No Cardboard Box under a Bridge for me!

Don’t leap to conclusions on what I’m about to tell you but I had an appointment with a person whose business card says he’s “a specialist in home care and assisted living placements.” I met him in March on a bus tour of independent and assisted living facilities and I was impressed with him enough to want to take advantage of a free service where he can estimate how long your money and assets will last in places like. I’m nowhere near wanting or needing to move into a facility but I wanted to get some footwork done for someday maybe. And don’t we all worry about whether or not we’ll end up in a fleabag Medicaid dumping ground or worse yet, get loaded up in a shopping cart and set loose at the top of a hill. Bye bye, there’s cardboard condo community down there under the bridge that you can afford.

 

He said I have enough assets to qualify to get me into most continuing care places---the kind where you start out in independent living and as needed they move you up in care levels plus they won’t kick you out if your money runs out. Not that he’s recommending that for me (far from it) but he said---and this is the important part---qualifying for those kinds of places is an great indicator that a person has enough assets to private-pay at nice/r places, with lower monthly fees for the rest of your life. (Continuing care places cost more up front in exchange for that life care guarantee and no one gets anything back if you die long before using up all your own money.) Of course, no one knows how long any of us will live but it’s the same principle as buying extended warranties---the companies selling them are betting you won’t need to use them i.e. continuing care facilities have developed extensive mathematical formulas and they are gambling you’ll die before it starts costing them money. And they are factoring into their calculations a two year stretch at the highest cost level at the end. I didn’t tell him this but the dark side of me wonders if when your money runs low if that's when you have a "tragic accident” like my sister-in-law did, chocking on a pill because no one was around who was certified to do the Heimlich in a timely manner?

The guy was here for nearly two hours and by the time he left I felt so much better---no eating cat kibble to save money for me! If there’s anything he doesn’t know about the various facilities around town, it isn’t worth knowing. For example, he asked if a religious affiliation was important to me and I said, “Quite the opposite” and I told him I didn’t like one of the places we toured on the bus trip because it felt “too churchy.” He replied that it’s common in this town for places to boast that they do prayers, devotions and Bible readings daily with their meals. “Not a good fit of me!” I said emphatically. And he named some places in my target area that don’t let religion bleed all over their mission statements. We covered the dog-friendly places, the view out the unit window, the ideal location for family support, the food and activities, etc., etc. Three pages of questions and answers and it will all be on file for my nieces when/if they need it. He’d take me and/or them on a tour of his top three recommendations when the time comes, or even next week if I wanted. I’m not ready for that. I hope I’m never ready but we all know our health can change in a heartbeat so when ‘hope’ fails it helps to have a plan. 

Change of topic to something else I’ve never done before: I had my first e-visit with my doctor’s office. I got diagnosed online for ‘acute cystitis’ otherwise known as a UTI to the ladies out there. I filled out the questionnaire at 9:00 Monday and by 11:00 I had the promise of an antibiotic called in to the pharmacy and orders left for a urine test. By Wednesday morning the lab order still had not shown up on my patient portal and I thought, well, maybe e-visits don’t do it the same way as office calls, so I went to the lab. No order was on file and I had to wait for them to call the doctor’s office. Finally, I got to pee in a specimen bottle.

I made three trips to the same medical building that day. One of those trips was for a mammogram and we all know how much fun that can be. I was getting pulled, stretched and pressed at the exact same time a lab technician two rooms down was leaving a message on my home phone that I’d failed at giving an adequate urine sample and I needed to come back and do another. Great! I’ve been peeing a million times a day and the one time it counted, I did a wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am quickie that only satisfied one of us. The bummer part is the e-visit doctor told me not to start the antibiotics until after I’d taken the urine test so I had to spend over 48 hours lusting after the promised relief sitting in a medicine bottle on the kitchen counter-top. ©

Nursing Homes and Barbie Dolls Nails

One of my sister-in-law’s had a series of falls a few weeks ago and had to be moved into a nursing home. She’d been living with her daughter who has a severe form of MS and is wheelchair bound which meant my niece-in-law also had to go into a nursing home. My sister-in-law is ten years older than me and for the past few years we’d often had the following conservation…

S-I-L:  “I’m ready to go to a nursing home where they take care of everything.”

Me: “You won’t like it. You have the best of two worlds right here.” They had home care aids coming in for six hours a day, 365 days a year who cooked, cleaned, did laundry, shopped and took care of medications and the daughter’s personal needs.

S-I-L: “It’s too much work to take care of the lawn and snow.”

Me: “What work? We both just call a service, sign a contract and write a check once or twice a year.”

Long story short ever since she’s been in the nursing home, she’s been insisting she wants to go back home which isn’t possible because her family emptied out her house and rented it within the first week, a decision not all the siblings were on board with but that’s not my story to tell. My sister-in-law is giving her family grief doing things like calling 911 because the aids don’t answer her call button fast enough, is discouraging her daughter from getting involved in activities and field trips at the home and is bad-mouthing the other residents.

This week I went with her other daughter to visit. Daughter number two goes twice a week to pick up and deliver laundry and iron out problems. The facility and rooms were nice but the (presumably underpaid) workers were sour-faced and it was depressing to think I could have been looking at my future. I don’t have daughters and sons to support me in a place like that…and it makes a real difference if you do. When my husband’s mother was in a nursing home for many years we went twice a week as well. It was a scavenger hunt each time. Where are her teeth, her glasses, her shoes? Check out Mable’s room first. (She was the resident kleptomaniac who squirreled things away in her closet.) Why is your mom wearing other people’s clothes? How did she get that nasty scratch on her arm?

One of my pet peeves about places like that is how they put red fingernail polish on people who can’t talk to object. I visited an aunt in Hospice Care once who was the next thing to a nun---a humble, simple person---and I was shocked to see someone had put red polish and lipstick on her. She never would have allowed that if she could have talked nor would my mother-in-law who was also painted up like a Barbie doll while in the nursing home. My sister-in-law, however, was happy with her blood-red polish.

Maybe I should write out a manifesto for if and when I go to a nursing home that could be posted on the back of the door next the codes about whether or not to give me the Heimlich Maneuver if I’m choking on a button I found on the floor. 1) No leaving me stark naked and exposed to anyone walking by in the hall while aids go on a coffee break. That actually happened to my husband in the month after his stroke---one of the reasons I brought him home. 2) No red nail polish. At least people who break the second rule can be forgiven because they’re trying to do something nice. People who break rule number one are heartless and border on criminally abusive. Nursing homes are scary places! Back in the late ‘80s two aids who worked at a local nursing home were convicted for killing five residences, the victims reportedly picked out to spell M-U-R-D-E-R with the initials of their first names. They would have gotten away with the murders, too, if an x-husband hadn’t ratted them out.

I should (but probably won’t) visit my sister-in-law on a regular basis like I did when she lived near-by which was a couple of times a month. I’ve always had the ability to say things to her that her kids couldn’t, things to help smooth her ruffled feathers when she gets to complaining too much. She calls me Mother Theresa because, she says, I always know the right things to say and do. I don't agree, but I do know that between my husband’s mother, my dad and my husband I’ve done my time in the ‘healthcare system.’ I want to be selfish, not selfless with the time I have left. Does that make me a bad person when I see an opportunity to help and I don’t want to act on it? Will Karma get me if I don’t? I hope not. At least not today. I’m going to the first meeting of a newly forming book club and I’m happy about that. ©

500 Blog Entries and Pushing Forward

For anyone who likes statistics, my last blog entry was the 500^th one that I’ve written since becoming a widow four years ago. I don’t know how to feel about that. On one hand, it's hard to be proud of something that came about because of my husband's death but on the other hand, it feels like I’ve reached a cake-and-candles worthy benchmark. Either way, this blog and the caregiver blog I kept while Don was alive both helped to keep me sane when my world was flipped off its axis. Both helped me find my sense of humor again while forging my way through some difficult challenges. And both blogs gave me a sense of purpose, that I might be helping others by exposing my journey to other caregivers or widows who could identify with its ups and downs.

Caregivers and widows have a lot in common, but society seems to judge widows with a harsher eye. With caregivers, others can see the on-going stresses and the changes in life-style and they’re often looked upon as “angels” who buck it up and do what needs to be done. But with widows others look at a calendar and at varying points along its timeline they will send out silent messages that seem to say, “Get over it, already!” Caregivers and widows both tend to feel isolated and feelings of fear, regrets and longings are kept increasingly closer to the vest. For me, being a diary keeper since I was ten, it’s second nature to unpack those feelings in a blog like this. I write mostly for myself, but I'm grateful that people have found it worth reading here from time to time, giving this blog over 224,600 unique views since I started it. For statistics junkies, like me, that averages out to about 450 views per blog entry and viewers have come from eleven countries including 6,038 from Russia of all places. I try to write around 800 words per blog which equals about 400,000 words written in this blog. The most read blog entry---a letter to my deceased husband---has 7,041 views and hopefully Don got to see it, too, where ever he is in the Great Unknown. 

Now on to my daily grind. This week my Red Hat Society Chapter went to our adopted nursing home where we make residents, who were interested, into honorary members of our group---we do a total of four events there per year plus send bags of goodies over on three holidays. Wednesday we served cookies and punch to thirty women and five guys and helped them all hot glue bling onto red visors. A few ladies were disappointed that we didn’t have bingo on the agenda this time. What is it about bingo that seems to go hand-in-hand with aging? With this group, it could be the prizes we hand out. We roll out a cart full perfumes, body creams, socks, books, etc. and it takes the winners forever to pick out their prizes. It would be fun to sneak a pair of sexy, red lace panties in with the other prizes and see what happens, but the World of Proper Decorum can be glad my actions rarely follow behind my mischievous thoughts. 

Honestly, though, it’s a good thing my chapter sisters all wear red hats when we go to the nursing home because it’s getting increasingly harder to tell us from the residents. Four of the ten of us who showed up were using canes and two couldn’t stand long enough to do much besides give moral support to those of us serving and interacting with the residents. And guess what, I finally graduated up to working at the glue gun station. Well, sort of---I only got to glue a few bouquets onto visors near the end. But that’s okay. After working twenty years in the floral industry, I don’t enjoy creativity by committee. As others debated if this flower or that one should go here or there I resisted the temptation to flaunt my two floral design school diplomas to get them to do it my way. But I didn’t do it because being right isn't as important as keeping peace in the valley and letting diplomacy be the star of the show. Mostly, I helped residents pick out their bling and ran it back to the glue station for someone else to marry it to a visor.

I’ll be the first to admit I’m never enthusiastic about going to our adopted nursing home, but my better self always shows up when I walk through the doors. I do my best to make eye contact with the residents I come in contact with and to show genuine interest in what they’re trying to say. One old guy, for example, wanted to talk about the fiddle he used to play and I told him it’s my favorite instrument to listen to. When Don and I first started dating we went to a lot of bluegrass festivals and my honorary Red Hat guy had played at a few of the venues I named. Who would have ever guessed that finding some foam rubber musical notes to hot glue onto a visor could evoke good memories for two passing strangers? But along with the good memories a hint of sadness followed. We could see it in each others eyes. And that’s why after writing 500 blog entries I still may have something to share. My memories of the past, the accomplishments of my present and my dreams for the future still come filtered through a lens known as widowhood. ©