Yesterday:
We meet with the hospice
rep in the hospital room of the man who loves me. Immediately, with a sad-eyed dog look and a honeyed voice, he blurts out a bunch of shit about how the hospice “can be there
for us 24/7.”
"Well, stop right there," I say. "So there could be someone 24/7 at
my house if I took D home with me for hospice?” I'd already spent two or three days figuring out that wasn't possible. And that the 24/7 would be necessary since I also care for my mom.
Mr. Hospice Guy, henceforth known as The Tool then tells us nope, well, not really and begins talking about respite care only he keeps saying respice like it was a weak
rhyme with hospice. If we need respice care, that’s 24/7, he says. For maybe 3 or 4 days. Tool. He calls D “young man.” Tool. He keeps saying transition and transitioning.
"You mean death
and dying," I say. He keeps confusing Medicare and Medi-Cal every single fucking
time he speaks. Could we please change the names of both of those programs? How about ElderMed and PoverMed so Tools can get it
straight. When he leaves, I would chug a glass of poison if I could get my hands on one. Bartender, drinks are on me. A round for everyone at
the bar.
Today:
A woman in an exquisite rose-colored polka-dot dress comes to fill out the hospice forms. She manages somehow to be simultaneously all-business and kind. After I get D settled in at the nursing home, the hospice nurse comes. She's wearing a pink smock with the name of the hospice and scrubs with hearts, but she's direct. Full of information about pain meds, and hope for being comfortable without being a zombie. She's asks if the goal is to get D to return home. "I would love to have him at my house," I say, giving her the facts of my seemingly impossible situation.
"It might not be impossible," she says. "Talk to the social worker. They have lots of community resources."
Tomorrow: Who the hell knows? For tonight, the man who loves me is in a nursing home. I'm sitting on my couch. Watching HGTV. I watched endless hours of HGTV after my divorce, never changing the channel. Maybe a couple of weeks from now, he'll be next to me, and the two of us will be staring a TV show where people obsess over granite countertops and his and her closets.
The Pie:
I was gone from 10:00 a.m. until after 6:00 this evening. M and her girlfriend stayed with my mom, bought groceries, reminded her to drink her Ensure, made her dinner, AND they made a pie. Mixed berry. Gluten-free crust. It was beyond divine. Maybe this is a harbinger of the love and support that awaits us.
"It might not be impossible," she says. "Talk to the social worker. They have lots of community resources."
Tomorrow: Who the hell knows? For tonight, the man who loves me is in a nursing home. I'm sitting on my couch. Watching HGTV. I watched endless hours of HGTV after my divorce, never changing the channel. Maybe a couple of weeks from now, he'll be next to me, and the two of us will be staring a TV show where people obsess over granite countertops and his and her closets.
The Pie:
I was gone from 10:00 a.m. until after 6:00 this evening. M and her girlfriend stayed with my mom, bought groceries, reminded her to drink her Ensure, made her dinner, AND they made a pie. Mixed berry. Gluten-free crust. It was beyond divine. Maybe this is a harbinger of the love and support that awaits us.
