I love NPR
Oct. 29th, 2011 11:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwendolyngraceThe first installment of "All Things Considered"'s kids' book club was yesterday:
The Graveyard Book.
Although as usual, either no one asked or they didn't ask Gaiman to answer the important questions. Like "WHAT IS SILAS? WHERE DOES HE GO?"
But that's okay. And then I found this:
Mouse Circus
Which I'm sure anyone who reads his blog regularly (yes,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
etakyma, I'm looking at you) knows already. So I'm behind the curve. Sue me. Wicked cool.
Okay. Updates. Oy. So much has happened in the last month. Mockingbird is over. Bell, Book, and Candle will be over tonight. Of course it's supposed to snow and we're supposed to strike.... We'll see how that goes. My neck got all twingey again last night and it hurts to turn my head to the left again. ARGH.
In the next week, I have a class on Tuesday morning, I'm leaving early on Wednesday for an appointment, I have an orientation session all day Thursday, and then on Friday I'm heading to Rochester for the weekend because after that, rehearsals for Big start in earnest and I won't have time until January. Somewhere in there I have to get my passenger-side front tire looked at because I had to fill it with air about a week ago. No road trip with a bum tire, thank you!
The reason I'm going to Rochester is not a particularly happy one.
Back in September, my mother was diagnosed with a new atrial fibrillation. In the course of adjusting her medications she fell and landed on her right leg. With the shortness of breath and dizziness and other side effects from the meds, she basically deteriorated to the point where people from her church and the neighborhood were "helping" her by getting her up the stairs to bed (and where the only bathroom is) with a sandwich or something similar - around 6:30 at night! - and then leaving her for the night, locking the house up on their way out. Not Good. Finally, two things happened that triggered an ED admission: She had a reaction to one of the meds (we're thinking the sulfa) resulting in an all-over-body rash, and her leg where she fell developed cellulitis (a secondary effect of her diabetes). And that finally alerted her medical team to the social issues she has with living alone in a house where the only bathroom is on the second level.
So. She spent a bit less than a week in Strong Hospital and was discharged to a nursing home for physical rehab. They've been working with her to get her back to a level of independence that should be at or even a bit better than it was before the new onset of the a-fib. But, she's finally realized that it's just not tenable to stay in the house anymore. She's chosen an independent living situation--though she still has to see the actual unit she'll be in--and honestly, we've been telling her for years that the best thing she can do for her health is to get out of that house and into something smaller on one level. And this way she'll have access to nutrition, services, health aides, etc., while still being in her own place with a garage for the car and so on.
But, it's been wicked difficult juggling all this with the incredibly busy month I've had, making phone call after phone call to find facilities for her to consider, checking in on her at the nursing home (on her cell phone because she doesn't have a phone in the room), and planning how to clean out the house and get it ready for the market and trying to figure out how long we can carry the house so we have time to do that and get it on the market in the spring (because selling a house in Rochester is bad enough but selling one in the winter is super-difficult). I'm definitely going to have to re-haul my own storage situation, possibly even getting a storage facility somewhere nearby, so that I can bring all my stuff that I've been storing at her place over here.
Then, there's the complication: The unit she's hoping to take may not be available until December 1st, but she will be discharged from the nursing home on the 5th of November. (Hence why I'm going home that weekend.) Right now, the plan they are working on is to discharge her back to the house, but with a bed on the first level (an adjustable bed) and home health aides. I'm still hoping we can get her to Baltimore for Thanksgiving, though it's looking more like it might be Rochester - I dunno. Maybe flying might be an option, but I'm not sure if her health will allow that.
So, it's been a bit...hectic. Fraught. Tense. Those things. But it's okay.
I'm not going to audition for any more theatre through the winter - at least not until we have a better sense of timing - so that I am free to travel back and forth to Rochester on weekends and ferry stuff away one car-load at a time. The good news is that there should be no reason Mom can't go to the house over the winter as well, to move some of her items that she wants, or if I came in on a Friday we could go on Saturday and spend the day going through several boxes, then bring what we're keeping back to her new place. The bad thing is that it'll be more expensive than we'd hoped because it's more on the order of assisted living than just living someplace on one level. But insurance will pick up some, the sale of the house will bring in some funds (not a lot), and my earning shot up with the new job *just* in time to be able to help.
And as I put it to her, it's happening while she's still able to be fully in control (or at least mostly in control) of what's happening. She can make the decisions, she can still enjoy high activity and in fact may be more healthy as a result. It's just hard to face the reality of leaving her house after 37 years.
Then again, the maple tree's gone. So really? Not all that much point to staying anymore. :)
The Graveyard Book.
Although as usual, either no one asked or they didn't ask Gaiman to answer the important questions. Like "WHAT IS SILAS? WHERE DOES HE GO?"
But that's okay. And then I found this:
Mouse Circus
Which I'm sure anyone who reads his blog regularly (yes,
etakyma, I'm looking at you) knows already. So I'm behind the curve. Sue me. Wicked cool.Okay. Updates. Oy. So much has happened in the last month. Mockingbird is over. Bell, Book, and Candle will be over tonight. Of course it's supposed to snow and we're supposed to strike.... We'll see how that goes. My neck got all twingey again last night and it hurts to turn my head to the left again. ARGH.
In the next week, I have a class on Tuesday morning, I'm leaving early on Wednesday for an appointment, I have an orientation session all day Thursday, and then on Friday I'm heading to Rochester for the weekend because after that, rehearsals for Big start in earnest and I won't have time until January. Somewhere in there I have to get my passenger-side front tire looked at because I had to fill it with air about a week ago. No road trip with a bum tire, thank you!
The reason I'm going to Rochester is not a particularly happy one.
Back in September, my mother was diagnosed with a new atrial fibrillation. In the course of adjusting her medications she fell and landed on her right leg. With the shortness of breath and dizziness and other side effects from the meds, she basically deteriorated to the point where people from her church and the neighborhood were "helping" her by getting her up the stairs to bed (and where the only bathroom is) with a sandwich or something similar - around 6:30 at night! - and then leaving her for the night, locking the house up on their way out. Not Good. Finally, two things happened that triggered an ED admission: She had a reaction to one of the meds (we're thinking the sulfa) resulting in an all-over-body rash, and her leg where she fell developed cellulitis (a secondary effect of her diabetes). And that finally alerted her medical team to the social issues she has with living alone in a house where the only bathroom is on the second level.
So. She spent a bit less than a week in Strong Hospital and was discharged to a nursing home for physical rehab. They've been working with her to get her back to a level of independence that should be at or even a bit better than it was before the new onset of the a-fib. But, she's finally realized that it's just not tenable to stay in the house anymore. She's chosen an independent living situation--though she still has to see the actual unit she'll be in--and honestly, we've been telling her for years that the best thing she can do for her health is to get out of that house and into something smaller on one level. And this way she'll have access to nutrition, services, health aides, etc., while still being in her own place with a garage for the car and so on.
But, it's been wicked difficult juggling all this with the incredibly busy month I've had, making phone call after phone call to find facilities for her to consider, checking in on her at the nursing home (on her cell phone because she doesn't have a phone in the room), and planning how to clean out the house and get it ready for the market and trying to figure out how long we can carry the house so we have time to do that and get it on the market in the spring (because selling a house in Rochester is bad enough but selling one in the winter is super-difficult). I'm definitely going to have to re-haul my own storage situation, possibly even getting a storage facility somewhere nearby, so that I can bring all my stuff that I've been storing at her place over here.
Then, there's the complication: The unit she's hoping to take may not be available until December 1st, but she will be discharged from the nursing home on the 5th of November. (Hence why I'm going home that weekend.) Right now, the plan they are working on is to discharge her back to the house, but with a bed on the first level (an adjustable bed) and home health aides. I'm still hoping we can get her to Baltimore for Thanksgiving, though it's looking more like it might be Rochester - I dunno. Maybe flying might be an option, but I'm not sure if her health will allow that.
So, it's been a bit...hectic. Fraught. Tense. Those things. But it's okay.
I'm not going to audition for any more theatre through the winter - at least not until we have a better sense of timing - so that I am free to travel back and forth to Rochester on weekends and ferry stuff away one car-load at a time. The good news is that there should be no reason Mom can't go to the house over the winter as well, to move some of her items that she wants, or if I came in on a Friday we could go on Saturday and spend the day going through several boxes, then bring what we're keeping back to her new place. The bad thing is that it'll be more expensive than we'd hoped because it's more on the order of assisted living than just living someplace on one level. But insurance will pick up some, the sale of the house will bring in some funds (not a lot), and my earning shot up with the new job *just* in time to be able to help.
And as I put it to her, it's happening while she's still able to be fully in control (or at least mostly in control) of what's happening. She can make the decisions, she can still enjoy high activity and in fact may be more healthy as a result. It's just hard to face the reality of leaving her house after 37 years.
Then again, the maple tree's gone. So really? Not all that much point to staying anymore. :)
