Mom

A quick review of the past couple of weeks. Health-wise, she is doing great. I took her to her doctor two weeks ago (that was the hospital visit follow-up), and he was really impressed. He said that unless there are any concerns, he does not need to see her until June. At the same time, after we reported everything that happened to my mom, he looked at me and said: you realize that that’s just the beginning? Make sure to call her every morning to check that everything is alright.

I understand that, and that was one of the reasons I was still looking for a caregiver closer to my mom’s house. The one who started to visit my mom before I went on my trip, turned out to be great. Mom really likes her, and I asked her to meet with my mom at least once a week even if there are no specific needs. It is also great that she can take my mom to places where my help is not really needed, like the nail salon. I even asked her to take my mom to the blood test. To be honest, this small help frees up a lot of my work time, and that’s the primary reason I feel like I am becoming a human being again.

We ran out of the nurses’ visits, which was not so bad because there were objectively no reasons for them and because my mom insisted on somebody being there during the visits, even though the nurse spoke Russian. The insurance won’t cover it anymore; as I said, it’s good enough for now.

One of the things the nurse arranged was a social worker’s visit. Mom had this weird idea that if she would admit she needed help, I would send her to the nursing home, so she always said that she didn’t need any help. The social worker came anyway, and she assigned a Russian-speaking case manager for Mom. This case manager called me a week later (not three weeks later, as we were told). I had to take off work again, but at least I got some valuable information, especially regarding the subsidized housing. Now that I have learned how it works, I am not surprised that we are experiencing a housing crisis. Anyway, I contacted both subsidized housing and filled in applications. One was accepted, and another was returned, and we still need to fix the issues and turn it back. I don’t know what to make out of the fact that two houses have entirely different applications!

For a reason unknown to me, my mom believes that she will be placed in a room “with somebody else,” and she still thinks that it’s “a nursing home.” I hope she will realize that this housing is much better than where she lives now and, more importantly, that she will have Russian-speaking neighbors. To be honest, that’s the sole reason I want her to move into one of these buildings, and if I could pay the full price for her to live there, I would be happy to do so!

In addition, the case manager performed a memory evaluation for my mom, and since I know what it should look like, I realized that she did a very basic one. I guess that anything better than complete dementia is considered to be “ok” at this age. A side note: my mom got very upset with this evaluation and said that she is not a mad old lady :), which is very true!

I think those are all updates for now!