Even though it is the end of November I am still trying to catch up.
July should have started out with us celebrating Zoey's gotcha day but that didn't happen because instead I ended up sending my mom to a skilled nursing facility that was suppose to specialize in dementia/Alzheimer called Garden Terrace. The guy from the hospice told me about it and when I looked at the reviews it looked like a good place for her. I talked to them about her situation and they assured me they could handle her so I decided to send her there. She did not go willingly but they finally got her there though. I finally got a call telling me she arrived but because she went in on a Friday and it was a holiday weekend we would have to wait until Monday to talk to a case worker. She would be also be in quarantine for 2 weeks which I was not happy about but nothing we could do about it. She was not there long and I got a call she fell. Found out SNF don't use any kind of alarms which makes no sense. They consider them restraints? I think that is crazy. They would rather have people fall then try to prevent that from happening? Thankfully she was not hurt. I was told she would not have a phone in her room which I found kind of odd but she was still able to ask for one when she wanted to call us and she did that a lot, mainly to tell us to come and take her home. I had to tell them to stop giving it to her sometimes. I didn't like doing that but she was driving us crazy. Because she went in on a Friday and it was holiday weekend we had to wait until the following Monday to talk to a case worker. That did not help anything. She was even more confused then usual and kept thinking she was at the health club or an abandoned office. I was finally able to talk to the case worker and they said I would be getting weekly updates. I told them that I wanted to talk to a doctor there as soon as possible but that took forever to happen. They had taken mom off of a lot of her meds at the hospital including the Aracept which she takes for the dementia because they thought that could have been causing the urine retention. They also took her off the Gabapentin which helps her spinal stenosis and her ability to walk so I was trying to get her back on those things but it took awhile. I also wanted to go over her med list to see what else they took her off of. I was never able to talk to a doctor there. The closest I got was the PA. I didn't get much out of her but she told me that she still would had to have 24/7 care from now on. I told her we could not afford that at home so was put in touch with the social worker who put me in touch with a placement service called Oasis to see what the other options were. They thought a group home would be a good fit for her. I had never heard of anything like that but I did a virtual tour of a few and was leaning towards one. It was a lot further than I wanted though and when I told mom about it she said no. I also found out that her supplement would pay for up to 100 days after the first 20 from Medicare which is something that we did not get with my dad so that gave me time to see if we had any other options. I was also still looking into 24/7 care at home but the cheapest I found was around $6,000 a month and the caregivers slept at night. I also did not have a good feeling about the guy that ran the place plus we would have to continue to pay the house expenses too and that would be even more money we did not have. I also got a text from the SNF one night out of the blue saying they had an active COVID case in the building. My heart dropped. I called to find out more information but nobody had any. I couldn't believe they would send out a text like that and not have more information. I had to leave a message with the GM because he went home for the night. Who sends a text like that and goes home? He called me back the next morning and thankfully it turned out not to be a big problem and was not in the building she was in. The guy from Compassus Hospice that saw her in the hospital was still calling to see how things were and was being somewhat helpful but that didn't last long. I had another hospice come and evaluate her Suntree Hospice this was the one I was going to switch my dad to but never got the chance and they said they would accept her too but not until she was out of skilled. You can't do both together. She was also starting to refuse physical therapy saying that her legs hurt to much to walk. I was hoping that once I got her back on the meds that would change. It did help some but she was not making a lot of progress and her mind just continued to get worse. They did have a wound care doctor and nurse coming to see her. I was not getting a lot of information about her wound either at first but was finally able to get some photos and it was starting to look better. They also had an appointment with the infectious disease doctor virtually but did not include me even though I asked many times to be part of that call. I was very upset about that along with all the other lack of communication. The APS lady who had been to the house to see us last month had called to see how things were and I told her what was going on. I had tried to get a hold of her at the last hospital but she was out of town so was really glad she called me. She was super nice and helpful and able to get the Ombudsman involved so we all had a care conference with the people at the facility and that helped some. I continued to try and figure out what to do next because I thought we still had time. That was not true though.
In the meantime I was continuing to look for places for mom. We decided it was time to sell her car so we would have some money if we found a place. I went to the safe deposit box to get the title but they would not let me in even though I had taken my mom to the bank months before to get all that taken care of. I had to get my sister to sign off on it and then mail back in the from which I did. They claimed they never got it. I ended up talking to the branch manager the next day and thankfully she was able to get them to let me in so I went back and I finally got it. Unfortunately the care was dead as a doornail from sitting in the garage so long but thankfully Rich was able to get it started with a new battery so I put it up for sale. We also finally had someone interested in buying my dads rental houses. Unfortunately the deal fell through though because when they tried to go and see it the tenants would not let them in and they thought they smelled drugs? We were able to find another buyer after that but that one fell through too.
If all this wasn't enough Indie got sick the end of the month. It started with a gurgle stomach like Lily use to have but nothing I tried was helping and things just continued to get worse. By the end of the week she was throwing up and had diarrhea. I got my home vet to prescribe her some meds but they didn't work either so we had no choice but to take her to a vet office. Because of the virus we could not go in with her though which I hated not being able to do but I had to get her help. Over $400.00 later they could not find anything really wrong. They put her on a different antibiotic, Pepcid, Probiotics and a shot of Cernia. I had to feed her tiny amounts of bland canned dog food for days. It took a while but thankfully she finally started to get better.
Things in my Etsy shop were pretty good. I got this great photo of a return buyers dog wearing my small boy dog party hat. His name is KJ. Isn't he adorable?
The end of the month I finally had some time to complete one piece for the Florals and Praise for His Glory Challenge on Instagram.
With everything that happened this verse gave me hope that things could get better. Unfortunately that did not happen though. More about that in my next post.
