My mom was admitted to the hospital on this day last week. So she has been in the hospital for a week. I thought she'd only be in there for a few days they'd rehydrate her, get her chemicals in balance, put a cast or something on her leg...but the doctors just keep finding more and more things wrong with her. Even though I didn't want to admit it, going to see my mom now was becoming very routine. Get in the car. Turn (direction)*. Drive down the street for several miles (we dont live very far from the hospital). Turn (direction). Turn (direction) into the parking structure because I'm tired of trying to find a closer parking space. Find a space. If its on a higher lot, take the elevator down. Get out of my car, walk out of the parking structure, turn (direction), and try dodge all of the construction that will be going on at the hospital for about a year. Follow the trail to the hospital. Go into the main entrance. See the coffee shop and the hospital gift shop. Glance in at all of the cute Valentines Day goodies. Go to the elevator. Sometimes alone, sometimes with lots of people. Sometimes stopping on every floor, sometimes only one: mine. Get off on the (#) floor, turn (direction), see the nurses at the nursing station, get to the room, put on the gown and gloves, walk into my mom's room and say hello, sit down and chat. Oh, and I forgot, get lost and unlost and some point...yes I STILL get lost! I have absolutely NO sense of direction!
Don't get me wrong. I don't hate going to see my mom. I just hate that now it's my ROUTINE to go visit my mom in the HOSPITAL every day. And ME at a HOSPITAL around SICK PEOPLE and getting on ELEVATORS? Well, we all know that story. Sometimes I have to remind myself that I AM facing some of my WORST fears without even fearing them, if that makes sense. Even though there are days that feel routine, most of that is BEFORE I get to the hospital. I think there have been more UNUSUAL days than usual ones. Either I get a call about something or find out some results when I get there; results that I was SUPPOSED to be notified about but wasn't. Today my mom was getting an ultrasound to get a better look at what was going on around my her abdominal area. She has been through so many tests in the past week.
So now we come back to the money. Since my mom got sick, Jeff and I decided that we needed to take over their finances for the time being. My mom took care of all of the money matters and she obviously can't do that now. It's very difficult to manage both their and our finances. We have to decide what's best for them without keeping them from having a say as well. It's a fine line and very hard to balance. We have to remember it's THEIR money and even though we are spending it for them, we cannot take over completely.
Jeff takes care of our finances since I am awful with numbers, money and organization and he is the opposite. So he is doing MOST of the work for them financially, but I do help out a bit. PLUS he does ALL the work for OUR finances. This is yet another stressful difficulty resulting from my mom's illness, especially on Jeff, and his mind is absolutely amazing...I dont know how he is able to organize everything in such a short time, without knowing anything about it. I really don't like the idea of snooping in on my parents' finances, but for at least the time being, that's what we have to do. They have pretty much relinquished all of the control over their info over to us and I hope we can keep things on track until my mom is well.
Anyway, so we spent the whole night going through, organizing, and paying most of their bills. It took a LOOONG time, was strenuous and exhausting, I think I became cross-eyed for a while, I'm sure we argued some, but overall I think we worked well together. I learned a lot, but I know I still have a lot more to learn. So I guess I also learned that I still have a lot to learn about handling finances!
And. We. Are. Not. Done. Utilities, Credit Cards Bills, Insurance Payments. We have to get them all organized and make sure we know the due dates and get everything paid on time. And not all of those have come in the mail yet. I feel like were running an accounting service.
On a different note, how in the hell does a high school student get a 4.2 GPA (some girl on Jay Leno just said she has one)?
*I left out the directions and floor number because it just felt safe to me for some reason
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