Mother's in the hospital. MRI showed yet another collapsed vertebra, L3. She will be there for awhile, then she will go to a short term rehabilitation facility. After that. . . I don't know. I've gotten information on what Medicare will pay for. It is all horrible to think about, but I have to.
Last night I stayed at my own home for the first time in months. Brought my things back from my mother's house and got set up. Poured a drink and sat down.
No internet! That meant no television. For the next hour, I was on the phone with the cable company trying to get it going again. The neighbors all had internet service, they said. It must be my router. I planned to exchange it the next day.
Got my Kindle and poured another drink and got set up in my own bed. Reading, scotch, and the events of the days made me sleepy. I took a sleep aid, did my nightly ablutions.
I slept in my own bed.
When I got up, I was still woozy. I remembered my internet troubles. I made the coffee. I was stupid. I used the coffee beans that had been here for months. Awful. I poured that out and made another pot with the new beans that I had remembered to get along with a few other items for my empty fridge and shelves.
I went to check the internet again. No lights on the modem. Wait. There was no power cord. My mind has not been working right. I found the end of the cord and plugged it in.
Internet!!!
As I poured a cup of coffee, the carpenter and his wife showed up. I didn't need that. But I had to go out and chat. I wrote him a big fat check. He had been through what I am going through with his mother who died last year. His wife told me that Medicare will pay for care up to 100 days, then it is done. Bad news . After that, you just drain your bank account. She gave me advice.
Oh. . . the photo. My mind is not working. I had gone to see my mother in the hospital in the morning. They took her for her MRI around noon, so I went to get lunch. That was lunch. I sent the picture to my friends with a message: "Coping Mechanism."
It came with a pulled pork sandwich and fries.
When I went back to the hospital in the afternoon, I had timed it right. The staff doctor came to see her and I got to talk everything through with him. Then I saw the case manager who is helping me set up the aftercare. My mother's nurse came in and we got to chat. My mother was starting to hurt. The nurse gave her a pill. I asked about the morphine. My mother was allowed morphine, she said.
"Give it to her," I said. "She came in because of the pain. I don't want her in pain."
And no shit--she went and got the morphine and put it right into my mother's port. My mother said, "O.K. I'm going to curl up now and go to sleep."
It was five-thirty. I drove back to my mother's house, made a Negroni, and sat down to watch the six o'clock BBC news just as I have done for months with my mother. It was very weird watching it in her house without her.
And again, I broke down.
After the news, I began packing up my things. Driving back to my house was very strange. Back home, I was fairly disoriented and out of my rhythm. At bedtime, I forgot to take my meds. I remembered this morning. I've never done that before. Never.
I need to get my head straight. There is just too much that is new and strange. My life has become very different from what it has ever been. I must be very, very careful.
Careful has never been my forte.
But sweet music is. Here is a very sweet, definitely Parisian, version of "I'm Confessing That I Love You." If you don't listen and love it, I'm not sure we can hang out in a cafe together any longer.
But that has always been your call.
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