Month: October 2022

Aunt Annie has been placed in isolation for 10 days at the nursing home to combat her COVID symptoms. While she feels like she’s got the worst flu bug that ever hit her, she’s not exhibiting any respiratory symptoms. She’s 5 days into her isolation program, but the fact that an immune-compromised 80-year-old is hanging tough is a bit of a relief.

She’s still going to need at least 3-5 days of physical therapy once she gets out of COVID protocol as she’s lost a fair amount of strength on bed rest, and she’s hanging in there, but it’s not been easy.

Every time she lets me visit her, I don the PPE and get in there to cheer her up. I’ve also been navigating the health system as we try to get answers as to what’s going to be covered by insurance, what we’re going to be paying ourselves, negotiating with the nursing home staff to get updates as to how her care is going, coordinating and re-coordinating her post-institutional appointments, etc. etc.

It’s really a full-time job in itself.

Continue reading An update and an ‘ask’

I received an unwelcome call late on Sunday morning, informing me that my aunt had tested positive for COVID after three-and-a-half weeks bouncing in and out of hospitals and sub-acute care facilities.

The facility where she’s being treated has apparently had a small outbreak, and five residents have been affected, including an aunt who has been downright antisocial over the past two-and-a-half years to ensure that her immune-compromised body not encounter anyone who might have been exposed to COVID.

I took a test on Sunday (as I’d spent Saturday with my aunt) and tested negative, and I’ll continue to monitor my situation over the next couple of days…

Because I spent Monday afternoon in full PPE, visiting with a more-than-slightly-pissed-off 80-year-old who feels terrible, but is at least not dealing with the most acute symptoms of a virus that’s making her feel miserable, but nothing worse than that.

Continue reading And then the nursing home gave Aunt Annie COVID

It’s been three weeks since my aunt was hospitalized for the first time, and she’s been in the nursing home/rehab facility for a week now.

She’s utterly exhausted, mentally as much as physically, from living in a facility where there is no rest from constant noise and negotiation with overworked nursing staff for basic care.

I’m also exhausted from worry, financial and health-related uncertainty, worries about what will happen when she comes home, and, after two weeks spent in a hotel and two-and-a-half weeks spent alone at home, I’m pretty bloody lonely in an empty condominium.

We have a week to go (hopefully) in terms of Aunt Annie’s institutionalization. Our insurance coverage runs out on Thursday, October 20th, and the nursing home is essentially dumping her out upon the world six days from now.

Continue reading Three weeks in

Hockey friends,

On the day that the Red Wings establish their 23-man roster (with a few players placed on LTIR for good measure), I’m headed out to the nursing home where Aunt Annie has been placed for another visit.

She’s had an incredibly difficult time adjusting from acute care to sub-acute care, and as hard as the first couple of days in the cardiac ward were, I would argue that the last four days’ worth of fighting with both the aunt and fighting with her medical caregivers to ensure that she receives a high level of care have been more exhausting.

I’m doing my best to make sure that everything’s taken care of, but there are times that my little 80-year-old can be her own worst enemy, and that’s been innervating.

So I’m still on the IR for another day or three while we get Aunt Annie truly settled into her rehabilitative routine. I desperately miss “normal” life, working for you included, and I will be back as soon as humanly possible.

Once again, my apologies for not being on the blog today, but yesterday night, we moved Aunt Annie from Beaumont’s cardiac ward to sub-acute health care (a.k.a. a rehabilitation facility); it sounds like things are still being worked out, so I need to get over there ASAP and make sure that she’s getting her pain medications and whatever else she needs.

Sometimes you have to be a pain in the ass to get things done, and as the caregiver, it’s my job to be that PITA.

I hope to be back and on Twitter for tonight’s game, but one never knows. I hope you all are doing well and I miss talking hockey with you very much.

Tomorrow marks two weeks since my aunt fell down the stairs. She is still hospitalized at Beaumont as of this morning, but we are hopeful that she will be transferred to a nursing home/rehab facility in Novi sometime this afternoon.

Aunt Annie had a heart catheterization on Monday, and it showed no blockages, but the cardiologists also diagnosed the chemical present when heart muscles have been damaged, so she’s had a heart attack of some sort at some point. We’re following up with the head of cardiology at Beaumont.

At this point, they’ve decided to treat AA’s heart failure (a condition that is surprisingly survivable!) with medication as opposed to placing a pacemaker with a defibrillator inside her. I’m not thrilled with that decision, but it’s not mine to make.

Ideally speaking, once she gets placed in the nursing home/rehab facility, and it’s up to her standards in terms of post-acute care, then a week or two of PT should help her regain her ability to get up the three steps on our porch and finally come home to Netflix and her JUUL.

Continue reading Still fighting it

I’m incredibly likely to miss the Red Wings-Penguins game tonight (7:30 PM EDT on Bally Sports Detroit Extra and the NHL Network [edit: as well as WWJ Newsradio 950]; I’m DVR’ing the game) because today is “Game Day” at Beaumont.

Aunt Annie is having her cardiac catheterization procedure at 4 PM EDT, and if the doctors don’t find anything, they’re going to discharge her tomorrow…

To nursing home care. Regrettably, she’s far too fragile to be discharged to home care, so she needs some institutional rehabilitation and PT/OT. We’ll be picking a nursing home/rehab facility that’s closer to South Lyon today, regardless of her discharge date.

Continue reading A different kind of game day: AA’s catheterization supersedes Wings-Pens for me

My aunt’s family physician for the last forty years said something that shocked me yesterday: “Well, your aunt’s in heart failure, but I’m fairly optimistic that with the right combination of medications, we should get this looked after.”

And that is where we’re at right now. Aunt Annie is in Beaumont, and, technically speaking, she is in heart failure. Her heart’s running at about 20% efficiency, and her pulse is somewhere around 110 beats per minute as the fluid around her heart and in her lungs continue to make it harder for her heart to pump blood around her body.

Continue reading Living with (heart) failure