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Week 3 on our hillside. Mom's pretty happy over in the Fifth Wheel. I've been collecting books from the rest of the family (by mail), and will give them all to her on her birthday. That should give her about a week's worth of reading.
Tall Friend came home last Friday. He's set up for home rehab, and is talking the exercise seriously now. His arm can hold his weight, he has some movement, and his fingers bend, so he's using a walker to move around the house. Short Friend just called and gave us an update, and to find out why the recycle folks didn't show up today. She doesn't take the local paper or read the county website, so she didn't know that the rural recycling was suspended until further notice. We happen to have three trash cans and only use two (one for trash, one for recycles), so we're giving her one for her recycles.
Sister finally sold her house and has moved into one much nearer to us (boy, is that a saga...). In two weeks, after any residual COVID-19 virus has died on the moving cartons, we'll move Mom in with Sister. Then we'll figure out how to get access to her Independent Living apartment to move out all her stuff and end that relationship. Considering the facility is still taking in new residents, which requires movers to have access, there must be a way to move out, too. Meanwhile, we're hoping the "cleaning" crew hasn't helped itself to her stuff. What was a very nice facility when Mom first moved in has gone to the dogs, and we were moving her out even before COVID-19 hit.
Until then, though, Mom's safe here in the country.
Got into Mom's IL apartment yesterday, to pick up more clothes. Sheesh, she has more clothes than I've ever had...
She'd given me a list of what she wanted, but after trying to find so much of it, I finally decided to just pack it all. That which I could identify as what she wants to wear now I brought back home. The rest I took over to Sister, so if Mom needs something else, it will be a whole lot less hassle to get to it.
While there, a guy was moving into the place. His family was doing all the moving, and they clearly had not gone through the main entrance or followed all the rules -- not that it was a big issue. The facility isn't a hub of wildly active folks bouncing through the hallways. That gives me hope that we can give her 30-day notice in the next week or so, and get a moving crew to take out the furniture -- all her kids are too old and all are immune compromised, so we're sure not going to do it. The facility hasn't had any COVID-19 cases in residents or staff, so I understand why they're being so vigilant about outside access, but this particular moving crew gets into IL facilities all over town, and all is going just fine. The hard part will be the packing, since the facility has a one person in the room at a time rule.
Still, I'm hopeful we're making progress toward Mom moving into Sister's house. So much safer for her there and infinitely cheaper.
Still no movement on getting Mom's furniture out of the IL. At least, to date, they've had zero cases of COVID-19 in either residents, staff, or visiting medical professionals. But the city saw an upsurge in cases, so they still have the IL and nursing homes locked down.
Mom's doing fine in our house and the Fifth Wheel, so other than missing an occasional useful item, she likes being back in the country.
Tall Friend started having strange symptoms, which sounded very much like a TIA or another stroke. Turns out he has a UTI. Yep, just as Kathryn of Aragon's thread on Adventures in Caregiving described, a UTI in an elderly person creates truly odd symptoms. Short Friend is desperately trying to get him to drink more fluids, but it's that old cycle:
"If I drink more, I'll have to pee more, and that means getting out of my chair/bed and using the walker to shamble to the toilet. I don't wanna..."
"If you don't, you'll just get sicker and sicker. Do you want to go back to the hospital?"
Tall Friend is in the ICU, but they are refusing to give any information to his wife other than "he's stable." She's hitting the warpath this morning, and it will be scorched earth. They really, really need to do a much better job of communicating, even considering how tired the medical personnel must be. It's why they have omsbudpeople, after all...
Tall Friend is in the ICU, but they are refusing to give any information to his wife other than "he's stable." She's hitting the warpath this morning, and it will be scorched earth. They really, really need to do a much better job of communicating, even considering how tired the medical personnel must be. It's why they have omsbudpeople, after all...
Ombudspeople are volunteers, it’s not actually a job and they have no authority for change. They are basically mediators. Although they can then escalate to state workers if needed. Just some info as I feel not many realize they are only volunteers.
We started packing up Mom's IL apartment. She's moving in with Sister this month. I'll miss not being able to look across the room and ask her something, but she's really missing all her stuff and her ability to dive into all those genealogy records.
Unfortunately, guess who is responsible for all the packing? Yup, yours truly once again. I can handle a couple hours of packing at a time and that's pretty much it. Luckily, this isn't even close to the nightmare of moving Mom out of the farmstead. Since all of her clothes and foodstuffs are already out, it's just genealogy records, books, kitchen utensils and dishes, knickknacks, pictures, decorations and furniture. We should have the vast majority packed up by next week, and then get the movers to do the heavy lifting.
While I will volunteer to help her unpack the small stuff, once this move is over, I'm done. Whatever goes on at Sister's house is hers and Mom's business. They'll have to sort out what goes where without my input.
Meanwhile, Tall Friend is in a plateau. He can't really improve until the damage the hospital and rehab facility did to his shoulder (torn muscles and a broken bone) finally heals. Spousal Unit stays with him for several hours each week, to give Short Friend a break. Usually, she and I volunteer at the local charity thrift store. I look up donated book values and assign a price, and she shelves them.
I'm very thankful that Mom, at 95, is healthier than most of her kids, 'cause this moving business is a pain -- a serious pain. Both Spousal Unit and I have aching backs and all we did was pack things into boxes. Sheesh. Aging is not for wimps...
Almost packed. Another couple days and we'll be done. Then we move the breakables to Sister's house, so we don't have to pack them to survive the movers. Movers will take the book boxes and furniture over next week. Then we'll move Mom from the Fifth Wheel after her medical appointment on Thursday, and help her unpack.
And then we'll let Sister handle things. I'll still drive Mom to her medical appointments, since Sister works from home, but those are not near as often as they used to be.
Sigh. All this packing, and packing, and packing -- Mom's sure got a LOT of stuff in that 2BR apartment. At 67, it's not near as easy to pack up and move like it was just 10 years ago, when I retired. But we've packed everything we need to pack. Just have to move the remaining little bits and pieces out of the movers' way, and she'll be out of the IL apartment and Fifth Wheel and into Sister's house by this Friday.
All this effort has ensured Spousal Unit and I sleep really really well...
Sister has already advised that a goodly portion of Mom's or her kitchen and dining stuff will have to go to another family member, since Sister literally has zero room for more. So I brought home all of Mom's cast iron except the cornbread stick pan, but will retrieve it when the box is opened up. There might be a family argument over who gets which piece of Tupperware (we all do love our Tupperware), and I have dibs in on one of her Corningware casseroles. The rest will be under discussion at Thanksgiving, when Brother plans to drive down.
No issues at all with Mom's bone china and crystal. She gave it all to Sister (at my insistence) about eight years ago. Sister had an ugly divorce, where he kept everything nice out of spite, not that they had any bone china or crystal. But I already have our china and crystal, plus we inherited Spousal Unit's grandmother's china and crystal, so we surely did not need more. Mom can still see, use and enjoy the china her brother brought her from occupied Japan, living with Sister.
Sister has Spousal Unit's mother's silver-plate, as he didn't want it at all. Mom has her silver-plate, so we have really nice dishes, glasses and flatware for all the family gatherings at Sister's (she now has the larger house). When we use our china and crystal, we're perfectly happy with the super high quality stainless flatware we chose when we married 43 years ago.
Next challenge: Changing all of mom's prescriptions to the nearest pharmacy and not out here, updating addresses with various doctors and other folks with whom she routinely does business, and me finally starting to document the miles I drive to chauffeur her to medical appointments, etc. Getting all the financial stuff properly documented for Sister and me will be rather important, IRS-wise, as Mom is not a dependent. Another item all the kids have to sort out and properly document, just in case her funds run out before she does. If she needs Medicaid, nothing of ours should be used to count against her assets (or lack thereof). It's rather brain deforming, trying to get that worked out just right.
Sure caused her kids to recognize the need to establish trusts for ourselves, so we got right on that last week. The hardest thing any of us have to deal with is finding someone we trust who is young enough to be able to take on being a trust manager for if the survivor becomes incapable of making decisions, or if both of us kick off together in a two-motorcycle crash...
Lessons learned: don't make things harder for family by not being prepared for the downslide toward eternity.
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