Is this a hospital bed.....or an April Fool's joke?

Note the industrial gray headboard and the remote control. Note the smile on my mother's face. This is not an April Fool's joke. This, believe it, or not is a hospital bed. How did this happen?

On Friday I came across THIS ARTICLE in the New York Times--a fabulous piece with quite a bit of good info for anyone on Medicare. (And by the way, the New York Times has dozens of great pieces about aging.) In the article was a link which led me to HERE, and from there I followed the state specific link to THIS SITE, where I clicked on the complaint form. The next morning, I filled out the form, attached it to a detailed narrative, also attached the doctor's prescriptions, the handout from the medical supply company, then took it to my local UPS store and faxed it.

Today around noon I got a call from a woman at the HSAG telling me she had received my fax and that she'd spoken to the medical equipment company and the doctor's office. She said she had instructed them to communicate with one another and work it out and to do their best to get the bed delivered before the end of the day. If that didn't happen, she said I could give them another 24-48 hours, BUT to call her back and let her know if I didn't get the bed.

We got the bed.

I'm going to call the woman back tomorrow and thank her. Maybe she can help with my alimony.

But we're feeling good here in Margaritaville/Pillville. Flyin' high.

The Rain Falls Gently on My Brain

Caffeine is a wonderful thing. Until you've had so much that your brain is twitching its tail like a crouching lion, eyes fixed on its next meal. I've pounced on chore after chore this evening as I wait for my mom to settle into her night. Laundry, dishes, scrubbing the kitchen floor, making my to-do list for tomorrow, laying out the papers to fax to my mom's new primary care doctor. What else, what else? the hungry brain asks.

I'm on the couch with the ancient cat (who has never stalked much of anything,) and  I'm hoping this glass of wine and her purring will undo the injection of artificial energy. Last night I slept for only a couple of hours--maybe three if you count the time I spent on a pile of blankets at the top of the stairs, waiting for my mom to go back to bed after she woke around midnight. She accidentally pushed her Lifeline button when she woke, and M and I scrambled down the stairs to assure the Lifeline monitor that she was okay. M won the race by a mile. My brain was still trying to decode the strange voice in the kitchen calling my mother's name by the time M had already taken care of things. I tried to go back to sleep, but my mother was up and moving around--now without the button on, I realized--and I didn't want to put the button back on her and risk it being pushed again and waking up M before her crack of dawn 100-mile drive back to school, or the man who loves me who was in my bed in his own fitful sleep.

So I waited. Then I intervened. What was she doing? She had to clean off her desk, she told me. She wanted another empty chocolate tin like the others I had given her for the dimes she'd taken out of her wallet. She needed to put safety pins away, file papers, rearrange this and that. "Go to bed," she told me. So I pretended to.

When I really did get back to bed, the man who loves me said, "We have to activate your mother's pills." Activate, I thought. Activate? Activate what pills? He was half in a dream, half trying to help with the real-life chaos. "Is she going to be okay?" he asked. I told him she was fine. That everything was fine.

This morning, I swear to god, my mother was singing a song that seemed to be about baseball to the tune of the Star-Spangled Banner. I looked in her room and she was sound asleep...singing. "Hah-ha-ha," she laughed. "I don't know many songs," she said as she twitched and tossed, eyes closed.

The man who loves me used to frequently laugh out loud in his sleep. I haven't heard him do that in a long time. And I'd never heard anyone do that before him. If my mother wants to sing, I suppose that's okay too. I'd prefer to dream an interesting dream rather than sing. I'd prefer to sleep, rather than sit here typing. It's started to rain. Maybe all this crazy energy will be washed away. Sleeping to the sound of rain is a rare pleasure in Southern California.

While waiting for the freezer repairman...

I'm spending Saturday morning in sort of a suspended animation, not feeling like starting a project I'll just be taken away from. My mother woke with nausea and a headache, so while waiting for the doorbell, I'm also tuned into her. She's up now, the effects of the pain pill and the anti-nausea meds allowing her to be up and puttering in her room. She's talking to herself under her breath. Desk drawers are opening and closing, the stash of pencils rolling around, plastic bags crinkling while I sit here at the end of the kitchen island satisfied with the New York Times and brief bits of contact with distant colleagues on Facebook.

Somewhere in the back of my head, in that space I imagine something like a drawer, I'm re-thinking the last lines of a story. And there's that in-progress cover letter to an agent and the corresponding   pop-up reminder in the top right hand corner of my screen snoozing and waking to remind me again that I must work on that while two voices in my head argue about whether or not just to open the file while I'm waiting for the repairman. The voice that says, no not now is winning.

My body is speaking, too. Get up. Get up and do some t'ai chi chih. Have another latte'. Carry those filthy rugs out to the garage.

In another brain drawer, I'm walking through a trip to the Emergency Room. Put some snacks and a water bottle and the last two New Yorkers in the go bag. 

The iceman cometh, I say when the doorbell rings. Pressed shirt. A beautiful silver earring. Eastern European accent. Or maybe Russian. He touches the top and the bottom of the freezer door like a doctor. Shines a flashlight into the icemaker's throat. Pats his tool belt. Puts on his glasses and consults his smart phone.

I sit and think about the New York times test I took just before he arrived. A test to assess how well I read other people's emotions. I sneak a peak at his face. How is he feeling about my freezer? Is that exasperation? I scored high on the test--31 out of 36. The average score is between 22 and 30. Two of my mistakes were misinterpreting desire for something else--annoyance and boredom. What the hell?If you're in a bad marriage, get out. The repairman scratches notes on that metal box/clipboard that seems to be the de rigueur accessory for repairmen, and then he tells me the price. I don't flinch. Let him guess how I'm feeling.

After I close the door behind him, I think more about my desire-blindness. I think about the man who loves me, sixty miles away. I imagine his irradiated body glowing, the cancer that might still be inside him shriveling out of boredom. I try to imagine his eyes, what they would look like filled with desire, wonder if he'll be annoyed that I emailed his family last night to say he's not doing well. The broken ice maker chucks another deposit of ice into the bottom of the freezer while my mother mutters and moans.

Report from Pillville

This week's wrap-up:

The vascular surgeon: My mother quit smoking 17 months ago. This means that, given her post lung cancer ration of 10 cigarettes a day, she has consumed approximately 5,100 fewer cigarettes than she would have if she still smoked. Unfortunately, the circulation in her legs and feet is worse than ever. The good news is that she's in less discomfort than she used to be. For whatever reason, she's not regularly waking a couple of time per night with pain in her feet. On the advice of her doctor, we are watching and waiting.

The cardiologist and the chemical stress test: First the I.V.. Then the injection of the "special medicine without side effects that won't make you feel any different, but will allow detailed pictures of your heart." Okay. Then 3 glasses of water---this was more difficult for my mother than the I.V. Then the imaging which has to be done while the patient remains silent and lies perfectly still with arms above the head. Then another test. Then a break for lunch and a nap in the car. Then another set of images in the same uncomfortable position. Total time: 5 hours.

For me that equalled a lot of time reading email and scrolling through Facebook. And then there were the magazines:

Somebody in that office has a life when the lab coat comes off!

And now for the final story in Pillville tonight. The doctor's office again failed to successfully complete the paperwork required by Medicare for the hospital bed.

The medical equipment place called me yesterday afternoon to tell me they received a FAX from the doctor, but the information was not written in a clinical note And it failed to state that the patient required frequent changes in position. AND.....the doctor didn't sign it. As a final twist, the person who was handling my mother's case at the medical equipment company has quit. The person who is now handling the case will call the doctor's office tomorrow. I'm considering a crowd funding scheme as a publicity stunt.

Meanwhile, the vascular surgeon suggested a new primary care doctor. And one of the office staff at the cardiologist's raised her gorgeously penciled on eyebrows to the moon when I told her about the bed predicament. "Completely unacceptable," she said three times in a row. She told me that hospital beds are usually ordered by the primary care physician, but that I should give the cardiologist's  medical assistant a call.

Time. All of this takes sooo much time and mental energy. This afternoon M and I went to get groceries, and after we'd unloaded the cart, I realized I'd forgotten my wallet. I think my brain might be a tad bit radioactive. I might need a subscription to that Smithsonian Travel Catalogue.