116. Mother-Daughter Journey: Stormy Weather
“When are you picking her up?,” the social worker asked.
“I am NOT picking her up. I am not transporting a ninety-nine year old woman with a fractured hip in a car without the help of an aide or otherwise. (The aides don’t come to the hospital). She has to come home in an ambulette in a wheelchair.” And, everything has to be IN PLACE or NO GO.”
Medicare pays for twenty days of physical therapy in a hospital. My mother’s benefit allegedly ended today; I received a call from the hospital social worker informing me that my ninety-nine year old, seventy-four pound mother would have to be discharged.
Today.
In a blizzard.
My answer was, “NO.”
It doesn’t take much brains to know that conditions aren’t safe, that we didn’t know what how bad the storm would be (but had a good idea: NYC public schools were closed in advance) and now that I see what is going on out there I bet you any money that the social worker who called me didn’t get in to work today. She told me to call the “head of the unit,” of my mother’s floor and I informed her that today was not going to be the day my mother would go home and she seemed to get it, but, after a while, especially after she offered to have my mother shipped to a nursing home and I went ballistic.
I was told my mother would “have to leave on Friday (tomorrow.)” That is, assuming that someone can ride with her so we don’t have another fiasco, (of her being taken to the wrong place) AND most importantly, that an aide could show up. The people who attend to my mother travel on several busses and trains. It is not just a matter of getting my mother home, it is a matter of who is caring for her once she is there. In my book, she should remain in the hospital a few more days, in light of all this, but I don’t know if I can swing that. (Contacted her doctor and he agrees with me, I hope he makes this happen).
The weather conditions are horrendous now, the winds have picked up and are fierce, the windchill is set to go down below zero. My mother doesn’t have a coat or boots. Something else I have to worry about.
I am my mother’s mother.
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 in the series is here
You are absolutely right.
Do these administrative social workers actually think ?
That’s the last straw – stormy weather… 🙁
Oh gosh… she needs physical therapy if she is to function on her own. If not she would need an aide around the clock, otherwise, rehab facility which can be like a nursing home. That’s what all the elderly in our family have had to do after hospitalization, because every day in bed, muscle is lost… the strength disappears. My dad only 86 fell and broke his arm was in hospital for three days and then in rehab for about a week and then at home with therapists coming to him. He had my sister stay with him the first two weeks at home. <3 <3 <3
But not in a snow storm.