September 2007

I don’t have a Living Will or Durable Power of Attorney. I did make a Last Will and Testament years and years ago and named my son as my sole heir. That was before I married my present husband and I read somewhere (probably some legal book) that when someone marries it makes the will null and void. So I guess I really don’t have one. Hubby and I have an appointment with an attorney next week to make our wills and such. We also have to talk to him about issues with my mother-in-law’s estate.

The Old Lady always said she had taken care of everything so that my husband would not have a hard time when she died. She did have a prepaid cremation policy and written instructions for the cremation and services, etc. She wanted one song sung at the graveside, “Amazing Grace”, one prayer and that’s it. She didn’t want services in Florida but wanted them in Iowa instead. So that part was pretty easy. Well, easy so far. The services won’t be held until the spring so that means hubby will have to fly to Iowa for that. I might even go to Iowa this time, but knowing myself the way I know myself I doubt I’ll make that trip. (I didn’t fly up for his father’s funeral in 2004).

The problem now is that we can’t find her will. We found a copy of a will she had made in 1993 but we cannot find the original anywhere. We really, really didn’t want to have to go into probate and I’m still hoping that doesn’t have to happen. Thankfully all the money was already in my husband’s name, either as beneficiary or as co-owner of the bank account. There isn’t a money estate, there is only a property estate which is her home and car. I hope the lawyer will be able to help us with this.

I think this lawyer should be a pretty good one. He represented my ex-brother-in-law’s wife during their divorce and really cleaned out the brother-in-law. I always said that if I needed an attorney this guy is the one to go to. I hope everything turns out to our benefit.

I was talking about McDonalds the other day and someone asked me about this video. Prepare to be grossed out.

Edit 09/25/07:

Ann from Feeding Time at the Zoo left this comment regarding the video. I’m not sure how many people read comments here so I thought I’d link it so it gets a bit more exposure. The only thing I take exception to is “be careful whose bandwagon you jump on” because I don’t really care for McDonald’s regardless of what anyone says, pro or con. I don’t like it - but I don’t mind if others do.

Pholph’s Scrabble Generator My Scrabble© Score is: 11. What is your score? Get it here.

When my mother-in-law was in the hospital my husband and I each downloaded a game to play on our cell phones. Hubby downloaded a chess game and I downloaded a Scrabble game. I beat the computer on my first try! (on easy mode, hehe)

While I was looking at other games on the Verizon website yesterday I noticed that the Scrabble game uses air time to play. Uh oh! I didn’t realize that when I downloaded it. I’ll have to pay more attention to that if I get another game. I don’t like to get the ones that use air time. Oh well.

I’ve always had a problem doing “what is expected” and my mother-in-law’s death is no exception.

When we got the call at 3:15am Friday morning we didn’t rush to the nursing home. I guess some people would have. My husband had been there at 8pm the previous evening and had brought her a vanilla shake from Wendy’s. They had a good conversation and hubby said the MIL appeared to be doing well. So what would be the point of rushing to the nursing home? None that we could see. We still don’t know the cause of death but I’m 99% sure it was her heart. She had heart surgery in 1962 and at that time the doctors gave her 10 years to live. I guess she showed them!

So on Friday we didn’t go to the funeral home and didn’t go to her house to look for important papers and we didn’t go to the nursing home to pick up her belongings. We stayed home and didn’t go anywhere at all. We made numerous phone calls to family and her friends and just chilled out. I imagine most people would think that was weird but my husband was freaking exhausted from the long hours he had been putting in with his mother and the stress he has been under for so many years now I felt like he needed a day off. It was worth it too.

So on Saturday we did go to her house to look for her pre-paid cremation policy (finally found something that looked like it) and went to the NH to pick up her stuff. I got kind of creeped out at the nursing home. The receptionist only had the MIL’s purse at the front desk and didn’t know where her clothes and other personal items were. doh! You’d think they would have a system in place to handle this. The receptionist asked us to go and ask the nurse at the nurses station that is directly across from the room the Old Lady was in.

Ya know, I’ve been fine and dandy throughout all of this but when we stepped off the elevator it hit me really hard all of a sudden. I suppose it was because the last time I stepped out of that elevator I walked into the Old Lady’s room and there she was, babbling and bitching and complaining in all her glory. I had to choke back tears and at first thought I should just wait at the elevator. I did manage to pull myself together and went to the nurses station with my husband. I guess my morbid side couldn’t help it but I looked into the room and saw that there was another resident there already. Of course there would be, this nursing home is only a 113 bed facility and is one of the best in the county. It did creep me out though.

The nurse had no idea where the MIL’s stuff was so she sent us back down to the receptionist. *sigh* LOL, so much for best in the county! Truthfully though, I’ve been to a few NH’s that family members were in and while I firmly believe there are no good ones, this one really is a higher caliber then the others I’ve seen. So they got on their walkie talkies to housekeeping and her belongings were delivered to us straight away. Not that she had anything of value, but hubby had taken our atomic clock to her to use and we really did want that back.

Next stop was the funeral home. This is the fourth family member that has been cremated at this mortuary. My mother in 2000, my brother in 2004, the old lady’s sister in 2005 and now the Old Lady. I figure I’ll be the next one but that’s morbidity for another day. The mortuary was pretty easy. All we had to do was provide information discuss a few things. We are not holding services in Florida. My husband is shipping her ashes to Iowa and will fly up in the spring to hold services at that time. I guess is weird and not what is expected that we aren’t having services in Florida but we don’t want to so that’s that.

Today we plan to go to her house and start sorting through things. I’m a big fan of procrastination but I know the sooner we get started the sooner we will be finished. Blah.

I’m in total shock. I knew it would happen one day of course, but she was doing so well considering all the health issues she had suffered through for the last year or so. My husband was at the nursing home 5 hours ago and his mother was fine then. Her spirits were better and she seemed to have a more positive outlook.

I just got the call at 3am. One of the nurses from the skilled nursing facility called me and said “I’m calling about your mother-in-law.” I said “yes?”. The nurse said “she expired”. I couldn’t believe it. I asked the nurse what happened and she said she didn’t know, that she got the call to come up from downstairs.

I’m assuming the Old Lady had a heart attack. To receive a phone call like that seems cold and unfeeling but I suppose it is the proper way to tell someone that kind of news.

She was fine when I talked to her on the phone at 4pm yesterday and seemed fine when my husband visited her. I’m just in total shock.

I reckon this is the final entry in my category called “The Old Lady”. What in the heck am I going to have to bitch about now?

I’ve said this before and it is always a long time before I change my mind, but I plan to never eat at McDonald’s ever again. It was after 8pm before the Old Lady got to the nursing home last night and it was about 9:30pm when we left. Hubby and I had not had dinner yet so we just drove through McDonald’s. Bleh. The food wasn’t terribly bad but I’m paying for it today with an upset stomach.

Maybe if I put it in writing this time I’ll remember why I don’t ever want to eat there again. I started to file this under “Fine Trailer Park Dining” but we have much better vittles in the trailer park than I got at McDonald’s last night. So I guess it is just another day in paradise.

What’s worse than being in a snit? Being livid.

I found out this morning that the MIL would not be going home but would be going to a rehab facility instead. Of course, I already knew this but she is in denial and so is my husband so I just went along them when they said she would be going home.

Anyway, it is the hospital staff I’m so angry with. I told the discharge person/social worker yesterday what our first choice of a rehab home was. She told me that was the hardest one to get into. I told her I understood but to please try her very best and she said she would.

I spoke to the social worker again today and re-emphasized which home the MIL wanted to go to. The social worker said, oh, sorry, the facility does not have a bed, we will have to go with her second or third choice, whoever has a bed. Hello??? Maybe that’s they way they treat people that don’t have anyone to go to bat for them but that’s not the way they treat MY family member. I asked the social worker if she thought it would do any good for me to call the home myself and ask. She said she didn’t know if it would help but it couldn’t hurt.

So I called our first choice and they didn’t even blink an eye. I guess telling them that “I’m begging for a bed” may have helped, but I don’t know if that was it or not. They just said that they needed clinical papers (or whatever the term was) faxed over and they would see if they they would be able to help.

I called the hospital social worker and gave her the direct number to the rehab home’s admissions office. I asked her to please let me know if our first choice would be able to take her. That was at 1pm. So I waited until 3:30 without hearing from anyone. I called the home’s admissions person again and they said, oh, yes, we have a bed and gave me the room number. She said it was all set up. The social worker had said she would call me when she knew for sure but she didn’t.

So that was one thing that made me mad. The other thing was that the social worker tried to pass the buck. She said she had faxed the request to our first choice yesterday and got an immediate “no beds” response. I think she should have called them herself and talked with them instead of shrugging it off and calling, er, faxing around to other places. I guess that’s why it is good my MIL has me to go to bat for her. I might not be good for much but I’m good for that much.

The other thing that has me livid today is the hospital nurse. The hospital is 15 miles north of me and the rehab is 15 miles south of me. Last time the MIL went to rehab I went to the hospital and followed the ambulance to the home. The hell hole, er, home was in the same town the previous time though. This time I decided to wait until they transported my MIL and then meet her at the home. The social worker assured me that I would be called whenever the hospital arranged for transport so I could drive to the rehab home and meet my MIL there. So I waited. And waited. Finally I called the hospital and they said, oh, yes, we called for transport about an hour ago and we were given a tentative time frame of 2 hours.

Now as I’m typing this I don’t know just why I became so livid but I was just fit to be tied because I wasn’t called as they said I would be. Deep breath. There really is no harm done - it isn’t like she was taken to the rehab facility already. She is still at the hospital waiting for transport. The nurse now says she will call me when the ambulance gets to the hospital to transport the MIL to the rehab joint. Let’s just see if that happens. The Old Lady said she would call me when the ambulance got there to transport her but sometimes she gets disoriented and I didn’t want to depend on that. I will say she has been strangely coherent today. She sounded just like she did when I met her about 11 years ago, before she had all the medical problems she has today.

It is 6pm now and I haven’t gotten the word yet, so this looks like it is going to be another long night. I’m holding up just fine - I really have a very easy life. I just hope my husband doesn’t have a nervous breakdown from all the stress and long days he has been putting in lately.

The Old Lady’s surgery went well yesterday. Instead of vertebroplasty (super glue in the spine) she had a similar procedure called kyphoplasty (super glue in a balloon in the spine).

The only newsworthy thing that happened was the Old Lady’s threat to call her attorney and sue the hospital if they didn’t let her out of the recovery room. Haha, it is easy for me to laugh because I wasn’t the nurse in charge. I pity the poor people that had to take care her. I’m sure she made her demands known at the top of her lungs. I don’t know what her big hurry was - I thought she had to remain still and quiet for a few hours after the procedure to let the glue set. She also told them that if they didn’t let her out of there that her son was going to come in there and tear the place apart. geez. Maybe this was her anesthesia talking but she was a real piece of work yesterday.

She was all over the nurse’s ass for writing her vitals on a napkin. The nurse explained that she was going to put the information into the computer immediately. (There is a computer terminal in every hospital room.) The Old Lady just couldn’t get it through her head. She thought she was receiving bad care because the nurses all write information on a napkin or other scrap paper and then throw the scrap paper away!

Now I have to worry about whether she will be coming home or going to rehab. She had such a bad experience in rehab last July I doubt anyone can talk her into going again - even to a different facility.

So I guess I should probably write something. Some people say you have to blog every day to have a “successful blog”. To those people I say “kiss my ass”. Success is in the eye of the beholder. I’ll blog once a year if I want to and you can hit your back button if you want to and there you have it. Complete harmony.

So why am I in such a snit anyway? Lots of reasons but mainly the MIL and step-son.

This past Wednesday the Old Lady told me during my daily call that she was in excruciating pain. I got in my car and drove straight over there. She was lying across the bed in almost a fetal position. She had wet the bed because she was in so much pain (she has a history of compression fractures of the spine) she could not make it to the bathroom. Somehow she did manage to change her gown and her depends briefs so at least she was clean and dry when I got there.

She said she had been throwing up. She said she had not had any breakfast, said she did go to the kitchen to eat but was in so much pain she had to go back to bed. I saw the uneaten bowl of shredded wheat on the table. She said she took two pain pills at 8:30 instead of one. She said she had taken a Tylenol at 10:30. It was 12:30 when I got there. I got her some fresh orange juice and brought her another pain pill. I was very worried. I wanted her to go to the hospital. She refused.

She has been under the care of a home health agency since she got out of the nursing home in July. The physical therapist stopped by. The PT had planned to discharge the Old Lady that day because she had been doing so well. We got my mother-in-law into a sitting position and wheeled her into the kitchen using her 4-wheel walker which has a seat. I made her some fresh shredded wheat with sugar, milk and banana and helped her take her other medications.

The PT took her blood pressure and said “oh shit”. Her blood pressure was very high. The PT wanted to call 911 to take the MIL to the hospital but she refused. The PT called the MIL’s doctor and the doctor wanted her to go to the hospital. Her doctor is nice but he does not do hospital admissions. He said to take her to the ER. *sigh* I think she needs a different doctor but that’s a blog post for another day. At any rate, the Old Lady refused to go to the hospital.

The thing is, this past July almost the same thing happened, only she waited all week until Saturday night to go to the ER. We arrived at the ER that night at about 7pm and she didn’t get into her room until after 3am. That’s just how long it takes to get admitted. Actually, the same thing happened several months ago also. She waited until night time to go. This is the part that pisses me off. She said she would not wait so long “next time”. But she did. Again. For the third time.

I guess I really should not get mad at her about this because she is 85 years old and while she isn’t senile she is not as sharp as she used to be. But sitting all bleary eyed and sleepy in the ER for 7 or 8 hours (or longer!) when it could have been easily avoided by going in earlier did make me angry. We got to the ER this time at 8pm and by 2am she still was waiting to be admitted. We did something we have never done before but my husband had to go to work the next day and we just couldn’t stay up all night. All her tests had come back and the ER doctor did decide to admit her and all they were waiting for was a bed. And the Old Lady kept telling us to go home (like she always does and we never do until she is settled into a room) so we went home.

She told me she didn’t get into her room until 4am. There was no way we could have held up until that time - it would have been 6am before we got home.

So the Old Lady has a compression fracture of the T12 vertebrae. I know it is very painful and I’m not mad at her now about what she put us through unnecessarily. I guess it took me 4 days to get over it, heh. I wasn’t the only one mad, my husband was mad too. Several people tried to get her to go to the ER for several hours and she flat out refused. Okay, enough ranting about that. It is over and done with.

The sad thing about this fracture is that she had been SO careful lately and she didn’t fall or anything like that. It is just that her bones are so brittle and fragile that she broke her back just by twisting a little when she tried to get out of her chair. She is scheduled for a procedure called vertebroplasty on Tuesday. I really hope this helps her.

I’m worried about the future but there is no point in worrying about anything that really isn’t in my control. I’m trying to take it one day at a time.

I’m also mad at my step-son (the one that recently returned home from Iraq) but I’ll post about that another day. Or maybe next year. Or something.

I was thinking about our “tree” where FanceePantzz is being held hostage. It looks a lot like the Stairway to Heaven cat house and our cats really love it. Well, Fancee really loves it because she lives on it now and even takes her meals there.

I was thinking about ordering another one and found a nice selection of pet supplies over at the Internet Pet Emporium.

I want to thank the people that responded to my post about Lilly because I think you understand how I feel about her. I know some people have the mindset that “it’s just a cat!” and I do understand that mind set because I never had a cat of my own until about 10 years ago when I got my Shimmer.

My husband and I lived in different towns before we were married and he would say he needed to go home because his cat Skid had been left alone for a day and I’d say “it’s just a cat!” to him. I could just kick myself now for saying things like that back then. Our cats are just like family to us and they are not “just cats” at all. They are our babies.

Technorati Tags: cat house, cats, kitties, pet supplies, pet information

I’ve been away from the internet for about three days. I wouldn’t think three days is such a long time but the internet moves so fast it seems like you can blink and miss so much.

Keeping first things first I’m very happy to say that our son arrived home from Iraq this past Thursday. (That’s why I’ve been away from the net for a few days.) He has a 15-day leave and then he will be going back to Camp Lejeune in North Carolina.

I was Blog of the Day at PayPerPost which was pretty cool although I didn’t do anything special to be chosen for this. The Blog of the Day at PPP is a random pick of over 50,000 blogs so I guess it really is kind of cool to be chosen.

Another reason I’ve been away is that I’m just not into blogging right now. LOL, I shouldn’t feel bad or guilty about that because as far as I know there is no real law that says I have to. Well, there is the blog police that say “you have to blog every day to have a successful blog!”. blah. Maybe I don’t care to have a “successful” blog. Maybe I’m successful enough by doing things the way I want to and ignoring the blog police (you know, like the John Chow’s and Darren Rouse’s and their ilk)? This is my space and I’m not out to win any awards for jibber jabbering about my boring life.

Technorati Tags: blog of the day