I haven’t been talking about my mother, because I just can’t. Thank goodness my parents had a second child. Alison (who has power of attorney) has had a work and personal life that means that she understands the systems, knows the questions to ask, and understands the answers. Still, everything is so complicated and hard for people with a background like hers—how does the normal person navigate this stuff? I simply shut down.
My mother went was hospitalized July 2, was there about 10 days, maybe, then went to rehab, where she’s been since. I can’t go into everything, but here is a frantic e-mail I sent to a friend on July 30, then cut and paste it to another on August 6, another on August 17, and now I am posting it here:
Briefly (because OMG, I could go on and it exhausts me) we had to move her from independent living to assisted living against her will (and other things that didn’t go well), then there was a bait and switch and we couldn’t afford it there anymore so we had to move her to another assisted living place, but she went into the hospital, so the move happened while she was in the hospital, and things were very **** up with that because she is a hoarder [Bloggers: see June: Whining/Negativity] and because the old place [facility name] dumped some of their shit in with the movers [what I’m saying here is that they dumped things into her apartment that weren’t hers], there had to be a second move of things out of the new apartment to her hoarder’s house, and luckily she went to rehab after the hospital and is still there because there was no room for her in her room in the new place, but there is now, but she has yet to set foot in it (and neither have we). All this from afar and with covid. We can’t really enter any facility anyway. My sister is in charge, thank god. And mom’s health is really questionable. And that is the very short version.
Today my mother is having an in-office vascular procedure meant to help her avoid amputation. If things do not go well, she’ll be admitted to a hospital. And of course, at 89, things may not go well at all.
We can almost never reach her to talk with her, which is another whole thing maybe I’ve discussed and maybe not. No cell phone. Doesn’t pick up the phone by her bed.
She still has never been to the new place and may never be.
And Tim’s brother is having his prostate biopsied this morning. It’s just one big party today.
Oh, IB! I'm so sorry you guys have all this going on. Can you ring (as we say)/call the facility, and get them to take the phone to her, to make sure she answers? It's so very hard to deal with all this, let alone when you are in a state of high stress (ie, it's 2020). Fingers crossed for Tim's brother.
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Oh dear. I hope everything went well with both your mother and Tim's brother. I know about the trying to reach folks in a rehab facility -- trying to reach my aunt last year was a pain, especially since she moved from place to place a lot.
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