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

[mdlbear]

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.

Comments

Re: FlowerCat Update

[otherdeb.livejournal.com]

What a relief.

Also for when she does come home, if your dad checks the local pharmacies that are surgical supply places as well, or just looks up surgical supply places, there are booster seats that can either go under your toilet seat and attach to the toilet, of go over the rim of the bowl and be removable. In either case, they raise the seat to a safer height (and are very nice if you aren't disabled, but have long legs). My ex has one of each, since his wife has problems with the seat height and safety issues.

Re: FlowerCat Update

[mdlbear]

I was delighted to find that Home Depot carries several different flavors of high toilet seats now.

Re: FlowerCat Update

[artbeco.livejournal.com]

When I came home with my broken leg, Paul found a great solution to the low toilet problem; our local medical supply place had very affordable grab bars that actually install on the back of the toilet. It's a bar the goes along the back of the toilet and raises up on either side with a sturdy covered grab bar. I think it ran around $30.00, and it was exactly what I needed to be able to get up from the toilet with only one leg. I found the booster seats to be rather tippy, unstable and rather scary; you really want the grab bars in addition even if you get a taller toilet. The medical supply place also had toilet shower stools and other implements that help; they're really worth checking out.

Re: FlowerCat Update

[mdlbear]

Definitely agree on the grab bars -- I'll have to look for that one.