…or: How to get a soon-to-be 100 year old woman with a fractured pelvis home from the hospital
Alerts: Drama included
An endless tale

1/10/18

Well, buckaroos, my mother is back on her ranch and what a day it was yesterday. It began the previous evening while I was glued to the kitchen, during the dinner hour, the message left by the hospital social worker indicated that we would work on this the following day, yesterday. And so the phone rang, and rang, and the day just kept going as if it were beset by Mercury-in-Retrograde, full of communications; lack of communications, miscommunications and yours truly in the middle. This will give you an idea.

Yesterday morning:

• discussion with the social worker: the doctor never called in to issue the discharge. Social worker would contact the doctor on the floor who happens to be my mother’s doctor’s colleague
• no call-back: the waiting game. I asked for an ambulette for 1:00 pm. Social worker can’t get in touch. She calls the social worker on my mother’s case at her MLTC (Managed Long Term Care)
• I text my mother’s doctor and allude to her going home, he says, “yes.” (So why hadn’t he called the hospital)
• Just in case but knowing how things operate, we begin a journey over to my mother’s apartment, after lunch, which, in the scheme of things, considering she used to live in Florida, is in my back yard. I text the aide who came in for another client and was hanging around. She knew I was bringing stuff but missed my text to meet me in the lobby to bring it all up: eggs, bread, two chicken noodle soups, a meatloaf dinner, plastic bags, the rent check. (A memo to myself to pick up the mail: There was a huge stack, one of which was another jury duty summons, a letter indicating all of her services had been discontinued —come on people, every year this crap happens, what the heck? I filled everything out MONTHS ago!! There was also a NEW health insurance card with a NEW number which of course means that I will be undoing disasters for weeks of claims that have gone in and will be denied).

We cleaned out the fridge of all the old stuff and restocked.

• While there, I called the hospital social worker to let her know where I was and to get a take on the transit: she still hadn’t arranged it
• Called the social worker at the MLTC to see what was going on
• Called the hospital social worker, it was now 2:30 pm and she arranged for a 3:00 pm transport
• Called the aide’s agency and she hadn’t gotten the go-ahead to pay the aides
• Called back the MLTC social worker to get clearance and she said it would be OK for the aide, who was sitting with me, to stay for the hour my mom is uncovered in the afternoon. (Kind of the aide to stay: SHE has an aide who cares for HER dad with Alzheimer’s, and her aide has to leave, so, her father might end up wandering the streets.)
• The way I left this: my intent was to get my mother organized and dressed to leave and I would either ride in the ambulette or hop back into the car which sits and waits for me for HOURS.
• Down I go to the car with the mail in my tote, an extra pair of socks for my mother whose crippled feet allow her to only wear sandals, the white beret I had given her
• I arrive at the hospital around 3:00 pm and knock on my mother’s door; she is lying in bed in wait and can’t get her sandals on over her socks. The struggle begins. I am, once again, a young mother, bending over and struggling to get boots on a three-year-old. Total role reversal.
• I finally meet the social worker with whom I have had a phone relationship for weeks: she reports: the ambulette is delayed at least forty-five minutes! This is not surprising as last time it was a two-hour wait. But I was losing it and despite my fear of transporting a seventy-three pound woman who happens to be my mother, with a fractured pelvis, I decide we are taking her by car.
• In the meantime, I take a load of stuff downstairs in my mother’s new rollator and shove everything into the car and manage to fold up this new device and get it into the trunk. I go back upstairs.
• BUT, the nurse’s shift change delayed anyone coming to our rescue to bring mother to the car. and, everyone wanted to say “goodbye” to my mother, who announced that she had to use the bathroom and was in diapers. Two aides came in to help. It was the first time she used a bathroom in a month.
• We continue waiting and my phone rings so I can issue a status report to the car below to the harried, bored driver who needs the bathroom: I report we are on our way down.
• My mother gets a nose bleed.
• We are in the hall saying our goodbyes and my mother wants to take a picture. A nurse declines and says it is not allowed.
• I ask for a second aide to help us to the car which is surrounded by six inch deep murkey water from melting snow
• We descend to the first floor where we are in the middle of at least six guards tossing a man out into the street. He says he is a patient and being thrown out against his wishes. So here we are in the middle of screaming and flailing.
• The two aides slowly go down a ramp with my mother in the wheel chair. It takes a few minutes of manipulating the parking to get it aligned with the curb. My mother is finally in, I do the seat belt routine and there we are. About ten minutes from her apartment in the middle of rush hour traffic. She says we have to wait for her rollator. I tell her that it is in the trunk, I say this about five times, that I had brought it down earlier, remember? Driver asks about the wheel chair. I say, again, the aide is waiting for us at home and she will bring it down to get my mother up to the apartment.
• My brain begins to melt
• My mother complains she is nauseous; I tell her to hang-on, that we are almost home. She hasn’t had a decent meal since time in-memorial
• I text her aide who ends up waiting downstairs for over fifteen minutes, and then finally, finally we arrive and pry mother out of the back seat and get her into her wheelchair for the trip back upstairs. The front-desk sees us: “Is that 517? She’s back!”
• So up we go and my mother is disoriented by her return and this frail, little, child-like-sized person takes to her bed in exhaustion.
• After a twenty-minute search, she recalls where she left her “emergency call button,” how’s that for memory after a month?
• One aide finally gets to leave at 5:00 and the other comes in to do her two hours.
• I am assured by text that mom is doing much better

Finis …

We picked up a pizza and ate in virtual silence. No on had an ounce of juice left to function. I was so over-exhausted I couldn’t sleep. I still have that anxiety — the fear that the phone will ring in the middle of the night with some dreadful news. I am awake anticipating it. Then, I can’t function in the morning. Never mind that the phone doesn’t stop, but not with awful news, just the usual stuff I orchestrate, beginning with the Visiting Nurse Service. I informed my mother and the aide that someone would be coming over to to do a physical therapy assessment. Remember, the last time this happened in September, she refused services because she was “too tired and needed to rest.” My answer to this was, NOT AGAIN, you need this and you HAVE to move. And maybe if you do you’ll be hungry and want to eat.

I signed off from the world at 10:30 am and went back to bed. I could no longer think or process information.

To wit: I have nothing more to say.

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