Hippo, birdie, two ewes...

... to thnidu!!! Have a great one!!

Colleen[7]: !@#@$@#!@#$!@#$!%^ and planning

OK, so it looks like they want to send Colleen home tomorrow. We're dealing with the US health care don't give a damn system here, so the probability of changing that is nil. At best we might be able to fight a delaying action, but even putting it off until after Thanksgiving is unlikely. It's not like they have souls or anything.

(Update: 11/22 2pm She'll be moving to a skilled nursing facility, no earlier than Monday or Tuesday, and will stay until it's safe for her to be at home with less than 24-hour care. Apparently the doctors who she spoke to this morning were unanimous in saying that she couldn't go home yet. No telling where in the chain of command the idiocy was located. Kaiser covers 100 days/year of skilled care. Renting a hospital bed for when she does come home will only run some $20/month, but see below for a better long-term solution.)

Here are the major problems:

1. It's 50 feet from the bedroom to the front door. Sometimes she needs to use a walker for that.
2. Family members are in school or at work much of the day. If she can't be left alone for a couple of hours at a stretch, or needs someone closer than a half-hour drive on call, we're simply hosed. We do not have long-term care insurance.
3. The bed is too high for her to get safely in and out of.
4. The toilet in the front bathroom is too low for her to get safely in and out of.

Here are some possible solutions and side-notes:

1. If there's a kind of pump that hangs on a shoulder strap, or an IV pole we can attach to the walker, she can get around the house safely by herself. This may require hardware hacking on my part.
2. I can work half-days from home; Kat can take over in the afternoons. Still, if she needs someone closer than half an hour -- and preferably an hour -- away all the time, I don't see how it would be possible. There are errands, shopping, dentist appointments, taking the kids to school, you name it. The friends most likely to be free to help don't have cars.
3. She can use the airbed in the sewing room temporarily. Longer term, I can set up a hospital bed either in the sewing room (which is really too small for it) or in the part of the living room that used to be the master bedroom. It already has curtains for privacy; I suppose we could put the wall back up at some point and make it a guest room. I've been thinking about that anyway.
4. We need a higher toilet in the front bathroom anyway. And grab bars in both bathrooms. Short term, if she's in our bedroom or the front, she can use a commode; that would require clearing out space in our bedroom, but that's another project that's been put off too long.

Another possibility longer term is simply replacing the bed in the bedroom with a split, adjustable bed -- I know they exist. It would be expensive, but there's not much to be done about that. Right now we're using the space under the bed for storage, but that almost certainly would be less stuff to move than what's in front, which includes a couch and the Wolfling's pile of wedding presents. Those will all go away around the end of January, but hopefully by then Colleen will be better by then.

Longer term, the household is simply hosed. We don't have long-term care insurance (my stupidity about 15 years ago, and not fixable now) and it's inevitable that one or the other of us is going to get sick enough to need 24-hour care. I don't have enough cope to deal with that one -- ever.

Colleen[8]: That's better...

Went in to visit Colleen about 11am, so as to be there around noon when her case manager was due to show up. Along the way we were assured by several doctors that she wasn't about to be sent home any time soon. In particular, she will emphatically not be coming home before Thanksgiving, so LOSCON is still on. We won't need the second room, though; overall we'll save $400 or so on room and meals.

(It's not clear just what or who was responsible for the miscommunication -- or more likely idiocy -- that had them setting things up for a Sunday release, nor which of the various people she cried or ranted at put the brakes on. But it seems to be taken care of for now.)

Sang "The Mary Ellen Carter" (my choice), "Wheelin'", and "Quiet Victories" (at Colleen's request).

She will be going to a skilled nursing facility, definitely no sooner than Monday; most likely Tuesday or Wednesday. If we're lucky, there's one very close to our house -- the only questions are whether it has beds and whether it can handle TPN. Kaiser covers 100 days of skilled care per year -- the case manager wasn't clear on whether that was per calendar year or per 365 consecutive days, but it probably won't matter in this case.

When she's no longer at the stage of needing 24-hour skilled care, we'll get training in using the equipment and so on before she'll be allowed home. I've seen the take-home pump; it's in a bag that can be carried as either a shoulder bag or a backpack. It would, at least, let her get around the house using the walker. We'll also get training on the ostomy bag (for the fistula). She'll be getting a home-care nurse initially, then go in for regular appointments at the wound care clinic. A hospital bed should only cost about $20/month to rent; not clear whether it would fit in the sewing room.

(I'm mostly making notes for my own benefit here, so that I can make sure they haven't left anything out.)

She's in good spirits, and looks and sounds healthier than I've seen her in weeks. Maybe months. She also hasn't needed any morphine today, which is good.

Thanks, by the way, to chipuni for his visit today, and to carmiel for the bear and good conversation yesterday.

Colleen, like me, favors getting a split adjustable bed for our bedroom as a longer term solution. I'll miss the lovely oak bedstead that I made a little after we were married, but it'll give us an opportunity for some much-needed and long-delayed cleaning.

Since I will be going to LOSCON with the kids, I obviously won't have Thanksgiving weekend for cleaning. Depending on timing I may have to take some time off work. Hopefully I can do a little every day or so. We'll deal with it.