5026 Up in the air

Friday, October 23, 2015

Whoa!  It's been a while since I visited here.  In the meantime, I've figured out a few of those noises in post 5021.  The microwave sounding beeps are probably people with remote keys locking and unlocking cars.  That explains the "bip bip" ones, but doesn't fully explain the "bip     bip-bip-bip     bip" ones. 

The loud crash during the night was the curtains and rod falling in the master bedroom, a closed room I seldom enter.  The curtains in that room are on a pressure rod that fits inside the frame, so I guess some temperature differential caused it to no longer hold.  I've had problems with those curtains before.  The second bedroom, where I sleep, has the same curtains on the same type of rod, but they've never fallen.  (I don't sleep in the master bedroom because that room is cold and drafty.)

I haven't been to the country house in a long time, and that's starting to gnaw at me.  The packed overnight bag has been in the trunk of the car for so long that I'll have to bring it back in and replace the light short sleeved things with heavier long sleeved stuff.  It seems like every time I plan to go, something happens to stop me.  This week I was absolutely determined to go, and then on Wednesday Ex#2 collapsed and was taken by ambulance to the ER, so Daughter ran off to south Jersey, and I had the Nugget.

Apparently he has some kind of blood infection, whatever that means.   They have him on antibiotics.  He wants to leave the hospital.  He's not entirely reasonable.

I really don't understand how that man is still alive.  I hear that he falls down all the time, but refuses to use his walker.  His diabetes is out of control.  His feet are so swollen they are like rockers, but he won't eat anything but ice cream.  He lives in an efficiency apartment attached to the big farmhouse (which he owns) where his sister, her divorced son and divorced daughter, her divorced daughter's ex-husband, and one or two of her grand children all live, and they are being driven crazy by him.  He's incontinent both ways, but refuses to wear diapers, is incapable of cleaning himself up, refuses to bathe, and refuses to have a daily health care worker in to assist.  An assisted living facility is absolutely out of the question.  He even refuses physical therapy.  And yet he declares he intends to live forever.

Daughter asked for and got a psych evaluation in the hospital so somebody else can make decisions for him, but they haven't heard the results yet.  I warned her that even the most out-of-it people can somehow pull it all together and sound perfectly reasonable for the few minutes that takes -- we went through that with Jay's father -- so we can't count on that.  But Daughter and the sister did at least get him to agree to a home care aide while the rest of the family are at work or school, so that's something.  Daughter doesn't have very high hopes for that because he gets mad and yells at anyone who tries to get him to do anything he doesn't want to do, and she's afraid they'll just quit,  but I told her that these aides are used to working with people like that and will know how to handle him.  I hope I'm right.

So, a lot of my schedule is up in the air.  Being available to Daughter is always a higher priority than the country house. 
So. 
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