First Cup of Coffee - It's been a week.

For those of you who may be experiencing something similar with a parent or loved one, I'm (so far) recommending the free service called A Place For Mom. Click Here for Website

In case you missed it, Strange Familiar Audio Book is now available on Youtube ~ Listen for free here

You can find the Owl Crate signed edition of Never the Roses here
A very beautiful hardcover edition can be found here
The audio book can be listened to here
And Kindle Unlimited has Never the Roses digital version!

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Tuscon Festival of Books is March 14th-15th this year! See you there *Wink* 

📚Books📚

Preorder MAGIC REBORN here

Among the Thorns will be here July 14th - Preorder is NOW available!

STRANGE FAMILIAR is live

You can always buy print copies of my books from my local indie, Beastly Books!

Transcript

0:00

I'm going to tell you all the whole story. If you want to hear it, today is probably all about just life things. Like mother. Like daughter. Right? I am my mother's daughter. Long time listeners will be amused by this. Because you know that she always wants to know if I have recorded the podcast. So I told her when I went to see her first thing this morning, that I was going to record this podcast today. And, so she asked me to tell you all. Hello. Good morning everyone. I'm here with my first cup of coffee. So. Which is now cold. It's been a week since we last spoke. It's been an actual week, and it's been a week. It's, felt like a year. So apologies for missing the podcast on Friday. I just couldn't couldn't. So, to update you all. Trying not to cry. Okay. Gathered my poise. So a week ago, Tuesday, my mother fell. So I'm going to tell you all the whole story. If you want to hear it, today is probably all about just life things. No, I've not sent in among the thorns yet, although I'm very close, and I'll. I'm going to send it, tomorrow COB. and I will be pushing off. As I've already said, I think I'm going to set, release date for Magic Reborn for December 30th and hope for the best. So last Tuesday, my mom texted. Good morning. Late week text. Good morning. Every day she's been living alone. For those of you who don't know, she's 83. And yet, if if you're not a long time listener, then you know that, like, she's been dealing with dementia, I've been trying to move her to be with me in Santa Fe. She's been vehemently resisting. So, I assume she often will sleep in till, like, 9:30. And so it wasn't unusual for her not to say good morning to me until then. And I asked her how she was, and she said, not good, which is very unusual. She's usually quite perky. And she, said that her arm wouldn't stop bleeding. And I said, well, that's the blood thinner she's on to rest because she had pulmonary embolisms. And I said, you know, it's that's why it won't stop. And, I said, why don't you call your friend Churito, who is a retired nurse. And she said, what good would that do? Which is my mother being stubborn and I said, well, bind it up really tight and keep me updated. Right. So then an hour goes by where she's not responding to my text. She doesn't respond to what I call. And so and I so I find what I'm trying to say what to do. Do I call an ambulance because I'm in Santa Fe? She's in Tucson. Do I call an ambulance? Do I call someone else? Am I overreacting? Am I under reacting right? We always wonder these things. And so I text Churito, her friend, and ask if she's in town. And I texted, my stepsister Hope, and ask if she's back because she was supposed to. She'd been on a delayed flight to supposed to be back over the weekend. Didn't get back. She was going to get back to Tucson at like midnight on Mondays. And I don't know if she made it back yet or not. So, neither one of them replies to my texts, and I'm starting to. And neither is my mother. So finally, I call Hope, and she picks up and she says she's sorry. She was on the phone with someone else, and she says, well, she'll go over and check on my mom. And right when I hung up with her. the...I had a text from my mom saying, that she finally got herself up off the floor. And I was like, when were you on the floor? And so the thing is, is we don't know exactly what happened. But then Churito replies to my text and I said, well, I think hope is going over. She said, well, does your mom need help? And I said, yes. So it ended up that both Churito and Hope got to the house at the same time. My mom had locked the screen door, bolted it from the inside, so they ended up having to cut the screen door to open it. But hope you know that had tried to call my mom, and she didn't answer. And then finally, my mom called her back, thankfully, and my mom said, well, that she couldn't walk, that she was sitting on the edge of the bed and couldn't walk. So that's when they cut the screen door and they went in. And there's blood everywhere. I mean, I took pictures when I got here and apparently the paramedics cleaned up some, but it looked like a crime scene. People, just blood dripping all over the house. All over her bed. It looked like she’d been murdered in her bed. So the paramedics came, and the upshot was, is they found out that she has a hip replacement. And she had fractured the bone beneath the prostheses and did not require surgery. So that was the great news. But I jumped in the car. All of this I knew by. Well, I knew that the paramedics were there, and I told Hope that I was coming and I was in the car

by about 1: 5:31

00 on Tuesday, and got here at 9 p.m. my mom was already asleep at the hospital. And yeah, so then we ended up spending the three days, three more days at the hospital, hanging out, doing things. I started dealing with stuff around the house. Once we know that it didn't. She didn't require surgery. She had to stay in the hospital for three more nights because the first night she was admitted for observation and then apparently, Medicare has this rule. That's the three Midnights rule that they have to be admitted for, like a reason instead of observation. So she did four nights on the hospital total. And from the very beginning, I'm. And it's all a blur, people. I mean, it's just like. And if you don't know, I'm an only child. So I was like, only child ING this. My stepsister, was with my mom all day Tuesday, so I, you know, kind of sprung her for a bit Wednesday, but she was coming and going, and I, and obviously I'm not firing on all cylinders. It's like my brain is totally scrambled. A friend of mine told me that, I thought this was a great analogy. He said that you're going through a traumatic experience. This is literally the definition of a traumatic experience. You can think of it like you have your hand on the hot stove, but you're not. You can't pull it away, right? You just have to endure it. There's this whole deal where they have what they call, a charge nurse or no case manager. Case manager. So this gal, on the first day on Wednesday, it was, sort of fired these questions at me. And she said, from here, they're going to move her into is a rehab or skilled nursing, depending upon the physical therapy assessment, which we hadn't have yet, and wouldn't have for a couple of days. And so she kind of fired these choices at me, you know, like, for rehab, there's this or this, and this is their parameters. And for skilled nursing, we have this, this, this, and you pick your first, second, third choices. And so like the next day, a different person in that same job, like whoever was on that day actually gave me a list, which I can show you, but a list of all these places with their ratings and so forth, which would have been really helpful to look at that first day, although I could change my mind, but basically they asked me to choose my first, second, third choices. And protip skilled nursing means nursing home. It's like the new euphemism I guess I picked according to like the scores. So here is another pro tip. If you go through this, go go to all these places, go look at them because you can't just go off of the ratings alone. It's really confusing. They give you these ratings that are the overall CMS rating with, and then all of these other things length of stay and pressure, injuries and all this sort of thing. And Yeah, it's it's overwhelming when you're already overwhelmed. It's overwhelming. So yeah, it would I wish I would have gone to look at them because the upshot is by Saturday evening they were going to transfer her on Saturday.

It didn't happen until like 5: 9:04

30.

They said between 5:30 and 6: 9:06

30. They didn't tell us that till about three in the afternoon. So we were kind of waiting around all day and my mom was sundowning by then. She's had good days and bad days, but between the pain medication and the trauma of the whole thing, she's been really confused. The dementia is a problem. On that first morning Wednesday morning, her attending doctor pulled me aside and said she had advanced dementia and couldn't be living alone and all of this. And I was like, yeah, I know, I'm okay. But I don't think I mean, I do think she has substantial dementia. I'm not sure it's advanced. And, you know, it depends on how completely addled she is. So Saturday evening, my mom was already starting to get mad. And, you know, and saying terrible things to me, you know, like, why am I punishing her? Why am I doing this to her? And they came and they transferred her. And my mom just went incandescent with rage. And they took us to this place where I was really looking forward to having her in skilled nursing. I'm like, skilled nursing. Sounds amazing, right? Where people are going to be looking after her and she's going to be safe. And I was planning to stay on Sunday and then maybe drive home on Monday or go part way, even Sunday afternoon. I was thinking, oh, totally, I'm going to be able to go. I know that she's in good hands. And, as the narrator says, this is not what happened. Yeah, we transferred her and it was. Nobody would talk to me there. They put her in this double room. Wasn't a private room, in this narrow bed under a window that had a broken blind. And it was, It was awful. It was truly awful. And it's a terrible night. I tossed and turned all night, and she had a terrible night. She was texting her friends. I go and I check her phone to see who's texted her and reply. If she hasn't and she's texting people saying she'd been kidnaped, that she was on a cot in a hallway under a broken blind. Which I think it's really funny because that both my mother and I noticed the broken blind. I mean, it's easy to notice, but also it's indicative of a thing. Right? And and it's been better since then. I mean, the people there, you know, it's kind of uneven, but some of the people have been really great, and she's progressing well. I mean, she's already up putting weight on that leg. She can use a walker. She's not completely steady, but she's she's doing so much better already. Mood is up and down Sunday morning. She was already texting me at like four in the morning. I visiting hours started at seven. I just went over there and and went in at like six. They let me in when they admitted her is nurse tech or whoever. It's it's a blur. Told me come any time she said when I'm visiting hours where. But she also said come any time. So it took me a little while to get in, but they let me in and, yeah. And kind of was able to settle her down a little bit. But then I came home and, my aunt flew in. My mom's a little sister, so that was great. But here's what I learned. I was sitting there Sunday morning thinking, what am I going to do? And for some reason, I didn't know this. So I'm telling you, in case you all know this, that I can move her to a different place. It's been a bit of a process. I didn't know why they ended up sending her to the third choice. Now, I understand that they communicated with me really badly. It was just, I didn't understand a whole lot of what was going on. And, yes, they did send me to the third choice of the skilled nursing. Who Actually has a really great rating. I'm like looking at their rating, but, not it's just not not what she needs. And so, I found a service that so far I am recommending called A place for mom. It's a free service. I found it when I was googling the skilled nursing centers and trying to see if I could find other ratings. Find out more information. They get a kickback from, like, assisted living. So they really tried to push me towards assisted living rather than the skilled nursing. And it took a little bit of guiding them back on track. But so far I think it's working out okay. My aunt and I went and looked at some places, but I guess Sundays at, like, these nursing homes, they're just barely staffed, and, like, they weren't going to do anything with my mom on that Sunday. You know, they're like, well, you know, Sundays, it's kind of a laid day. It's visiting day. We had an official appointment to tour a place yesterday morning at nine, and this is what I think I'm going to do. So apparently the other thing with Medicare is they can only be in skilled nursing for 20 days. And my mom will probably not need to be in there that long because she's really doing so well. But a friend of mine who had been through this recommended saying, well, when they decide to spring them from skilled nursing, it happens pretty fast, you know, that. They decide, okay. And they say, where are you? Where do you want us to send them? And so she said, well, the one of the best things you can do is already have the assisted living setup because she can't come back to this house and live by herself. She just can't, which is heartbreaking. But had to happen, right? So, I found this place, we toured it. And the upshot is, is that today I met with them yesterday. The guy in charge of skilled nursing said he would pull the trigger. What you do is you get a referral. They refer, from the place where she is now. They they handle the medical transport. So they're supposed to transport her today from the place where she is now to the better place, which is also where the assisted living is. And I picked out an apartment for her. It's really beautiful and it's got great views. The other advice I've gotten is, I think I will pull the trigger on that, assisted living place today. I want to get her in the skilled nursing first, and then, the other advice is to go ahead and have that place ready so I don't have to come back when I move. Moved to assisted living. Which means I have to deal with, like, moving the furniture and stuff. They they have a moving service, so. But I think I'm going to deal with that, too. Well, it's been another piece of advice that some of my wonderful friends have suggested to be aware of how difficult this is, and to limit how many decisions I make per day. So I'm trying to make fewer decisions per day. So I think I will wait for her to get there and then make the decision on the apartment and so forth. And then tomorrow I'll think about maybe getting the moving service to come get some furniture. And right now that feels overwhelming. So, so that's where I'm at. I have been working on, Among the Thorns, and it's a little bit. It's, it's grounding to me to do the creative work. And fortunately, it's only at it, so I don't think I could actually be drafting right now. So at least lets me focus on something. And, my mom said I told her I was going to do the podcast today. That's one of the signs of her returning understanding of things, where she did ask me on Friday if I recorded a podcast. Faithful listeners will be amused by this because you know that she always wants to know if I have recorded the podcast. So I told her when I went to see her first thing this morning, that I was going to record this podcast today. And, so she asked me to tell you all. Hello. Yesterday she got just a close on, her nurse tech. Yesterday was great. And she asked me to bring her her makeup bag because she said she was tired of looking like shit. And I told that to a friend of mine who said, I can certainly see how you two are related. Like mother, like daughter. Right? I am my mother's daughter. So. So that's what's been going on. I may be driving home on Friday if, all goes well in my life, I don't know if I'll try to do a podcast first, but, I will attempt to keep you all updated. So I hope that, I hope your work's going better than mine. And I will talk to you all soon. You all take care. Bye bye.