Need Help After Hospice? Jumping Through Home Healthcare Hoops

You catch more help with honey than you do with sarcasm

Nov 12, 2024

They took her off hospice again.

I told you they would.
Full sentences are back now & again, situationally appropriate and coherent.
Eastern European peasant stock.
Strong like ox, pull plow
That’s how we talk about ourselves - me, her, her side of the family. We beat things—
pogroms, the Holocaust, the Great Depression, parental abandonment, bad marriages, cancer, poverty, depression, more cancer, drug addiction, bad choices—
we just keep on keepin’ on.
Strong like ox.
Pull plow.
She will outlive us all.

🩵

You know what will beat me?

Bureaucracy and paperwork. Decisions. Genetics.
Medicare part B, part D, Medicare supplemental.
Is it time to take Social Security, which may not make it past 2035.
I will be 77 in 2035.
She, if she is still here, will be 104 — fifty years old than her mother, aunts or uncles ever reached.
It’s possible. She’s already thirty years older than they were.
And I’m just the right age to follow in my ancestors genetic footsteps. Within a year or two of the age my grandmother, two great uncles and two great aunts died of cancer or complications of ulcerative colitis.
I’ve already been hospitalized twice with ulcerative colitis.
It’s possible.

🩵

You know what will beat me?

Healthcare red tape.
Call centers.
Care coordinators who read from scripts, but don’t actually listen.
The visiting NP was confirmed to start today, Monday, 11/11 at 9:31am.
Yes, 9:31.
No one came. No one called.
I started calling at 10:01am.
Four different people, four different sets of information.
A visiting doctor was called, his voicemail simply says, “Hello…..” then, a long silence
Followed by an automated voice telling me that the voicemail is full.

🩵

It’s only days after the 2024 election, our wounds are open and painful.
This is not a good week for me to keep sarcasm, anger & condescension out of my voice, and I’m painfully aware that I will catch more healthcare help with honey than I will with sarcasm, anger and condescension.
Still…
Soaked in frustration, it is my go-to mode of communication.

🩵

You know what will beat me?

Life, being all lifey.
The next few weeks on my calendar are a mixed bag:

A second online session with a new shrink to address adjusting meds to deal with the stress of life being all lifey
An MRI brain scan to assess any damage done by being pickled and fermented for twenty years & boy oh boy, I’m not looking forward to the answer to that question
A biofeedback soundbath in Brooklyn
A dental check-in preceding a dental implant
A legal consultation. The POA, Healthcare proxy, amendment to mom’s irrevocable trust, a new revocable trust, a living will and a pour over will started in July ar still not finished or correct. If you’re a gambler by nature, smart money is on yet another a struggle to mask frustration, sarcasm, anger and impatience.
A second session of EMDR
Trying to Tetris in time to be with a busy out-of-town friend in town for five days for a five-day-event that’ll keep her busy for five days