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.
We’ll be able to coordinate some home care sessions, but I’m going to be living with a heart failure patient now (though it turns out that heart failure is a surprisingly survivable condition), and while we’ll have a couple of family members with health care backgrounds to lean upon, we’ll be as close to be “on our own” as it gets.
Work-wise, I didn’t think that I’d be missing regular season time (and it sucks, frankly, to not be able to man the blog), but I’ve got someone on the IR here, and being their health care advocate is honestly very difficult.
I want to thank those of you who’ve reached out. I know I’m not alone in having gone through this situation, and I have a ton of sympathy for those of you who’ve taken on similar caregiving situations. It’s hard, isn’t it?
Anyway, we’ve got six more days until AA gets out, and certainly a few days of adjustment to our new lifestyle together, but I’ll be damned if I’m not coming back to do this blogging thing as soon as her medical situation finds me able to do the work necessary, at least without sacrificing care for AA.
Right now, we’re taking things day by day, shift by shift, and that will continue when I return to work, but I hope that whatever constitutes our “new normal” will involve balancing caregiving and blogging again.
My mother lived with ‘heart failure’ for thirteen years, from the age of 90 to 103….yes, 103! I was her primary caregiver for many years until she finally had to spend the final year of her life in a nursing home due to worsening dementia. It’s not easy, I know. Hang in there. I wish you both well.
It’s a battle to care for people with heart failure, but it’s surprising that “heart failure” is such a survivable illness to me. It sounds so odd!
Thinking of you, George …