants too, so I wrote the names and simple explanations (for example, writing the place of origin—cosmos, which looks like an ancient Japanese plant, is actually a plant from South America that arrived in the Meiji era) on photos I took with my smartphone during walks. I think I printed and gave her about 50 different kinds.
My mother said she couldn't listen to the radio or watch TV, I think because of the pain and mental fatigue. But she said she could look at the plant photos and descriptions, and that it was a great distraction.
People cannot communicate just by speaking the same language; they need some common topic. And it needs to be something that suits the individual. This is even more important during illness or injury.
This is a difficult area for nurses and caregivers. It has to be family. I have a chronic illness and there is little I can do. I decided to make giving her plant photos and descriptions the center of my support.
◆ Mind and Healing Power
I had read a book called "Healing and the Mind," and I happened to be re-reading it before my mother got injured. It is a quite old book, but it contained interviews by journalist Bill Moyers with experts who were practicing the idea that approaching the mind can have a major impact on recovery from illness.
There was an easy-to-understand example where patients who underwent surgery recovered statistically faster if they were in a room with a good view of the outside compared to those in a room without one, but there was also more specialized content.
This is a bit technical, but one expert mentioned that information-carrying substances once thought to exist only in the brain have been found throughout the body, suggesting that the mind is not just in the brain, but that the neural network throughout the body might also be part of the mind.
The prediction that the nervous system and immune system are in communication, and that the state of the mind and the risk of infection are closely related.
Not just immunity, but the state of the mind should also improve blood flow and other circulation, which would have a tremendous impact on recovery.
I also intuitively felt that way (I had felt that way based on things I had actually experienced, seen, and heard, but that would be a long story, so I would like to write about it separately if I have the chance), so I felt that it was absolutely better to work on the mind.
My mother is grateful for my frequent visits and for bringing the plant photos, but those things are at the root of it. What I am doing is not just out of kindness.
◆ What I Want to Convey
Perhaps this is an important thing. And having an injury or illness is something that happens to everyone. I shared this in the hope that it might be helpful.
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Postscript
My mother's progress
My mother, who is in her 80s,
suffered a complex fracture of her femur and underwent surgery five days after the injury.
Immediately after the surgery, she was bedridden and required excretion management using diapers and a urinary catheter.
After that, she began rehabilitation, and about 10 days later, she was able to sit up on her own and use a bedside commode for excretion.
I think her improvement is quite fast for her age.