So, my mom hit the infamous Medicare donut hole this month. Whose idea is this anyway? If I find out I'll send her to live with him/her when her meds run out. Although her meds won't run out. I'll just have to do some creative negotiating of payments with the pharmacy.
I'm getting pretty good at payment plans. I avoid them as much as I can, but now I have to use them. Mom has payment plans with two hospitals, a dentist, a contractor and a credit card company. That's a lot to keep track of (plus my own bills to figure out how to pay. I often forget to pay mine entirely). But a relative was nice enough to loan her enough to pay off two of the balances so that eases up a bit of brain space for me.
Next month is go time for mom's house. The house will be on the market by the end of April ready or not. I have given the final notice to family, who are using the house as their personal storage facility, that their things will be thrown away if not removed in the next week. I'm done with the stress of it. I plan on scrubbing the house down myself next week and start painting. Now the kid with the severe asthma really shouldn't be the one painting, but c'est la vie. So I'll schedule my week in bed for May and push through as best I can.
The med tech at my mother's ALS mentioned to me the other day that she heard my mom talking to herself. An immediately count-down calendar started ticking in my head. That day I walked up to mom's room and heard her mumbling to herself. Today at her primary care doctor visit she told him she was seeing people. She said she knew they weren't real so she refused to speak to them. Then the whole drive back to her ALS she mumbled quietly to herself (she called it "speaking in tongues" when I was a kid. I would call it "speaking without a tongue" for a more poetic and accurate description). She was enrolled in an Observation and Assessment program through Medicare to hopefully keep her out of the hospital this time, but I'm not optimistic.
She's had severe shaking the past two months (she's having trouble eating and is rapidly losing weight because of it) and her primary care physician isn't sure if she has developed Parkinson's Disease (just what she needs) or if it's the medication she was on until November last year. He said if it's the meds it may go away or be permanent. There has got to be a way to catch a break here at some point. My mother will be seeing a neurologist to figure out what's going on there. Her new psychiatrist (who I'm really not fond of already) was adjusting her Zyprexa lower to see if it was causing the shaking. Lowering the dose only seemed to make it worse. And now she's complaining of panic attacks and trouble breathing. She sees the psychiatrist next week so we'll see what he says (and if he remembers she's his patient this time).
So that little calendar in my head is ticking away. I'm sure if a miracle doesn't happen she'll be back in the hospital in the next two months. Maybe Mother's Day? Maybe that can be my vacation? (See horrible daughter explanation in previous post).
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