4/16/20
Meanwhile, back at the war zone on this Day of Days, you will not believe this story. I had spoken to agencies all day trying to figure out a plan for my mother who seemed to be quickly on the way out: not able to eat, barely drinking and unintelligible. I called at least twenty people and got few call backs, upping my anxiety, because it dawned on me, my mother was going to be alone, she gets eleven hours of care, she is alone at night, she is in a severely weakened state, a fall risk and blind. In addition, I had no idea who would be coming to take care of her tomorrow. The aide was complaining of a cough and has a medical appointment tomorrow. She did not know if she was going to return. My concern: What stranger was going to take her place?

Phone calls were flying back and forth between me and the doctor and I implored him to get her hospice care. At least, from my experience in the past, they would send a nurse to make her comfortable. I called the Managed Long term Care and spoke to our assigned RN with a back-up plan: could she extend the amount of time an aide could provide hours? A short while later I got a call with a “no.” That that would be custodial care and they don’t provide that. I tried to get a private pay nurse for the overnight and no one returned my call. In a pandemic, your life is whittled to the bone. Another call back to the doctor and he was writing up the reports to submit for hospice.

Soon  the phone rang. It was the doctor: “Did you request an ambulance?”

“NO!”

“Well someone did and they said it was you!”

He instructed me to call my mother’s building which is not a state-run assisted living or nursing home. I spoke to a young man at the desk to whom I spoke earlier informing him that my mom was not well and in her room, that the aide was going home and I was concerned.

“Someone called for an ambulance for my mother.”

“It was YOU, YOU are the daughter, a daughter called asking for an ambulance.”

“It was NOT ME.”

The desk area was full of clueless people. One woman insisting it was me or my sister or son who had made the request. Or the doctor. But I had just gotten off the phone with him. This was crazy. Mind you, my mother’s request was to stay in her apartment.

I called at least four people and was spun in dizzying circles of finger pointing and blame.

The desk-guy said, “well, here is the number of the daughter.” He gave me the phone number that was allegedly mine! A Manhattan number that belonged to someone else. I called it, identified myself to the woman at the other end, told her what happened. SHE had called for an ambulance for HER mother. HER mother needed to go to the hospital.

Was this a great mix-up? A case of mistaken identity, an error on the part of the desk-guy who thought I told him my mother needed an ambulance? Did HE make the call or someone else? Or, was this divine intervention?

And as we were on the phone my little mother was zipping through empty streets in an ambulance, to the hospital, wearing the pajamas she wore for days that she refused to change, likely disoriented and confused. I tracked her to the ER. They were testing and testing. “Call back later, they are still testing.”

Her doctor called me again and told me to insist they not release her. He had spoken to the ER doctor and as he suspected, she has double pneumonia, but no fever. This is my mother’s illness of choice, her weak spot. They are doing a covid test. If she is positive they will keep her and isolate her, something they can’t do in her apartment building. If it is negative they will release her, but she would need more care. But where and how?

Now think about this: my mother would have been alone tonight in a precarious situation. We don’t know who would have come tomorrow. I would have been a wreck all night. Something happened in the Universe: Despite my mother not wanting to go to a hospital, something or someone took it out of my hands. By taking her to the hospital, she will have nurses around her and care to keep her comfortable. It was the right thing.

Later:

The ER doctor called… My mom has the covid virus. He wanted to admit her to the hospital. It was a no-brainer.

She was admitted after 10:00 pm; I received calls until midnight from people needing information. Then of course I was too wound up to get any real rest. The plan is for a hospice assessment tomorrow.

If you have been following this journey, you likely have a vague recollection of my mother’s many trips to the hospital while in Florida: It was a brutal time, linked only by phones and sound spanning over a thousand miles. I’d be on the phone for hours, day and night, while fighting my own stress—migraine aura and vertigo. My mother made it out, to live another seven years in her hometown of New York City, back at age ninety-five after being away close to thirty years. And now this: The insidious virus that is spreading like wildfire throughout her building might smack her down a month after her one hundred and second birthday.

I am waiting for the results of a Hospice assessment. I spoke to a new social worker at the building, the primary one is out sick with the virus. After being told that “hospice was not allowed in the building” by an administrator yesterday the social worker said that was not true, and that there were people on hospice in the building. Go figure. This misinformation about the lack of hospice would have led to many people being shipped out to a nursing home to die.

Later:

Received a call from the woman who did the hospice evaluation. I learned a tough lesson: even if my mother is released to go home on Hospice, unlike what I recall in Florida, the Hospice nurses do not stay with her 24/7, they visit a couple of time a week. So what good is that? She would need to have her eleven hours a day of aide coverage. But an agency is not going to send an aide to the home of a covid patient. Send her to a nursing home? The last thing I would consider, they are so overwhelmed the bodies are being stacked up in rooms! NO. She stays in the hospital. If she recovers, she can go home again with an aide and a hospice visit. Now is not the time to move her, it is too much, she is weak and sick with pneumonia. I told the evaluator to come back in a week and see if she is still alive. We’ll talk if she recovers.

I have spoken.

It’s been Days of Days. This is war.

This series starts here:
Part 1: And The Band Played On … a mother’s life, a daughter’s journey

The previous post is here

The next post is here