Some time has passed
It's been quite a long time since I've written a new post. At first it was the busy end of the semester rush that turned into the pleasures of vacation time and then it happened. My 95 year old mother calls saying she's dizzy and can't get out of bed. Off to the emergency room for a night of worry and waiting, followed by a diagnosis of vertigo. OK, that's better and understandable although it's irritating and she needs more assistance.
For all of the nice people who work hard at providing health care services my praise and thanks, however health care in America is much like the sea - indifferent, vast, mostly unknown and on a remarkably different time scale. You enter into it and then time and space collapse into grayness and waiting with usually too little understanding of what might occur next and what that might mean.
Things get better, a return to normalcy and then it happens. She falls and breaks her arm. Well, fracture of the arm really. Back to the emergency room with x-rays and more waiting. The orthopedic specialist says it's not bad, it'll take six weeks to heal - just wait it out. Then it happens - she falls at home alone and spends most of the day on the floor in the bedroom.
With more assistance things stabilize again and seem manageable, but the visiting nurses say she can't stay home alone, she should be admitted again. Back to the emergency room and she stays overnight and is admitted to the hospital. I show up to visit in the morning and am led into the nicest hospital room I've ever seen - wow. However this is just a holding pattern to allow her to quality for the next round of care in a rehabilitation facility - where I don't know.
They find an opening in Ludlow which is a 50 minute drive each way for me to visit. It's no where near as nice as the last room. This holds four people in various stages of physical capabilities and outcome. It's a little grim to be honest and she's not too happy about it at all, but she needs the help and the therapy.
A week and a half later they find an opening for her at a facility that's only 8 minutes away from my house and she's transported and settled in. It's much nicer, closer, friendlier and seems more promising, but how would I know.
I visit every day because I can. I collect the dirty laundry and bring back the clean, drop off the magazines, bring a can of nuts and some bottles of water, and sit and talk for 20 minutes each day.
We hit the six week mark and return to the orthopedic specialist and he says, wow, she's heeled quite well, can now put weight on that arm and he'll see us in four more weeks, again.
The therapy is really working, she's out of the wheelchair walking, though a little unsteady. She's reading again - having asked me to buy a desk lamp to make it easier to see. At some point she'll be going home and need more assistance with daily living and we'll see how it goes.
With only Medicare to pay her way it's lucky that she's got enough money in the bank to cover the extra expenses that they don't fully pay. As we all get older as a society there's only more of this to look forward to on a larger and larger scale. I can only hope that not too many of us get caught up in the sea.
gunther
