Not so good today

Well, Rick doesn’t seem to be doing as well today. I went in to feed him for breakfast. He still needed to be reminded to swallow and sometimes would choke on it. I noticed that he would grimace some when swallowing, like maybe his throat hurt. I didn’t pay too much attention to it. Tonight when I was there for supper, he ate 75% of his pureed food, drank 8 oz of thickened orange juice and some of his thickened tea. But with each bite he grimaced when he swallowed. And sometimes he would grimace with the food being in his mouth. I had to remind him to swallow. He did better with the liquids. I couldn’t figure out why his throat was hurting him. Then I remembered that antibiotics can cause yeast infections. Candida, or thrush, is a yeast infection of the mouth that can be very painful. So when he finished eating I looked into his mouth. Sure enough, there was white stuff on his tongue. I shared this with the nurse, Elaine, who was on tonight. She just nodded her head and said she would check it again when she did his breathing treatment. Another thing… His skin felt hot again. I asked what his temperature was and they said it was normal. So I asked for a thermometer so I could take it. It was 99.9 axilary which is 100.9. I can’t figure out why his temperature would be back up. He was warm this morning too, but since they said his temperature was normal I didn’t go any further. I told Elaine about this too. She said that if he was still bad in the morning she would call the doctor. When I got home tonight, I saw my neighbor, Donna, out in her yard. I went over to talk to her. She is a registered nurse who works with this kind of thing regularly. She felt that the doctor should be notified right away about the thrush, and get it taken care of before it gets worse. So I called Heritage to talk with Elaine. She had already left. I asked to speak with the nurse who was on. It is Angelica. She gave the message back to me that she would call me back when she got through passing out medications. I felt a little put off by this. When she called me she said Rick was fine. I told her his temperature was elevated and that I thought he had thrush. She said this wasn’t reported to her at the change of shifts. And when they took Rick’s temperature it was normal. I told her that I felt something should be done about the thrush as soon as possible. She said she would evaluate him when she was giving his breathing treatment. I asked that she call me back when she completes the evaluation. She said she would. I’ve been saying that I have felt they have been taking good care of Rick during this illness. But I’m not too pleased with today’s responses. 9:30 pm Angelica called me back. She said she didn’t see any white on his tongue. She said he was sleeping well now and doing ok. So I guess we will wait until tomorrow to see if anything else needs to be done.