Break Chronicles: Day Twelve, and Happy New Year!

It is officially 2024, and I am in a different state than the one I anticipated I would be in. I am still at home with the cat on the bed curled up next to me. I slept through the transition to the new year - much like I usually do - and woke up at 2:40 am - much like I usually do - to take a look at the new year. It is now 3:20 am, and I am very much awake and ready to get this new year going!

Our new year is starting with a bit of uncertainty, but less than we had just a bit ago. My mother has received an official diagnosis after lots and lots of blood work, tests of various kinds, and food deprivation. It seems that she is avoiding surgery right now (thank goodness) and will be doing some antibiotics to fully recover. This is better than the outlook that we had yesterday morning when things were less clear to us all.

So, our New Year has started with a parent in the hospital but a parent who is getting better. Hopefully this same parent will remember that she doesn't like being in the hospital and will then go get medical treatment for this if it returns faster than going through seven months of discomfort. (One can only hope. The women in my family tend to be really stubborn - have you noticed??) This has been a bit of a slow build, but my sister and I now have some valid talking points when Mom has similar complaints. "Did you like your five days in the hospital? No? Then GO TO THE DOCTOR and GET SOME MEDICATION!"

To add to the complex situations already going on, my mother has to find another doctor in the next three months because her regular doctor (she has been going to him for something like 30 years) has decided to become more like a concierge doctor than a general practitioner. For the low price of $3400 a year, my mother can be seen by this doctor. That is before insurance, co-pays, co-insurance and all the other financial obligations that go along with health care these days. That is not going to happen, so she is shopping for a new physician. My sister thinks they have one - they just have to call. I cannot believe - well, no that's not really accurate. I can completely believe that this doctor would do something like this. I am disappointed in his cavalier way of trying to get more money out of the seniors that he tries to serve in his "geriatric" practice. Health care is crazy.

If nothing else, this week has shown me that I am much more suited to the world of education than the world of health care. I have spent much of the last three days at the hospital, watching what goes on. All I can say is that I have so much respect for those who choose to work in the emergency room and in the general hospital because it is not the place for me! My mother's main nurse, Julia, has been great. The doctor has been absent around me, and the various departments that have taken Mom away for testing have been really slow to act, in my opinion. I am getting a better appreciation for my local hospital by being at my mother's regional hospital. Again, I am much more suited to the world of special education than the health care world.

While I was sitting in the emergency room (for 14 hours - again, that is a rant for another day), I kept thinking that there was a place for music therapy in that environment. There was a place for music there, but there was no music - not a note. There was no background music or anything to calm the environment at all. The chairs were uncomfortable, there were no decorations or pictures around, there was one television across the room with the volume turned off, and there was no attempt to keep conversations private between the check-in people and the patients. I am not prone to enjoying various medical situations to begin with, and the emergency room nearly did me in on Friday.

I have to go home tomorrow. I have no other choice since I have to get back to work and do the things that I have to do far away from here. I am glad that I was able to change my flight from yesterday to tomorrow (that would be a good 80's power ballad title) so I could be around to keep my sister company during this time. That is really the only function I play at this point. 

My sister is the first contact for medical situations for my mother since she lives 20 minutes away and I live 29 hours away. The arrangement makes sense, but it means that I am not really involved in the conversations. Many of the interactions have been limited to only one person going back. I did break the rules at the end of our 14 hour marathon and went back to the ER without sending my sister back out to the emergency room. No one yelled at us, so I stayed with Mom and my sister for about an hour before they took Mom to her room.

Tomorrow will be a travel day with the expectation that I will be home before I have to go to my doctor's appointment. I will text my principal tomorrow morning about not being there for the entire professional development day since I FINALLY have an appointment with a hand specialist close to my home. I am hoping that I will have a plan for fixing my finger by Wednesday afternoon. My original plan was to spend some of tomorrow at my music therapy room, cleaning, but that has changed due to being here a couple of extra days. I will have to hold off on the cleaning and rearranging until after my intern graduates so I can move things without disturbing her work environment. It will get done, but it will happen around music therapy sessions rather than on a day where I have no clinical obligations (like the 2nd was going to be). That's okay. I will survive without mopping my office floor.

I am grateful that I was able to stay during this situation. My mother keeps telling me to "have some fun," but that's not our focus right now. Our focus is to get her to feel better and get back home. I'm not sure what she considers "fun." I know that she knows that being in the hospital environment is not fun for anyone, especially for the patient. 

For her, the biggest complaint seems to be that she has not been able to eat or drink most of the time she has been there. My mother loves her food! Coming out of anesthesia the other day, she was talking about getting her lunch as soon as possible (which didn't happen for another 2.5 hours!) She was on restriction yesterday, waiting for another procedure and was a bit disturbed when she found out that she might not get to eat. She had to wait to get cleared by the physician before even putting in her order. She was selecting things to go with her soft diet order when the dietary service person came in with a meal for her! While it wasn't what she would have ordered for herself, the selections were her secondary choices and things that she ate happily - except for the coffee - why is it that the hospital assumes that coffee is the go-to drink? I guess more people drink coffee than not, but still - would it hurt to ask? Mom got some tea and then happily took her medications and ate every speck of food on her tray. I hope that someone came by for her dinner order - we left before that happened. I know that she definitely had dinner - she would not allow anyone to leave her unfed.

After we left, my sister and I went to get food and then started watching Akeelah and the Bee. I have never seen the movie before, but I can see why it is considered a good one. My sister left before dark, and I finished the movie on my own. The cat was sitting in the front, watching the neighborhood. Once the movie was finished, I went upstairs and got ready for bed. I am trying to get back into Central times, so I am not going back to bed when I get sleepy (like right now). Today might be the exception, though, especially since the cat is sleeping right now next to me. I could probably do with another four hours of sleep. We will see.

Happy 2024! I hope that it brings us all happier times.