"I CAN'T DO THIS ANYMORE!" has become my mantra for at least 10 of the last 20 days...
Today was one of those days I thought I would spend in bed because I still felt like crap. Sniffling, coughing, feeling icky, you know the drill. So anyway, around 2:30pm I got a call from my mom. She said that she was going to be discharged to the rehabilitation center TODAY. TODAY??? Nice notice. I asked her what time and she said she didn't know; that as soon as she found out, she'd call me. My dad was with her but he wanted me to come and drive him over.
So I took a quick shower and a few minutes after I was done, my mom called and said she was going to be taken over to the facility at 4pm. This was around 3pm. I could handle that. She said she was going to be taken over there by ambulance, so we would follow them (that's standard procedure).
I got there in plenty of time. The EMTs arrived right after I did. As usual, it was the hospital staff who wasn't ready; they were still changing the dressing on my mom's leg. This seemed to take forever, with me, my dad, and the two EMTs waiting in the hallway impatiently. They were finally ready and off we went. They took my mom out in her bed (those things are so neat; you can move the person to a place instead of taking the person out of their bed and taking them to the place) and down to the ambulance. I looked back in the empty room that my mom had stayed in for about 2 weeks. I kinda said "goodbye" room" in my head, and felt a little sad. That room was beginning to feel like my "little home."
The EMTs told us where the center would be. Conveniently, it is really close to the hospital; close enough for a hospital employee to pretty much walk there. When we got there, I was not pleased. The sign outside the place said it was a CONVALESCENT hospital. I was thinking, "huh? I thought they were taking her to a rehab. place?!" When we walked in, there were a bunch of "old people" in wheel chairs and walking with walkers. I had to face the fact...my mom is old. I don't see or think of my mom as old, so this was really hard for me to reconcile in my mind. The place also smelled like "old people." I was NOT happy. My mom had a "roommate," another thing with which I was not liking. At the hospital, she had the luxury of a private room because of her low resistance to bacteria. But this place was hospital that was for people who needed care, but not the care that those required at a "regular" hospital would need. However, this is just a place where she would temporarily reside while receiving physical therapy. It is not one of those places where the adult children drop off their parents to live and then never go see them.
My mom and her very odd roommate were separated by only a curtain. Her roommate seemed to like to listen to our conversations and chime in. Now I'm not trying to be rude, but we JUST got there, were all confused and just wanted to be left alone, and right away this woman just joins our conversation. A little OVER-friendly I'd think. Oh well. Maybe it was just me.
Anyway, each half of the room had a bed, nightstand, another table for things like food or writing on, a couple of chairs, but only ONE bathroom, luckily closest to my mom. I just felt so uneasy there. I was not happy at all. I immediately wanted to go back to the hospital. I missed the hospital. Yes, I MISSED THE HOSPITAL!!! I felt like a little baby, thinking inside my head, "I wanna go back to the hospital, I don't like it here! I don't like it here! Take us back to the hospital! Waaaaaaaa!" That's pretty much how I felt anyway.
We got the lay of the land, found out all of the necessary things (e.g., visiting hours, phone calls, ect.). OH WAIT! PHONE CALLS! My BIGGEST f*cking (sorry) pet peeve about this whole experience, beating out both of my mom's incompetent doctor in 2nd place and the poor communication between the family and the hospital staff and 3rd place (1st being the worst of the three evils, 3rd, not as bad but not great). Do you know how they handle calls there? They give the patients CELL PHONES!!! CELL PHONES??? Cell Phones Old People = NOT a good mix.
My mom is one of the most techno-phobic individuals I know. But she had something working against her. The crappy design of the phone itself. The thing doesn't really have any words or intuitive symbols. It is really small and has small buttons that are hard to read. It goes into auto key lock after 2 minutes. And even I had trouble hearing someone on the other end when using it. I consider myself to be pretty technically savvy so I felt like an idiot because it took me about ten minutes to figure out how to use it. So now my mom has no way of calling us or receiving calls, because she doesn't understand how to make nor receive calls on this phone. I told the person at the front desk that she was having trouble with it and they said the nurses would help her. Yeah, right.
So we stayed for a while, but I was still feeling sick and pretty depressed at this point, and really wanted to go home. I took my dad back to the hospital to get his car and then I drove home, kind of whimpering. When I got home the tears came again, not as bad and hard as when my mom went into the hospital; those were tears of the fear of losing my mom. These were tears of frustration and feeling like my mom was even farther away than she was when she was in the hospital because of our inability to call one another, coupled with the fact that I did NOT want to visit that depressing place every day (which I did do at the hospital with the exception of my two "sick days") I didn't even MIND going there anymore.
My dad called while I was still bawling, and he asked me what was wrong. I told him I did not like that place and the fact that my mom was not going to be able to figure out how to use the phone would also limit our contact. My dad agreed and we were both depressed about it, but what could we do? I was 99.9% CONVINCED that my mom would not know how to use that phone, if we could even get her to try.
Wasn't this supposed to be a HAPPY day? My mom was considered FINE now, at least healthy enough to no longer be hooked up to a bunch of machines, and I was able to finally HUG her again! But I guess in my mind, the "bads" outweighed the "goods."
Just face it. Jessica doesn't like change. The world should know that by now and make special accommodations for her!
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