What I forgot to tell you seems ironically irrelevant at this time, but just as my computer went down a couple of weeks ago, just as I was getting ill, I was in a store when my phone rang. I recognized the number. Let me rewind:

For nine months I had been fighting with my mother’s managed long term care (Medicaid) to fill in the hours she lost when she outlived her private pay insurance. This was to no avail despite a “Fair Hearing,” despite several requests for re-evaluations. It left me scrambling to cover meal and bedtime hours and was draining our pockets.

Then mother fell in September, the first time, when a meal delivery guy knocked her over. Luckily, nothing was broken, but she was in pain and weakened. But, even that didn’t facilitate getting more hours. I was looking at another fair hearing and this time I’d have to be there. In Brooklyn.

I ended up calling an agency to arrange this representation and it just so happened that my mother worked there years ago. This time I didn’t have to inform the Managed Long Term Care; the agency took care of going right to preparing the paperwork for the hearing. They must have been requesting paperwork without my knowledge because the case manager whose number I recognized, would call but not leave a message.

So, there I was in the store like I said, when that number appeared. It was the case manager informing me that “there was a meeting earlier and it was decided that we are giving your mother the two hours.”

This was without the hearing. This was without the hassle. This just was. It something that I didn’t expect and it was like a gift—a gift that should have been received months ago. It meant that my mother would have her aide first thing in the morning. It meant that she no longer had to pay for the evening hour and the financial stemming of the tide would take place at least for a bit longer. I stood there in the store and tried to catch my breath. Then I cried. And for a week I felt good, relieved. I felt that I could rest. Until …

And then my mother fell and it all began again. The X-ray was read and “no bones were broken,” so they sent her home only to find days later that the pain in her leg and groin were from a pelvic fracture, something that was not originally seen or in the report, and then it was yesterday and the fiasco of being brought to the wrong hospital. One miscommunication after another.

The weather is frigid but blue and bright. Numbing cold.

Just like my heart.

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

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