Could be the worst storm in almost 100 years (1916) on the way. National Weather Service says two storms, local forecaster says merging into one mother of all storms, just about to get underway. We’re no better equipped to handle monsoons in So Cal than most Floridians are to handle snow, or than most bunny rabbits are to handle corporate lawyers.
So, I started this time yesterday, filling oil lamps, cannibalizing 4 dirty old lamps to end up with one working lamp. Found all the candles and matches. Laid out crap on dinning room table to get ready for the dark, including pliers, WD40, scissors. Washed the oil lamps, covered with dust and very old termite sawdust. Power went out just before 14:00 yesterday, resumed at 23:00. Ahhh, but what adventures we had when the light were out.
Thanks the gas, we had a stove, although the water heater and furnace stopped because both are operated by electrical controls. I was able to keep my Italian wedding soup simmering on the stove. TCG took DOB to the lab for routine tests, getting caught in the slow-motion nightmare of trying to get DOB from car to building at the nano-second that the skies opened up and dropped raindrops the size of Volkswagens. Can’t you picture TCG, huffing and puffing to get her moving, and saying, in that slo-mo deep movie guy voice: “N…Nnnn…ooo… ooo!!!” as Perverse Nature laughed in the background? Good times.
So, anyway, after they get home, just about at dark, having stopped for Italian food because after several abortive attempts to use his iPhone w/ Bluetooth in the car, there was enough confusion in the air. I simply gave up trying to convey anything about light situation to TCG, because he was stuck in Send mode. He and DOB went out to late lunch on the way home, so they arrived just as the last light left the sky.
Fortunately, I had lights outside the front door and immediately inside, including several configurations of wax candles and those battery-operated tea lights. I could hear incoherent babble from DOB, concurrent with the urgent inarticulate cry for help from TCG before the door was fully opened. Finally, I was able to impress upon them both (yeah, right) we needed to review lighting options immediately.
UCC: (TO TCG) I set out candles and oil lamp on the dinning room table. You need to proceed there, sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up. It’s getting dark. See if you can get some of the other oil lamps going--
TCG: (Talking over me) Here, these are the leftovers from Centifoni’s. Mother had lasagna and I had angel hair pasta with blah blah…
UCC: (Patiently taking the dripping bag and walking in to kitchen. Dripping? Because have contents shifted? Well, yes. Wiping off container and placing it dark refrigerator) Muttering.
TCG: …. we got soaked at the lab. The rain started the instant we got out of the car, one v-e-r-y long parking space away from the building entrance.
UCC: Focus! You need to think about whether she can be trusted with live flame, which would be risky even if she had the sense of a retarded caveman. Think how flammable our house is. Think how stupid she is. Think---
TCG: (Talking over me) There were only two people ahead of us at the lab…
UCC: I’ll get DOB into her room, changed into dry clothes and explain her lighting options. Meanwhile, you check out the oil lamp situation.
TCG: Blah blah, blah (because I’ve walked away to get DOB out of her gape-jawed stall, parked on her walker in the middle of the room listening to me trying to get TCG to the dinning room table and her into her fucking room to shut that whining dog’s pathetic cries, so I don’t actually hear what he continued to say.)
DOB: We had angel-hair pasta and some…. oh, you know, that…
UCC: Lasagna. (Pointing to the 3-candle candelabra, alight on her kitchen table). It’s getting dark, let’s get you out of those wet clothes. (Trying to get DOB to walk quickly, even in dry weather, is an exercise in attempted violation of the law of thermodynamics about biddies (sic) at rest wanting to stay at rest) See the candles?
DOB: (Gazing solemnly in what can most favorably be described as a bemused and baffled look; but which veers closer to the slack-jawed blind-gaze-of-the-terminally-comatose end of the scale).
(…Crickets…)
Then, she begins this pornographically postmodern striptease attempt, gracefully slowed not by skill, so much as inability to lift her fat arms over her fat head.
WISIMH: Ok, I’m not so much captivated by this, as I am vomiting in my mouth. There’s not much to do except help her disrobe and pretend to understand her lunatic raving, muffled by the shirt over her head. Don’t even try to communicate in any meaningful way. Breathe. Wait, belay that! The room stinks like sick wet dog and stale urine.
So later, TCG goes out in the car looking for oil lamp oil, wick, and it goes without saying, some candles and matches; which however, since it went without saying it went without thought. Wait until you see what helpful stuff he DID get.
TCG: (returning to the house, beginning to speak to me before even registering where I might be, like, for instance, bleeding out on the floor at his feet, where he would still be talking as he tripped over my dead body) I went to A, the then to B, and finally, someone at C told me Dixiline had lamp oil and wicks. I went there, but they were closed.
UCC: Did you get some more candles or matches?
TCG: Oh, no, you didn’t tell me that!
WISIMH: You broke the chimney on that lamp! You spilled lamp oil all over the fucking table trying to consolidate limited supply in working units! You left other unspeakable mess behind, and god help me if you’d think to get your own fucking tools or clean the fuck up after yourself.
And now, for something completely different.
UCC: So what DID you get?
TCG: I almost got those oils you get to stick in aromatherapy bottles, with the sticks?
WISIMH: Thank goodness you didn’t do such a bonehead thing, you charming man.
UCC: What…
WISIMH: ..the fuck…
UCC: DID you get?
TCG: Tiki Torch Oil! (spoken triumphantly, with no more trace of irony than the trace of a grimace could be detected on my own smiling face.)
WISIMH: Aggggh! I’m going blind! Tiki torches are alcohol-based and burn like gasoline. This would not be appropriate for indoor use by people who had, let’s say, average competence and common sense. Imagine giving a Moltov cocktail of an oil lamp to DOB. I gave her a fucking battery-operated tea light earlier, showed her carefully how it wasn’t a real flame, and how the switch on the back could turn it on and off. When I returned later, upon smelling smoke, she had carefully placed the electric teal light safely in a cereal bowl, presumably to be fire-safe and catch melted wax.
The smell of smoke? Turns out she too, has 2 oil lamps, which haven’t been used in 20+ years, and are thus caked with greasy dust and fossilized termite droppings. Did she clean them before lighting? Seriously? Do you know what that lamp would smell like when lit in a room already damply redolent of the dying dog’s pustulant sores, and her ventilated diaper pail? If you don’t, good.
Later, having tried unsuccessfully to start a dura-flame log, TCG lights a homemade tiki-torch in the dinning room. Did I mention that TCG has COPD? That candle smoke bothers him? That he is an idiot?
TCG: There! How’s that instead of oil lamps?
UCC: (Hurrying to the site of the conflagration, now smoking and with flame a foot high.) That doesn’t work inside, too much smoke and CO2. Put it out.
TCG: Blah blah, putting it out, blah blah. WAIT! I have a bloody nose!
Spontaneous nosebleeds are TCG’s latest symptom, lovingly cultivated and dramatically performed, replete with plenty of red Kleenex, which he keeps in a flat sheet to dot with blood like some insane performance artist with only red paint. Despite needing a rapt audience for the duration of the nose bleed, it is dutifully interspersed with much apology and insistence that everything’s fine just fine. All suggestions one might make – for example: to do as web-MD advises and pinch nose closed for ten minutes – are declined with much patiently and regretfully sorrowful disappointment at one could be so wonderful and yet so dumb. Sadly shaking his head no. Ahhh….
Now look. I could attempt to recreate the evening’s conversational journey, lexically noncompliant and without context, but last night in the dark DOB was there too. In candlelight, plus the light of the fire I finally started instantly by the simple expedient of following the manufacturer’s instructions. I am reminded that LBJ once said someone was so dumb they wouldn’t know how to pour piss out of a boot if the instructions were written on the bottom. TCG wouldn’t know how to follow directions for lighting a dura-flame log if they were written in huge 3-step process on the log wrapping.
So instead of trying to commit the scintillating conversation to memory, I just kept drinking. I do recall one exchange during this 15-minute episode of Nosebleed Theater (audience will absolutely not be seated once the show has begin!) It exemplifies the quality of the discourse:
DOB: Aunt Hilda used to get nosebleeds all the time.
TCG: Yeah, but she was a bit high-strung, (spoken in an ominous undertone that hints of dark Freudian complications, most likely having to do with The Change)
DOB: But she was skinny. Hilda’s bloody noses were nothing like yours.
TCG: I’m skinny too. I now weight more than you. I’m the fattest person in this house.
WISIMH: Which makes as much sense in the middle of a nosebleed conversation as Biblical references do stamped on American weapons in the GWOT. It is a Good Thing that, in addition to the lights, I had the forethought to put out the jug of generic Baileys Irish Cream and a couple of glasses. And plus, I had the foresight to drink an entire glass before you guys got home.
I refilled my glass twice more during the entertainment portion of the evening’s show. He can’t start a fire. He can’t fix a lamp when all he has to do is fill it with the fucking right kind of oil. He can’t be trusted to think of anything on his own and now he can’t even competently follow directions. I’ve confronted the demon of having no intellectual stimulation or meaningful communication with either of them. Now, I’m beginning to suspect there’s another demon around the next corner. I’ll have to do everything. Who will check to be sure I don’t burn down the house? On second thought, that might be a mercifully brief way to end the pain.
On third thought, I think I’ll stick around. I’m beginning to see our times together here in the Fortress of Attitude as like those black and white episodic shows I saw on Saturday morning at the movie theater when I was a kid. Each episode ended with a cliff-hanger. The plot moves forward slower than an old lady on a walker in a rain storm. The hero walks into ambushes. The helpless heroine gets into trouble and has to be rescued. Repeatedly. Her father, the scientist, can save us all. But the bad guys get to Daddy and drug him and he doesn’t make any sense. Taken thusly, this happy home isn’t such a bad place to stick around, even in the dark.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Good Riddance, first decade of the new millennium
“It is this deep blankness is the real thing strange.
The more things happen to you the more you can't
Tell or remember even what they were.
“The contradictions cover such a range.
The talk would talk and go so far aslant.
You don't want madhouse and the whole thing there.”
- William Empson, Let it Go
More things keep happening to me. I’m sitting here in the madhouse trying to decide whether to enumerate my resolutions for the new year and/or decade, or to make my predictions about what mischief will happen next. Then again, perhaps, I’d do better to predict what won’t happen next year. Here goes.
DOB won’t remain on her feet through January. I foresee another fall in darkness, a midnight call, another rambling tale that begins with “I don’t know how this happened…” a trip to the ER, and too much hospital vending machine coffee.
TCG won’t exercise, walk, take any preventive measures to forestall his own mental and physical decline, and accordingly, the gathering dark will increasingly envelop him and threaten me.
UCC won’t make the cut to appear on my new favorite reality show: Hoarders. This is apparently a recognized clinical condition in which the hoarder turns to the accumulation of stuff as a means of clinging to happiness. Which actually, gives me an idea for a resolution. I hereby resolve to use the stuff I have before buying more stuff for the same purpose.
Whatever compassion I may have for the mentally ill, I find I have none for losers diagnosed as hoarders. I have the opposite condition: crumbs on the kitchen counter, clothing draped over doorknobs and even doors themselves, and the alluvial clutter accumulating on side tables and other flat surfaces. These things drive me crazier than I should be, faster than anyone should be driven.
One hoarder on a recent episode was found to have not one, but two dead cats buried beneath the 5,000 pounds of garbage stacked three feet high in every room. Flattened and mummified to resemble cat-shaped pancakes covered with cat hair. Please. I live with roommates that would soon become eligible for this show if it were not for my heroic – but ultimately doomed – efforts to throw out the trash slightly slower than it accumulates. Isn’t there a law of physics that decrees everything is returning to dust and mummified dead cats?
In fairness, it’s two to one here in the Fortress of Attitude. As the inhabitant with the most compos in my mentis under this roof, I am the driver of the clown car that is our lives, struggling to keep this freak show on the road, veering more precariously toward the abyss on either side of the mountain of our collective lives. Picture that early Disney cartoon in which Mickey and Goofy are driving a car pulling an airstreamish trailer.
I think as we age, darkness at the edge of our vision creeps slowly in, narrowing the focus of our thoughts the same way that twilight shadows gather at the end of day, narrowing our vision into a gathering darkness. We can’t think as fast, or as broadly as we did in youth. Our awareness shrinks to exclude first the “complicated” plots of Law & Order episodes, then our ability to distinguish between actual “news” on TV and the garbage that spews from the talking heads purporting to be “opinion.” Next, we can’t distinguish between news and infomercials for exercise equipment, or Big Pharma ads for the latest prescription drugs to cure us of invented diseases like restless mouth syndrome. We have to have things explained at least twice. We gradually lose the ability to pursue imaginative flights of creative and interesting fancy to such heights as those we scaled with youthful energy and vision. In the end, our universe shrinks to fit the surface of our own bodies like a loose fuzzy bathrobe: we lose all sense of charm, ability to make pleasant conversation, all consideration, grace, not to mention habits of personal hygiene and polite table manners.
Eventually, we can’t talk or even remember what happened. We talk aslant, we contradict, misremember, and are overtaken by blind paranoia. We are reduced to the status of roommates in the same madhouse. So, happy new decade everybody. Let this decade go.
The more things happen to you the more you can't
Tell or remember even what they were.
“The contradictions cover such a range.
The talk would talk and go so far aslant.
You don't want madhouse and the whole thing there.”
- William Empson, Let it Go
More things keep happening to me. I’m sitting here in the madhouse trying to decide whether to enumerate my resolutions for the new year and/or decade, or to make my predictions about what mischief will happen next. Then again, perhaps, I’d do better to predict what won’t happen next year. Here goes.
DOB won’t remain on her feet through January. I foresee another fall in darkness, a midnight call, another rambling tale that begins with “I don’t know how this happened…” a trip to the ER, and too much hospital vending machine coffee.
TCG won’t exercise, walk, take any preventive measures to forestall his own mental and physical decline, and accordingly, the gathering dark will increasingly envelop him and threaten me.
UCC won’t make the cut to appear on my new favorite reality show: Hoarders. This is apparently a recognized clinical condition in which the hoarder turns to the accumulation of stuff as a means of clinging to happiness. Which actually, gives me an idea for a resolution. I hereby resolve to use the stuff I have before buying more stuff for the same purpose.
Whatever compassion I may have for the mentally ill, I find I have none for losers diagnosed as hoarders. I have the opposite condition: crumbs on the kitchen counter, clothing draped over doorknobs and even doors themselves, and the alluvial clutter accumulating on side tables and other flat surfaces. These things drive me crazier than I should be, faster than anyone should be driven.
One hoarder on a recent episode was found to have not one, but two dead cats buried beneath the 5,000 pounds of garbage stacked three feet high in every room. Flattened and mummified to resemble cat-shaped pancakes covered with cat hair. Please. I live with roommates that would soon become eligible for this show if it were not for my heroic – but ultimately doomed – efforts to throw out the trash slightly slower than it accumulates. Isn’t there a law of physics that decrees everything is returning to dust and mummified dead cats?
In fairness, it’s two to one here in the Fortress of Attitude. As the inhabitant with the most compos in my mentis under this roof, I am the driver of the clown car that is our lives, struggling to keep this freak show on the road, veering more precariously toward the abyss on either side of the mountain of our collective lives. Picture that early Disney cartoon in which Mickey and Goofy are driving a car pulling an airstreamish trailer.
I think as we age, darkness at the edge of our vision creeps slowly in, narrowing the focus of our thoughts the same way that twilight shadows gather at the end of day, narrowing our vision into a gathering darkness. We can’t think as fast, or as broadly as we did in youth. Our awareness shrinks to exclude first the “complicated” plots of Law & Order episodes, then our ability to distinguish between actual “news” on TV and the garbage that spews from the talking heads purporting to be “opinion.” Next, we can’t distinguish between news and infomercials for exercise equipment, or Big Pharma ads for the latest prescription drugs to cure us of invented diseases like restless mouth syndrome. We have to have things explained at least twice. We gradually lose the ability to pursue imaginative flights of creative and interesting fancy to such heights as those we scaled with youthful energy and vision. In the end, our universe shrinks to fit the surface of our own bodies like a loose fuzzy bathrobe: we lose all sense of charm, ability to make pleasant conversation, all consideration, grace, not to mention habits of personal hygiene and polite table manners.
Eventually, we can’t talk or even remember what happened. We talk aslant, we contradict, misremember, and are overtaken by blind paranoia. We are reduced to the status of roommates in the same madhouse. So, happy new decade everybody. Let this decade go.
Monday, December 28, 2009
Breakfast of Champions
UCC: Did you test your fasting blood sugar this morning?
DOB: Yes, of course.
UCC: What was it?
DOB: I don’t look, I just write it down. I don’t remember.
UCC: Well. (checking) it was 97 today, and also yesterday morning. Do you know why you take your blood sugar?
DOB: Yes…. To write it down. Sure.
UCC: Actually, you’re supposed to pay attention to what it is, and more importantly to eat something if its below 100. Did you eat any breakfast?
DOB: No. I don’t usually have breakfast. Just a cup of coffee, and maybe some toast. But I usually get up around six to feed Sandy. He’s a good boy. Then I take my second nap…
WISIMH: …And the first would be when you slip into a coma caused by low blood sugar?
DOB: …. Then I might have some coffee or maybe a piece of toast.
UCC: Diabetics aren’t supposed to skip breakfast. Here, drink this juice. Remember we talked about this before…
WISIMH: … about a million times. You are a champion idiot. But in all fairness, I’m an idiot too for continuing to be surprised at your surpassing stupidity. And speaking of the stinking undead, I’ve been dreaming of the zombies again. I don’t always escape when they chase me, but I’m beginning to think that might be for the best. Last night, I dreamt I won a spelling bee and the word was exsanguination. That makes us both champions.
DOB: Yes, of course.
UCC: What was it?
DOB: I don’t look, I just write it down. I don’t remember.
UCC: Well. (checking) it was 97 today, and also yesterday morning. Do you know why you take your blood sugar?
DOB: Yes…. To write it down. Sure.
UCC: Actually, you’re supposed to pay attention to what it is, and more importantly to eat something if its below 100. Did you eat any breakfast?
DOB: No. I don’t usually have breakfast. Just a cup of coffee, and maybe some toast. But I usually get up around six to feed Sandy. He’s a good boy. Then I take my second nap…
WISIMH: …And the first would be when you slip into a coma caused by low blood sugar?
DOB: …. Then I might have some coffee or maybe a piece of toast.
UCC: Diabetics aren’t supposed to skip breakfast. Here, drink this juice. Remember we talked about this before…
WISIMH: … about a million times. You are a champion idiot. But in all fairness, I’m an idiot too for continuing to be surprised at your surpassing stupidity. And speaking of the stinking undead, I’ve been dreaming of the zombies again. I don’t always escape when they chase me, but I’m beginning to think that might be for the best. Last night, I dreamt I won a spelling bee and the word was exsanguination. That makes us both champions.
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Where’s a Half human/half bull when you need it?
Here’s what I have done for the past two weeks. It feels like I’ve been lost and wandering in a maze, while suffering from sleep deprivation and too much caffeine.
Our latest adventure began with DOB’s latest trip to the emergency room in the wee hours of the night. DOB is now safely back home and in the embrace of her loving family, where her caregivers now spend our “waking” hours each day stumbling around in a walking coma feeding her, negotiating her moves from bed to chair and back, emptying a commode chair in which most (but unfortunately not all) of her piss ends up in the bucket, coordinating with a gang of home health people checking her blood sugar and blood pressure (which, of course, we now do before each meal, so who needs them?). In my free time, I try to negotiate the maze of federal, state, regional and community “resources” for either in-home “personal care” (i.e. changing 3X adult diapers, and providing personal hygiene services that would be burdensome enough if the patient was an anorexic dwarf, but which in this case involve a patient whose flab and folds equal the mass of approximately 3 morbidly obese dwarves.
Prior to our recent venture into the dark, I elected not to do any of this in advance, preferring instead to use my energy to plead that TCG pay closer attention to managing DOB’s blood sugar (he didn’t), or to lobby that he take her ailing 80+ pound dog with the open sores on his appendages to the vet (he didn’t).
In retrospect, this was stupid of me. Now, not only do I have to do all the research, record-keeping, and bureaucratic wrangling, pre-paid funeral arrangements, etc. I have to do it while TCG huffs and puffs in my ear and tells me how much he appreciates my help. The fact is that I’m better at this than he is, but the prospect is more daunting than trying to negotiate King Minos’ labyrinth. At least in the labyrinth Deadalus had the delightful prospect of eventually encountering a minotaur who might mercifully tear off his head and slurp his neck like a popsicle, thereby putting an end to his suffering.
Thanks to the magic of Medicare and Secure Horizons we have all these worthless home care services like a nurse who can take blood pressure and blood sugar readings twice a week and copy down from our three times a day log of same. Nursing services we need like a hobo wino needs a glass of chocolate milk. We now also have a physical therapist and an occupational therapist twice a week for the next two weeks. Like DOB is going to be able to get into her shower stall and actually clean between her fat folds as a result of such therapy. What we do need, and have desperately needed all along, and asked each health care professional who stops by, is somebody to bathe her and change her clothes a couple of times a week. But although rumored to be afoot, we’ve seen no evidence of yet. Thus, the funky unwashed smell continues to marinate and evolve almost to the point of self-awareness. Wait: maybe this is how zombies are made.
Should I succeed in completing the application in for Medical (aka Medicaid in California), and should she qualify, and should we then spend down her savings to the point of impoverishment, we might be able to find a Skilled Nursing Facility (which Medicare and Medical might pay for if we assign the facility her entire Social Security check, and if her primary care doc prescribes as medically necessary) or an Assisted Living Facility (which they apparently won’t pay for, but which ironically is actually cheaper than the SNF and more appropriate to her needs) me and TCG might get a life back and our marriage might survive. Otherwise, let’s hope there’s a minotaur there somewhere, maybe back behind the stacks of new adult diapers and plastic-lined bed pads, or behind the trash can that contains said products after marinating in urine for a day or so.
As it is now, I’m stumbling through the waking nightmare my life has become and wondering how much longer I can keep my actual emotions and thoughts shut down enough to keep from screaming “shitfuck” while hitting my roommates upside their heads with a shovel. Last night, after making her dinner and serving it in her room only to find out all she wanted for dinner was another pain pill, she began for the gazillionth time to demonstrate where the pains were and how they were moving around from front to back or whatever. Without thinking things through first, I said “I don’t…” and almost finished what wanted to say “…give a shit”. Instead I managed to finish: “…think it matters where you pain is. The vicodin will find it”. I then drank too much coconut vodka, had an unsatisfying fight with my husband, and went to bed.
Yup. Need that minotaur.
Our latest adventure began with DOB’s latest trip to the emergency room in the wee hours of the night. DOB is now safely back home and in the embrace of her loving family, where her caregivers now spend our “waking” hours each day stumbling around in a walking coma feeding her, negotiating her moves from bed to chair and back, emptying a commode chair in which most (but unfortunately not all) of her piss ends up in the bucket, coordinating with a gang of home health people checking her blood sugar and blood pressure (which, of course, we now do before each meal, so who needs them?). In my free time, I try to negotiate the maze of federal, state, regional and community “resources” for either in-home “personal care” (i.e. changing 3X adult diapers, and providing personal hygiene services that would be burdensome enough if the patient was an anorexic dwarf, but which in this case involve a patient whose flab and folds equal the mass of approximately 3 morbidly obese dwarves.
Prior to our recent venture into the dark, I elected not to do any of this in advance, preferring instead to use my energy to plead that TCG pay closer attention to managing DOB’s blood sugar (he didn’t), or to lobby that he take her ailing 80+ pound dog with the open sores on his appendages to the vet (he didn’t).
In retrospect, this was stupid of me. Now, not only do I have to do all the research, record-keeping, and bureaucratic wrangling, pre-paid funeral arrangements, etc. I have to do it while TCG huffs and puffs in my ear and tells me how much he appreciates my help. The fact is that I’m better at this than he is, but the prospect is more daunting than trying to negotiate King Minos’ labyrinth. At least in the labyrinth Deadalus had the delightful prospect of eventually encountering a minotaur who might mercifully tear off his head and slurp his neck like a popsicle, thereby putting an end to his suffering.
Thanks to the magic of Medicare and Secure Horizons we have all these worthless home care services like a nurse who can take blood pressure and blood sugar readings twice a week and copy down from our three times a day log of same. Nursing services we need like a hobo wino needs a glass of chocolate milk. We now also have a physical therapist and an occupational therapist twice a week for the next two weeks. Like DOB is going to be able to get into her shower stall and actually clean between her fat folds as a result of such therapy. What we do need, and have desperately needed all along, and asked each health care professional who stops by, is somebody to bathe her and change her clothes a couple of times a week. But although rumored to be afoot, we’ve seen no evidence of yet. Thus, the funky unwashed smell continues to marinate and evolve almost to the point of self-awareness. Wait: maybe this is how zombies are made.
Should I succeed in completing the application in for Medical (aka Medicaid in California), and should she qualify, and should we then spend down her savings to the point of impoverishment, we might be able to find a Skilled Nursing Facility (which Medicare and Medical might pay for if we assign the facility her entire Social Security check, and if her primary care doc prescribes as medically necessary) or an Assisted Living Facility (which they apparently won’t pay for, but which ironically is actually cheaper than the SNF and more appropriate to her needs) me and TCG might get a life back and our marriage might survive. Otherwise, let’s hope there’s a minotaur there somewhere, maybe back behind the stacks of new adult diapers and plastic-lined bed pads, or behind the trash can that contains said products after marinating in urine for a day or so.
As it is now, I’m stumbling through the waking nightmare my life has become and wondering how much longer I can keep my actual emotions and thoughts shut down enough to keep from screaming “shitfuck” while hitting my roommates upside their heads with a shovel. Last night, after making her dinner and serving it in her room only to find out all she wanted for dinner was another pain pill, she began for the gazillionth time to demonstrate where the pains were and how they were moving around from front to back or whatever. Without thinking things through first, I said “I don’t…” and almost finished what wanted to say “…give a shit”. Instead I managed to finish: “…think it matters where you pain is. The vicodin will find it”. I then drank too much coconut vodka, had an unsatisfying fight with my husband, and went to bed.
Yup. Need that minotaur.
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Swing and a Miss
DOB fell over the other night. We awoke at 2:30 to the sound of her air horn calling us for help. We called 911 for lift assist.
It took until about 3:30 for the ambulance crew to persuade us to take DOB to ER for an x-ray, and for us to persuade them not to also take TCG because of his breathing, gasping, chest-clutching and general dramatics.
Me and TCG finally left the ER about 8:30 the next morning, having taken the doctor’s advice to admit her for further tests to figure out why she fell. Of course the irony here is that stupid isn’t a valid medical diagnosis. Nor, it turned out over the three subsequent days, does it show up on an MRI, a Cat Scan, or in a blood test.
Three nights (four, if you count our vigil in the charming ER suite) in a hospital room turns out to be not only the max her insurance covers, but it’s the minimum needed to disconnect her from any remaining semblance of reason, sanity, continence, coherence or awareness of anything but her moving aches and pains. The x-rays show a broken rib which is probably new, a tiny fracture on T6 which is probably old, and some tiny blood clots in her "brain", evidence of TIA events that are probably also old. Her stinky dog, staying in our side of the house during these nights, had kept TCG up with his whining and crying. As for me, I took a vicodin and slept like the dead.
We’ve been back home for 3 nights. First night, she speed-dials TCG at 12:30. Assuming she’s fallen again, we rush in to find she just wants another vicodin. (Note to self: find out if you can somehow hook a “clapper” up to deliver pain pills on demand.) Between calls to/from doctors, hospital follow-up, and social workers, physical therapists (!) and pharmacists, I went through some of her files to find evidence of regular payments to two different insurance companies, with no information whatsoever about coverage.
Calling for copies of policies, information on claims and surrender values is interspersed with grocery shopping, cooking her meals, testing her blood sugar before each meal, changing her clothes, and emptying her commode chair bucket has taken up the three days since she’s returned home. We’ve also had visits from the home health care nurse and a “placement specialist” who told us we’re pretty much SOL for getting her admitted to a skilled nursing facility or an assisted living facility based on the amount of her Social Security check. I overrode TCG’s offer to subsidize her check by about $1k a month to keep her in a facility. I may have to work for free, but dammed if I’ll sacrifice a big chunk of our meager fixed income to pay for somebody else to wait on her.
Turns out my strategy to expect TCG to take care of these matters was a mistake I’ll be paying for by having to empty her bedpan and change her diapers until the next time she hits the floor. We also learned that she doesn’t use the shower any more because she can’t step over the four-fucking-inch ledge. She gives herself a sponge bath using the kitchen sink and dish sponge and presumably the dish soap, but you’d be forgiven for guessing she doesn’t use soap based on the stench she exudes. And don’t throw up picturing the dish sponge washing her fat folds because the evidence shows she probably doesn’t actually use the dish sponge to wash her dishes anyway. The home health care nurse asked me why I didn’t give her sponge baths and check her diaper rash, and I said it isn’t in my job description. At the time, I was on my knees, trying to pull up DOB’s diapers after a rash check, but I don’t think the nurse appreciated the anger in my voice. I’d rather pick up the used toilet paper DOB drops on the floor after using the commode chair: this apparently is in my job description.
The silver lining is that I learned that the next time she falls over, we will get her to the ER immediately, insist that she be admitted to the hospital, and then simply refuse to take her home. Because I didn’t ask the right questions, make the right noises and/or wear socks that match my sweater, we missed a great opportunity to get her out of the house. I’ve got 2 weeks in the unofficial poll for the next time she falls. Tell Santa I’ve been a good girl.
It took until about 3:30 for the ambulance crew to persuade us to take DOB to ER for an x-ray, and for us to persuade them not to also take TCG because of his breathing, gasping, chest-clutching and general dramatics.
Me and TCG finally left the ER about 8:30 the next morning, having taken the doctor’s advice to admit her for further tests to figure out why she fell. Of course the irony here is that stupid isn’t a valid medical diagnosis. Nor, it turned out over the three subsequent days, does it show up on an MRI, a Cat Scan, or in a blood test.
Three nights (four, if you count our vigil in the charming ER suite) in a hospital room turns out to be not only the max her insurance covers, but it’s the minimum needed to disconnect her from any remaining semblance of reason, sanity, continence, coherence or awareness of anything but her moving aches and pains. The x-rays show a broken rib which is probably new, a tiny fracture on T6 which is probably old, and some tiny blood clots in her "brain", evidence of TIA events that are probably also old. Her stinky dog, staying in our side of the house during these nights, had kept TCG up with his whining and crying. As for me, I took a vicodin and slept like the dead.
We’ve been back home for 3 nights. First night, she speed-dials TCG at 12:30. Assuming she’s fallen again, we rush in to find she just wants another vicodin. (Note to self: find out if you can somehow hook a “clapper” up to deliver pain pills on demand.) Between calls to/from doctors, hospital follow-up, and social workers, physical therapists (!) and pharmacists, I went through some of her files to find evidence of regular payments to two different insurance companies, with no information whatsoever about coverage.
Calling for copies of policies, information on claims and surrender values is interspersed with grocery shopping, cooking her meals, testing her blood sugar before each meal, changing her clothes, and emptying her commode chair bucket has taken up the three days since she’s returned home. We’ve also had visits from the home health care nurse and a “placement specialist” who told us we’re pretty much SOL for getting her admitted to a skilled nursing facility or an assisted living facility based on the amount of her Social Security check. I overrode TCG’s offer to subsidize her check by about $1k a month to keep her in a facility. I may have to work for free, but dammed if I’ll sacrifice a big chunk of our meager fixed income to pay for somebody else to wait on her.
Turns out my strategy to expect TCG to take care of these matters was a mistake I’ll be paying for by having to empty her bedpan and change her diapers until the next time she hits the floor. We also learned that she doesn’t use the shower any more because she can’t step over the four-fucking-inch ledge. She gives herself a sponge bath using the kitchen sink and dish sponge and presumably the dish soap, but you’d be forgiven for guessing she doesn’t use soap based on the stench she exudes. And don’t throw up picturing the dish sponge washing her fat folds because the evidence shows she probably doesn’t actually use the dish sponge to wash her dishes anyway. The home health care nurse asked me why I didn’t give her sponge baths and check her diaper rash, and I said it isn’t in my job description. At the time, I was on my knees, trying to pull up DOB’s diapers after a rash check, but I don’t think the nurse appreciated the anger in my voice. I’d rather pick up the used toilet paper DOB drops on the floor after using the commode chair: this apparently is in my job description.
The silver lining is that I learned that the next time she falls over, we will get her to the ER immediately, insist that she be admitted to the hospital, and then simply refuse to take her home. Because I didn’t ask the right questions, make the right noises and/or wear socks that match my sweater, we missed a great opportunity to get her out of the house. I’ve got 2 weeks in the unofficial poll for the next time she falls. Tell Santa I’ve been a good girl.
Friday, December 11, 2009
American Sign Language of Prophecy
Brushing crumbs off your chest can be reversed into the ASL sign for “happy” by brushing up instead of down. If you always make a practice of making your last crumb-brush in an upward direction, you will be telling all deaf people in your line of sight that you are happy. And, I propose that this will make you actually become happy in some sort of self-fulfilling prophecy kind of way. It might also make you less concerned about the crumbs that always end up on the front of your shirt.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Philosophy of Plumbing
TCG: Just to let you know, I stopped up the toilet this morning. Pretty impressive.
UCC: Ahh, thanks. I think.
WISIMH: And here I was, just musing about Jacques Derrida’s speculation that civilization is not so much about sameness, but about difference, and hello, you come along and gobsmack me with a report about plumbing problems that makes me lean my head sideways like a confused dog trying to translate your meaning when what he hears always sounds like blah blah blah.
Anti-word of the day: heterogeneous
Composed of parts of different kinds; having widely dissimilar elements.
You like ka-ka conversations which makes us a heterogeneous couple, since I prefer existentialism and philosophy.
UCC: Ahh, thanks. I think.
WISIMH: And here I was, just musing about Jacques Derrida’s speculation that civilization is not so much about sameness, but about difference, and hello, you come along and gobsmack me with a report about plumbing problems that makes me lean my head sideways like a confused dog trying to translate your meaning when what he hears always sounds like blah blah blah.
Anti-word of the day: heterogeneous
Composed of parts of different kinds; having widely dissimilar elements.
You like ka-ka conversations which makes us a heterogeneous couple, since I prefer existentialism and philosophy.
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