Just need to talk to my friends (200)

Eagle with your stings if in a week or so they reflare up return for care. This happened to me last year after getting 10 yellow jacket stings. You will need to take steroids for a few days if that happens. If you don't you will get like a systemic reaction.

My sister and I visited Salem when we were young, we enjoyed it.

I know the money bleeding feeling right now also.

Lorita glad there was a kind man who helped you. That is wonderful. Hope you got your butter beans cooked.

Now I have time to talk. My mom is now in assisted living. In the hospital, at some point the case manager contacted me and said my mom would need to go into long-term care. They asked me if I had choices and I gave them three. When we went to the first appointment as soon as we started talking to the lady, she was pretty defensive for lack of a better word. She immediately told us they were not accepting our mother because of her dementia and her noncompliance issues. My mom still does not have a dementia diagnosis but of course she is noncompliant. It was a little disappointing, but at the same time we felt like our eyes were opened a bit about some things. So I contacted the case manager and told her I could see we really couldn't pick so whoever she got to we would have to accept. She then told me she was going to give me name of someone who could help me.

she gave me a number for a lady who runs a franchise called Carepatrol. She helps you with getting people placed and normally she mainly works with people who are still at home. But she also will work with people who are in the hospital. She was definitely a wealth of information and a breath of fresh air. She immediately told us that we could get our mother placed in assisted-living, and I never dreamed that we could. She said there are two assisted living facilities in our community that take patients who need higher levels of care. Of course, that being said you pay much more money also based on the level of care they need.

the hospitalist that we had when my mom was there got it from our initial meeting with her. We didn’t have to tell her she knew. She told us I have your back. So if you remember, I told you that it’s my mom’s left foot that has all the fractures, but on the second day she started complaining of her right leg and not moving it. So when I asked her what she thought was going on with my mom’s right leg, she says I believe she’s making it up. So I sort of laughed and said OK. But when she left, I said to my sister I’m not sure she’s right about that but time will tell. A few days after that we were in the room with her and she was examining mom and my mom was doing her thing and she looked at my sister and says drama.

she called in a Neuro consult and a psychiatric consult for us. The neurologist got a brain MRI. Of course he would not give her any dementia label because he said the diagnosis of dementia needed to be done on an outpatient basis when they’re at their baseline, I understand that. What he did say is she had a lot of multi vascular changes in brain which can cause vascular dementia. So she doesn’t truly have a dementia diagnosis yet but as I said at the long-term care facility, they mentioned dementia and noncompliance as their concern.

when the psychiatrist came in, we were not in the room. So we just waited outside the room. She was only called in it turns out to determine whether my mother was medically competent to make her own healthcare decisions. When she came out, she told us that today she could not say that my mom was medically incompetent to make her own healthcare decisions. That kind of sent my sister into a little tirade about what all we’ve been having challenges with. Then psychiatrist says , that decision is just for today if your mom is discharged and she still isn’t walking and she refuses to go somewhere then I can say she is incompetent to make her own healthcare decisions. I even like restated it and said do I understand right and she told me yes. So I was counting on that because I thought she was honest and I could trust her word.

with the lady from Carepatrols help we went and visited two facilities and she went with us at each one. They both were nice enough one was $2000 more a month than the other. So we chose the less expensive one but when the nursing Director came to evaluate my mom, my mom was a little spun up. And actually, she had not been that way this admission she had been fairly calm, she complemented the nurses, but was totally uncooperative with doing any thing she was supposed to do. So this lady says we cannot take her if she’s acting like this. That was a little disappointing because the lady we were working with said they took harder to care for patients . So I told the lady I said well I think you know this isn’t going to work. I said wherever my mom goes I don’t want someone calling me in a couple of weeks saying we can’t care for her. That is the reason we were very upfront with them about all my mothers issues . The lady that was working with us told us the other facility is more to take harder cases. When their nursing Director came, they had a very good conversation with my mom as you can have with her and there was no acting out what so ever. So they accepted her. But that was sort of only the beginning of the battle.

at some point during all the above the hospitalist was talking to us about our mom and she said your mom has a personality disorder and she’s having delusions. My sister who was a psych nurse in her past told me that mom has narcissistic personality disorder quite a while ago and was having delusions. I looked into it and I told my sister you could well be right. I thanked her for telling us because that helps me to not feel like I’m biased or that truly the things I think I am seeing, I am seeing. One day just as I came in when I went to mom’s room, the NP with the podiatrist walked out of the room. As soon as she seen me, she recognized me from working there. She says to me I know what you’re going through. I have dealt with this too. She said my mom was also delusional in the same manner. She told me it is very hard for me to go into your mothers room. I told her I was so thankful that she talk to me about this and it turns out actually she had it way worse than I did. She is a young girl and I could tell that it affected her much more than it affected me because I think she had to deal with it at a much younger age and it was much more intense even. I said to her I try to have grace because I don’t know what causes it, and I don’t know if they have any control over it, so therefore I leave it in Gods hands. She had already told me she was a believer, so I hope maybe that will help her somewhere down the line to be a little more at peace as she helped me to be a little more at peace because she recognized it. I told her sometimes very hard to talk about because you’re afraid you will be judged. With this condition, my mom has I just read a little while ago how manipulative they can be. I have dealt with a lot of manipulation and I worried that maybe I would make the wrong call about it being manipulation. But this week has helped me to see that I was thinking correctly and that I wasn’t being biased or hard on my mom because I was tired and burnt out .

On day of discharge my sister was in room when psychiatrist came in. She said mom gave her usual answers and psychiatrist confronted her about her answers. Then she was not going to change it to medically incompetent to make decision.. my sister questioned her about it and in no uncertain terms told her we would not be taking her home. Sister said I don't what case manager thought. I said she oribably was happy and saying you go girl. Turns out she was. Psychiatrist then changed it and said patient delusional and unable.

So far my mom is doing ok. We are staying away until monday.

Mint, I know this is late, but you might ask the psychiatrist if your mom could have borderline personality disorder. It's very challenging.

Iris

FYI for anyone who might have missed it…M1's dear LO died this morning after suffering another fall. Can be found in comment titled…the other shoe has dropped.

Hello, my wife spent the day trying to get the new modum to connect the T.V. and all our electronics the 2 laptops,to cell phones and tablets (she is the computer expert). She was able to fix everything except her laptop so she went to the GEEK SQUARD yo fix it and they will call when it's ready.

Here's a pic of the new addition to my family:

We had a pretty good Halloween. Our scarecrow won a prize. The judges could see that it was outstanding in the field ;)

Good morning

I appreciate prayer.

Carl if you are able maybe you can share a picture of your scarecrow. I like scarecrows, have 3 in my living room.

Lorita it is a good feeling when someone helps us out, when someone lightens our load.

Caro-Lynne your cat is beautiful. When you talk about going through the motions of living, you helped me to realize that is part of what im feeling right now.

Take care everyone

Good morning to those on the porch.

Marie— Thank you for the heads up about M1's partner. Theirs has been such an unusually traumatic journey.

Mint— Dear Lord, what a couple of days you and your sister have had. It sounds as if you have prevailed and gotten your mom into a safe setting. Strong work on your parts; I'm sorry it wasn't easier.

I'm glad you were validated on the personality disorder piece. Between mom's family and dad's we pretty much have the DSM-5 covered. Dad was next level but never diagnosed. He must;ve been something else because as a five-year-old, his stepfather's dad took dad to a series of psychiatrists and faith healers in the early 1940s. A friend who is a clinical psychologist things high functioning sociopath but dad's geripsych was more comfortable with bi-polar disorder based on family history.

David— I hope Geek Squad is able to sort out your DW's tech issue. IME, they're like wizards. I'm a little salty on Best Buy at the moment. Their phone dudes made a mistake migrating DS's phone number and when DS tried to call to ask a question their customer service person refused to connect him and hung up on him. Not cool.

Lorita— Good on you getting your ballot in the mail. I agree, the South African accent is agreeable. DS used to attend a summer camp where a number of the counselors and water instructors were from there. DS came home with a hint of the accent himself.

Carolynn— A Scottish Fold, no? What a cute baby. When DH and I decided to get married, he was in the middle of buying a house and had no money for a ring, so he got me a Persian kitten instead. I was so disappointed when he slipped under the bed as soon as we got him home. On the third night, I felt a little thump in bed when he decided to join me there. Oddly, his little brother adopted a few months later came out of the box like he owned the place. He was dumb— he didn't know how to cat.
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It's a quiet day here. DH is giving DS a ride to work; I can't wait until he gets his car back. Grrr. His shift was canceled yesterday because of a bad brush fire along the right-of-way. It's been a drier summer followed by no measurable rain in 2 months and it's been breezy. I'm a little concerned about my situation— the house backs up to a 2-lane state road with a lot of traffic. Drivers sometimes pitch trash (always Dunkin' and McDonald's for some reason— we have 4 Starbies but it's never them)— a cigarette could be a disaster with the leaves. I like to leave them to breakdown in my backyard as my soil out back is terrible.

I spoke with mom's home health nurse Friday. She created a calendar page for mom's schedule and flaked filling in dates. She got as far as 11/08 and the started over with 11/01. Mom can be very distracting. I get it. She asked me what I thought of mom's progress and I said I thought she'd finally turned a corner and that what I was seeing now was more typical of her recovery from a COPD exacerbation. She'd admitted based on how poorly mom was on her intake appointment that she thought my goals and expectations might have been a little optimistic. She told me to keep advocating. FTR, mom's at 93% on room air.

I need to stop by and drop her off some soup I made. She often resorts to soup for dinner after a big lunch. Alas, prepared soup is now on her no-fly list. I made her a batch of curried green split pea soup that comes in at about 20mg of sodium a serving. I think if she hits it with enough freshly ground pepper she'll enjoy it. I may try my hand at cream of mushroom next and a batch of chili.

Went to Church first time I broke my ankle and it felt good.

Got a call that my wife's laptop is ready so after lunch we will go get it

Judith, are you waiting for mail-in ballot? Have you verified that you are registered? Strange things have been happening. Seems like they are cutting it close for mail-in ballot. I received mine weeks ago and mailed in straight away.

Yes Ron, we're eager to hear how the social went. xo

There is a tracker for absentee ballots. It says I have not applied so I guess I will load up my rollator Tuesday. at least I can sit on it in line…lol

Tornado watch until 8p. A more serious watch for Lorita.