Tag: healthcare

Another Step

I am really nervous. Another step toward resolving my parents’ healthcare issues is about to happen. I am not going into details, but my brother and sister and mother and father are about to do something that I really, really need to go well.

No, that’s not a good enough description. Let me try again…

I really, really, really, really, really, really need things to go very, very, very, very, very, very well.

I’m sending out all of the positive red head vibes* I can. Come on, universe, don’t let me down. After a year and a half of Covid-19 on top of all the family health problems, you owe me, universe. You owe me.

Fingers crossed
Toes crossed
Eyes crossed

*Red head vibes are the best vibes. You have to be a red head to know this, but it is true. Red head vibes are powerful things. I have to be careful to use them sparingly, and to only ever use them as a force for good. I have used them a lot since Friday. When I say a lot I mean, a lot.

Friday Morning

It’s Friday morning, everyone! You’ve almost made it to the weekend. Hang in there, it’s almost over.

Ready for your morning update to the saga of my personal pain?

Last night was okay. I don’t control the TV remote anymore so I stuck my AirPods Max with their transparency mode onto my noodle and surfed the web. I decided to watch The Orville. We had started it once before but only got a few episodes in. I’m going to give it another go. I also did some music and bitched about local news. Mom’s pain level was manageable. Dad was fine.

This morning though.

I woke up about 5:30. Dad was asleep but mom was up. She was in a lot of pain and she was very confused. She told me she was lost. She said she was in the new school and didn’t know her way around. She was opening doors and peering inside trying to figure out what was up. She asked me what each room was. She asked me if we were on the second floor. I kept telling her she was home and safe but it wasn’t getting through. Eventually she found her bedroom. She called it “a” bedroom, not “her” bedroom though. She sat on the bed for a little while and seemed to slowly come back to herself.

So that was fun, right?

Dad is still asleep, but mom is having breakfast. The complaining about pain and the feeling lost both seem to be gone. I’m pretty thankful for that.

I need to get my workspace ready for the work day, check on the doors, and try to sneak in the new episode of The Bad Batch. The home health folks aren’t coming until 9:00 so I had a little extra time to get ready. I had gotten into the habit of keeping all of my stuff on dad’s hospital bed in the living room but I can’t do that anymore. I think my CPAP machine and my laundry and stuff will go out to the car this morning so they won’t be in anyone’s way.

I have a really bad feeling about today. I shouldn’t but I do. I also had to switch some days around this month. My brother and sister and I all have stuff we need to do in our own lives outside of our parents’ lives so the calendar was monkeyed with. It works to my benefit later in the month, but in the immediate future I have some tough times. I will go home tonight around dinner time, but instead of having a day off before I come back, I come back tomorrow night at dinner. That’s still better than the 48 hour shift I have next week. That’s going to be a shit burger.

Okay. Let’s get this Friday rolling, shall we? Happy thoughts, everyone. Happy thoughts.

I’m freaking Out

Dad is being discharged at 3:00. The home health aid is coming at 2:30. I am freaking out. Totally freaking out.

Shit has been going on all day at work. None of it is freak-out-worthy, but all of it is freaking me out. I tried to go to lunch at 1:00 but I had 45 minutes solid where I got call after call after call and couldn’t stop.

I am totally fucking freaking out.

Overnight Shift

It’s pretty quiet tonight. Possibly because the memory issues shit hit the fan before I got here. A few weeks ago she tried to leave the house and ended up walking down route 38 for a while before turning back. Magically she made it back to the house without getting lost.

As a result we installed alarms on the doors. When they go off they ring at something like 110 decibels. You can probably hear them from space*. Apparently, twice in the last two days, including just before I got here tonight, she has left the house and set off the alarm and didn’t even notice. Yesterday she went outside to get the newspaper. She told my sister she had no intention of ever leaving on her own. Today she went outside to see if the car keys were in the car because she wanted to drive home**. Note, the car keys are not in the car, they are locked up in a case inside the house and she doesn’t have the combination.

After that she came back inside and went to bed. I woke her up for her 8:00pm meds and she stayed up for half an hour or so and then went back to bed. She’s been sound asleep ever since. Fingers crossed she continues to have a quiet night. My father is coming home tomorrow. His insurance has shut him off, but the rehab place says he’s ready anyway. My brother and sister have both seen him and say he’s infinitely better than he was when he came home last time. I believe them but I am still terrified. I guess I have to see it with my own eyes.

The potential for a shitty day tomorrow is high. The potential for a good day is also high but I am in full on glass-half-empty mode and I may never recover from it.

Shit.

*I understand that sound does not travel through a vacuum. Come on, man, it was just an expression. I got an A in Physics in college, thank you very much.

**She says she needs to go home, but she is home. This house has been her home for 52 years. My sister was told by a memory care professional that for some reason the idea of “home” is a common theme for memory patients. Oh goodie. Shit.

It’s Monday

It’s Monday, and Monday sucks.

I mowed the entire lawn yesterday, front and back. My body will likely never forgive me. I just vacuumed up the lake in the cellar. It wasn’t as bad as it was last week, and there was a whole extra day worth of build up so I think there is improvement. I had to empty the wet vac and carrying that out of the bulkhead is painful. Carrying the dehumidifier tank is painful too, but not nearly as much.

Suffice to say, I’m a hurtin’ red head today.

It’s a nana sitting night tonight, and tomorrow’s nana sitting work day will also be a papa sitting day too as we’re expecting him to come home. The last time he came home we were all so happy, right up until the moment when we realized how much nursing care he still needed and from there it was awful. Not to imply that we weren’t happy he was home, just to say that none of us are trained health care workers and it was incredibly difficult. I am seriously hoping it’s better this time. Fingers crossed.

I wanted to do car music this morning but had too many other things to do. I have one song ready to mix and I’ll probably do it at my mother’s house tonight. It’s a 12-bar blues and it’s not good. Not good at all. It’s a song though and it counts.

Okay, going to work now. Mondays suck.

Representative Brian Mast (R-FL) is an Idiot – May 7, 2017 Edition

https://twitter.com/aravosis/status/860240955311624194

This one isn’t as bad as yesterday’s fascist collaborator moron in Congress video, but it’s got me just as pissed off.  Give it a view, it’s a quickie.

Congressman, how do you know that this bill isn’t going to destroy the lives of millions of people seeing as there was no analysis done on it by any economic or medical groups at all and there is zero evidence to show that anything it says will even come close to doing anything it’s supposed to?

“I know.”

I know things too, you fucking piece of dog shit.  I know you just raped millions of constituents in order to line the pockets of the super rich.  Hey congressman from Florida, how many of your voters are on medicaid?  You know medicaid, that thing you just gutted?  Who bought you, congressman?  Who bought your vote?  Which fascists do you answer to now?

Enjoy your stay in the US House of Representatives.  It will come to an abrupt end in just under two years.

Rep. Raul Labrador (R-ID) is an Unimaginable Schmuck – May 6, 2017 Edition

Watch this.  Beware though, you are about to see a demonstration of utter stupidity that cannot be fathomed.  Watch it anyway.

 

During a town hall meeting one of his constituents happened to mention that people will die without health insurance.  He responded by saying that no one dies from not having access to healthcare.

This friggin’ schmuck actually said that.  You alt-right fascist apologists can’t call this one fake news because it’s right there on video.  I heard it with my own ears.  This guy said the single dumbest thing I have ever heard a politician utter.  No one dies from not having access to healthcare.

Tell me, Congressman Labrador, you insulting piece of shit, what would happen to my step son if he didn’t have access to healthcare?  He’s a type one diabetic and needs insulin to live.  What would happen to him?

Tell me, Congressman Labrador, you mental midget, what would have happened to my mother if, when she developed a brain tumor, she had not had access to the healthcare that saved her life?  Tell me, you fucking tool.  Tell me what would have happened to her.

Voters in Idaho.  Come the mid-term election, you know what to do.  Kick this despicable schmuck out of office.  Send his moron ass packing.  We’re counting on you.

Trump is a Fascist Idiot – 3/24/17 Edition

Donny Cheeto Fascist and Paul Vichy France Ryan got their political asses kicked today and I am loving every second of it.  It was beautiful.  The look on Vichy Paul’s face  as he told the nation that the great billionaire’s tax break bill that most people are calling the trumpcare healthcare bill (is “care” the right word considering 24 million or so people would lose their coverage?) didn’t have enough votes to pass so they pulled it from the House session!

Glorious!

Now I understand that the fascists and their collaborators have control of the white house, the house, and the senate and that eventually they will destroy the entire United States population.  That doesn’t matter today.  Right now… today… The fascists have failed.  They were the losers we know and hate, through and through.

Take that, you fascist cheeto piece of shit.