Called Mom this morning, and she's in excruciating pain with her shoulder. She woke up at 5AM from the pain. Although the doctor told her to alternate heat and cold, the home won't offer her a cold pack. I've asked Gilly to go down and take her to hospital this morning as there may be further damage from the fall, or the attempts to pick her up.

I asked Mom what happened with breakfast this morning, and she said when she went to the dining room they had put out the wheeled chair I explicitly told them not to use. Mom keeps saying "It was fine, I sat in those chairs for years with no problem." She simply doesn't understand that she no longer has the balance to use that type of chair, and she is very likely to injure herself again.

I tried to call Nancy, but she hadn't arrived yet. I left her a voice mail asking her to call me.

I've also asked Gilly to go to the dining room and take away the chair when she goes to take Mom to hospital, but Gilly is reluctant because she doesn't want to fight with anyone. I get that she's tired, but really, we're talking about our ...mother's safety. All she has to do is go in and take the chair and leave the building. It's Mom's property, so there's not a whole hell of a lot they can do about that. I think her safety is more important than an aversion to confrontation, and I would also feel less like a single parent if it wasn't all up to me to deal with this shit.

My mom phoned me at 9AM this morning, quite confused and upset. She was calling to ask my advice.

She had just come from breakfast. Because she is so fat, she has a special designated chair in the dining room. It has no arms, as her bum can't fit in chairs that do have arms. She was sitting eating breakfast, and suddenly her chair just collapsed underneath her. She was lying on the floor, struggling but unable to get up. Her shoulder has been painful for weeks and her knees are bad. The staff were trying to figure out how to pick her up, but given those complications they had no idea what to do. Mom pushed her LifeSign button on her necklace, because she wanted an ambulance. However, she doesn't understand that you have to be in the same room as the phone unit. Mom said the LifeSign operator said to just call an ambulance, which I guess means that one of the staff went to her room to speak with the operator. And ambulance was called, and the EMTs checked her over and determined she was not seriously injured. At some point one of the nurses gave her a pillow for under her head, but I don't know how long it was before they did that.

Mom says the way they eventually got her off the floor was they got a long sheet and somehow wrapped it around her body and another one around her ankles, and lifted her that way. I can't picture how it was done. Anyway, it worked.

So after all this, the staff had the nerve to say that since that was the only armless chair they had in the home, that Mom was responsible for buying her own chair! When Mom told me this, I just about hit the roof. While my mom is very obese and exceptionally wide, she doesn't actually weigh much more than me. The reasons she's so fat with that weight are that she's 7 inches shorter than me, and he weight is made up of fat. I'm tall, and my weight is largely made up of dense bone and muscle. It is not at all unreasonable to expect the home to have a chair sturdy enough to support up to 300 pounds. You know, not all sick old people are skinny!

So I told Mom my opinion, and advised that she see a doctor to document any bruising. She said the EMTs had done a check and determined she was OK, so at least there will be documentation there from outside the home. Mom had a mobility bus booked to take her to and from church today, but she said she was feeling too shaky to go and was worried that if she skipped it she would be penalised for not showing up for the bus. I told her not to worry, the staff should tell the driver she had a bad fall and wasn't p to going out today, and if there was any problem with GRT I would explain things to them. After all, there is nobody at the mobility bus booking office on weekends, so there's no way she can call and lt them know.

Tomorrow morning, I'll be calling Nancy, the manager of the home. I'll also call CCAC and report my concerns, and possibly a lawyer if Nancy doesn't apologise for Mom's treatment and agree to get a new, stronger chair.

I hope Nancy sees it my way, or Mom may end up having to move again. She was NEVER treated this badly in the other two homes!