my mom

[Drunk Monk]

No need to be sorry. It was just a tad surreal after the cannacup. I hadn’t been by svale in a week and the message machine is always full - mostly with my mom’s friend Flo who suffers dementia and keeps calling her because she forgets her number at rehab and asks me to call her back on her number which she has never left in several dozen messages.

There was also a message from Microsoft about her computer which hasn’t been turned on in years. Yeah right.

[Drunk Monk]

My mom will be discharged on May 1.  That's the same day as our TCEC Judges Meeting from 10:30-2 which is something I cannot reschedule or be absent from as I collated the rules and no one really knows them at Tiger Claw beyond me.  No one there competed in any sport ever.  Fortunately the rehab center is accommodating about pick up.  Next step is to reestablish home care and juggle PT, OT, RN & social worker appointments. Those appointments are going to be really challenging because I'm in the TCEC prep zone now.

---

fuck

insurance contested the doctor's recommendation and now she'll be discharged saturday.  now i must spend the day navigating appeals.

i hate being jerked around by the system this way.

[Greg]

I do have a contact for a home care worker for you, if you need it.

[Drunk Monk]

we have a service

plus she'll need medical at first, a cna not just home care

[Drunk Monk]

The appeal took about half an hour on the phone. Now we wait. I should know by Friday.

I realize it's just a difference of a few days, but I had already begun planning my weekend.  I'll likely have to move back to Svale until the OT/PT/RN/SoWork is done, maybe another 2 weeks or so, which puts me right up against TCEC.  

The saddest part for me personally is that I must give up my weekday telecommutes from the Cruz. I really enjoy those - the Cruz is so much more mellow during the weekdays in the summer.  I knew today might well be my last for a long time, and it's gorgeous today, so I had planned a very relaxing day of low-stress work and errands.  Instead, it was the stress of the appeal (with all my mom's files in Svale) and the waiting game.  From now on out, my telecommutes will be from Svale, doing stuff for my mom.  

In a few hours, Stacy comes home from visiting Tara, where she's been since Easter.  After her yoga class, we plan to have a nice dinner.  Then once more, into the breach.

[Drunk Monk]

The appeal failed.  My mom comes home tomorrow.  Tonight will be my last night in the Cruz until we get home care set up again.  And it's going to torque my schedule like crazy with the RN/PT/OT/social worker as I'm sinking into the TCEC zone.  I can barely track things as it is.  Fortunately, we should be able to get home care going quickly because we've already contracted the service.  The tricky thing is my mom, although she can walk under supervision with a walker, still cannot manage getting her backbrace on and off by herself (which she'll need for the next 6+weeks as her spine heals) and still cannot get up on her own to go to the bathroom, so she's bed pan bound. This makes her prone to falls when unsupervised.  What's more, she's very addled from the pain meds.  She's not thinking clearly at all.  She's stressing the move home and calling me with random questions.  

I'm dreading this upcoming week.  I'm trying to not let it bring me down.

[Drunk Monk]

And so I'm back, in the living room of my youth, watching the sunset through the window still stained by that unfortunate cat.

My mom is doing much better and even wheeled herself out of her room into the den - first time she's used the door we cut on her own.  We're trying to figure out the bathroom - she almost do it herself although I did get her a new bedpan this morning.  It's just that back brace although she managed to almost put it on by herself.  My biggest worry is she's really ditzy after 4 months of opiods and her balance isn't great.  I don't want her to twist or slip and pop her fusion bars or something worse. I had to tell her to take it easy, take off the brace, and not try to do everything, because she just got home.

My patience is gone. So many things trigger me - her random calls for things she's forgotten, her constant questions about thing we just talked about.  I know it's the meds and her age and perhaps that's why it upsets me so.  I just get so angry.  

Tomorrow is the first judges meeting, so I must leave her on her own for about 5 hours in the middle of the day.  I think she'll be fine though.  I'll have to do this again on Wednesday. The countdown to TCEC is in full force now. The rehab scheduled a Doctor's appt on Monday, right in the middle of our first home care person which we're paying like $30+ an hour for - so I'll go to work, then come back for the appt, then go back to work.  Then Tuesday the OT/PT/RN/Social workers start calling, scheduling appts the night prior.  And this is just the beginning.

[Drunk Monk]

The judges meeting went okay in the new smaller space. It was good to chat with Emilio, and CCL made a surprise appearance which turned it into a faux paparazzi party. He babbled at me about something for a long time as my eyes glazed over.

It ended early so I went by the pharmacy to see if my mom’s scripts came in. Nope. We would run out tomorrow, but I’ve got a stash just in case of such a situation. 

Now I’m sitting in a starfucks, my most disdained franchise, just to catch a moment for myself. Having a horrible iced tea (I’m here for the WiFi). It’s at a little strip mall across from where I got my braces 40+ years ago. This strip used to have a wonderous candy store where we’d make pilgrimages in high school because it had some hard to find items. It’s so nostalgic to be back in svale. It fills me with melancholy at unexpected times.

[Greg]

You threw me. I thought we were in the Mom thread and you're talking about the TCEC Judges meeting.

I had this strange vision of you meeting with your mom's caregivers and CCL popped in.

[Drunk Monk]

Alas, this whole thing has thrown me.  


On the bright side, the new caregiver seems really good.  And today's Drs appt went well.  We're looking at weaning her off the opioids next.  She's lost a lot of weight and so the Doc prescribed ice cream everyday, buttery mashed potatoes, more fried food, basically everything I'm supposed to avoid nowadays.

[Dr. Ivor Yeti]

Good news for a change — that’s nice.

[Drunk Monk]

The caregivers are slowly falling into place.  It's an expensive service because we're starting with CNAs.  We're going with them for a month and Stacy and I are covering some days.  

My mom lost nearly 20 lbs which is a lot considering she's under a 100 lbs.  She's lost her appetite but is forcing herself to eat.  Today she was in some pain but not the level 10 pain she had in her hip and knee like before.  It was a general ache, which is probably due to the reduction in opioids. We just pulled her off oxycontin to hydrocodone and a lesser dose at that, which has got to hurt a bit.  

With all of the people passing through the house now, I've moved the valuables (papers, petty cash, Rx, silverware) into my room which my dad reinforced with a deadbolt and fortified door back when we first moved here.  Svale had this program where a cop visited our house and gave all sorts of random security advice. I think I mentioned this already.  So my room has served as a lock box for decades.  Well, today the deadbolt jammed.  I was almost locked out, which would have really sucked.  I pulled the screws out and tried to follow some youtube vids about dealing with locks, plus graphited it up.  It's working now, but it's a little sticky and that's unnerving.  It'll have to be replaced sometime soon, and that's just a little outside my skill level.

[Drunk Monk]

Watching another sunset from the living room. I don’t think I appreciated sunsets from here like I do now.

My mom reads mostly and sometime calls her friends. Most of her friends are hard of hearing and some have dementia. She turns the volume way up so I can hear both sides of the conversations, even from the other side of the house. It’s interesting to her my mom’s perspectives on things. They are a bit distorted and her friends don’t always make sense. It’s surreal chats but they make each other happy.

She gets so many calls from India about her computer. She hasn’t turned that pc on in years. She tells them gruffly that she has no computer so they ask about her laptop. Then she hangs up.

[Drunk Monk]

Occasionally I get a little motivated and try to sort some of the junk lying around the house.  My room is full of stored crap, so many books and curious.  Occasionally I realize I can't find something, like I don't know where my antique Tiger Hooks are exactly.  I mean, how could I lose a pair of antique Tiger Hooks?  I'm sure their buried here somewhere.  I need to dump boxes of VHS tapes - the entire collection of stuff I did for Wing Lam takes up a huge yardxyard box, and they haven't been spun in like 20 years so I'm sure they are spoiled.  Magnetic tape magnetizes itself if not spun every year or so.  There's also several boxes of my cousin's stuff.  He went to Stanford, got his degree in education, then moved to Japan for a while and is now a National Award winning High School teacher in Oahu.  When he left Stanford, nearly a quarter century ago, he left several boxes of his crap on top of the boxes of my crap stored at my folk's place.  He's forgotten it.  Every once in a while I'll find a box of his, like last night.  I found his school binders.  Damn, he was organized - so OCD.  I'm tossing them but saving the binders because they are like new - donating those to the office here (actually we have a ton of empty binders in a big ol' box in the center of the office for anyone to use).  

I took his stapler.  It's small, black and it still works well.  I've been needing a stapler since people steal mine and I lost my last one in the downsizing move.

[King Bob]

That last bit sounds like Office Space: "That's my stapler."