Nothing Like a Walk to Clear the Head

“Walking is man’s best medicine.” – Hippocrates.

And woman’s, I would add. I’m lucky to live in a good walking neighborhood. One of my favorite spots is a park a few blocks away. It has no playground equipment. But it has a stream running through the middle, some open grassy areas, lots of trees and a couple of mysteries.

What are those things coming up out of the ground? I keep walking past them and wondering. They’re made of tree-like material. My best guess is that they’re part of the surrounding trees’ root systems. Some day I might do some research and find more information. But for now, I want to keep my walks to their intended purposes – get some exercise and get outside my head. Shutting down my overactive mind, giving it a rest, is one of the biggest benefits of my regular constitutionals. At this point, I prefer to enjoy the unusualness of the sight without having to know everything about it.

Nothing clears my head more effectively than a good walk outdoors. It’s always been my go-to. When my kids were little, I had a fancy schmancy two-seater wagon with cup holders. I’d often load them in with sippy cups and snacks and pull them around the neighborhood. And the day generally went better afterward.

Now that they’re young adults, I walk alone most of the time. I’m an introvert so this works for me. It’s my time not to have to think about my mom’s Medicaid paperwork, or whether my son is caught up on his homework, or getting the leaking shower fixed. All of those things will be waiting for me when I come back. And I’ll be less likely to snap at anyone over them.

Walking – free, easy, requires no special equipment, and it makes me feel good. Hippocrates couldn’t have been more right.

Or You Could Say “Congratulations”

“How are you going to manage that?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Are you going to be able to keep up with everything?”

“Maybe you should wait a couple of years.”

“Congratulations.”

Finally! Eventually I received a positive response on my increase in paid work hours.

I’ve been at a little over half time in my public library job for a number of years. And that’s been okay, as I was raising my kids, etc., etc. It’s hard to move beyond that hours-wise without a real library science degree. But there are a few opportunities here and there, on occasion. For quite a while, I’ve been watching for a chance to increase my hours, planning to pounce at the first opening.

My moment arrived a couple of months ago (hence the suspension of blogging activities.) Is this the perfect moment to add more to my workload? No. I still have two teens at home, and helping my mom is like having a second job, especially when it comes to dealing with Medicaid. But another opportunity might not occur for …who knows?

Has it been a big adjustment, and have others had to sacrifice? Yes on both counts. I’ve cut actual visits to my mom from three times per week to two. I’m not as available to help keep my son on track with his schoolwork (he has auditory processing difficulties and thus needs more parental involvement than some kids his age.) I don’t even pretend to try to make dinner before reporting for my twice-weekly evening shifts. I don’t write as much, and I panic a little more about whether I’m going to cover the essential tasks of keeping life running.

Was it the wrong decision? No. Could I have waited a couple of years? I’m not certain if another opportunity would come along. And we do certainly have uses for the money right now. My older child is attending community college, which is not free. One of our vehicles has 180,000+ miles on the engine. Our house is old and falling apart. And then there are the mid-life crisis and retirement fund issues.

Could I wait a couple of years? I’m not getting any younger. At some point I have to stop waiting to do things. And there are days when I feel as if I’ve waited away half my life already. Plus, seeing up close what happens when you’re old and you run out of money has lit a fire under me to save as much as I can for retirement, starting immediately.

I did think things through. For the person who asked – do you know me at all? I have a well-deserved reputation for over-thinking decisions. How am I going to manage? The same way millions of people do. I’ll live with a little more dust and there will be nights I won’t sleep enough. I’ll hit the top priorities on my to-do list and the rest will slide.

I’ve worked hard to get one of the coveted more-hours-benefitted positions at my workplace. I’ve worked hard to be reliable and competent. I’ve pro-actively pursued training opportunities and volunteered for additional responsibilities. One of the hazards of working for pay part-time or not at all is the ease with which you can start to question your own value. Many days I wondered if I had lost the ability to support myself. Psychologically, getting this position was a big boost. My work has been noticed and valued. I’m not a complete loser.

I was happy, really happy, about this new development. Right up until I started telling people about it. I was unprepared for the number of folks in my inner circle who seemed ready to burst my bubble when I shared the news. You’re sorry to hear it? You’re sorry I have to take a promotion to more hours and better benefits? Ouch. This is the 21st century. Would you ever say that to a man? Even a man who had teenagers at home and was helping his elderly mother?

Or would you offer congratulations? Ponder it.

The World Opens Up Again

The good news – excellent news – is that my mom’s hearing is restored to its former level. Indeed, she only needed to have her ear canals cleaned, as they were completely clogged with wax.

The comic/tragic aspect of the experience had to do with me not being able to accompany her to the doctor’s appointment. I had so completely given myself permission not to feel guilty, not to worry that everything would go wrong without me there to keep it right. The aides who work with her are kind and good. They know her, she knows them. She’d be fine with any one of them helping her.

The nurse who made the ENT appointment had assured me she’d explain to my mom why we decided to get her the first possible appointment instead of waiting until I could go along. And she probably did, but my mom couldn’t really hear at the time. I couldn’t call to explain it to Mom, for obvious reason.

A different nurse was on duty the morning of Mom’s appointment. That day, I arrived at work, took my cell phone out of my purse to put it in my pocket (ringer off) and realized I had a voicemail from the nursing home, left while I was in transit ten minutes earlier. We’re not really supposed to use our cell phones at work, but I was able to listen to the message surreptitiously. The key part was “Your mom’s appointment is in a few minutes and she won’t get on the van to go. She keeps saying we have to wait for you to get here.” Oh crap. Crappity crap crap.

Of course, by the time I listened to the message, it was too late. Either she was on the van already or it had left without her. I called and left a voice mail at the nurse’s station asking for someone to contact me at my work number. Thirty long minutes later the nurse called me back and told me they’d convinced Mom to go.

In the afternoon, between my work shifts, I called again to ask what the doctor said. The nurse read me the notes they had, mentioning hearing loss in both ears blah blah medical jargon blah blah, adjusted hearing aide medical jargon.

“Do they know why she lost so much hearing so quickly, though?”

“Well, I read you everything it said.”

“Did they find any wax or fluid or anything?”

“It doesn’t say. But you can call their office directly.”

So I did. I talked to a nurse there who repeated hearing loss in both ears blah blah medical jargon…

“Do they know why her hearing declined so dramatically all of a sudden?”

“She already had hearing loss. She was wearing a hearing aid when she came in.”

“Yes, but she went from the hearing aid helping her live her life and have conversations to almost no hearing at all even with it in.”

“She could get a second hearing aid.”

“Okay. I’ll look into that. Um, did you all by chance clean any wax out of her ears or anything?”

“Oh yes. Her ear canals are narrow and they were completely filled with wax.”

“They dug so deep I was afraid they’d puncture my brain,” my mom told me later.

When I visited her the next day, she heard me knock on the door. We had a face-to-face conversation rather than a mouth-to-ear one. She’d watched a TV show and understood it. She told me about the morning’s activity. She was back to being an active member of her world. This afternoon, I called her on the phone and heard about their ice cream social, with accounts of all the funny things people said. And she doesn’t believe she needs a second hearing aid for now.

Excellent news.

Suddenly Deaf

My mom’s hearing is gone. Pffttt. Disappeared. Like that (imagine my fingers snapping.)

She already had some hearing loss, but has managed to do okay with a hearing aid in one ear. You could carry on a conversation if you spoke up a little. Then suddenly, a couple of weeks ago, she could hear almost nothing. It’s gotten a little better at times and then worse again. She can understand me if I put my mouth right next to her ear and speak slowly. That’s it.

She has an appointment tomorrow morning with an ENT. I hope we discover impacted wax or something that can be remedied on the spot. My consultation with Doctors NIH and Google tell me sudden hearing loss is often idiopathic, meaning nobody ever figures out the reason. Oh, please no. Sometimes hearing mysteriously goes away and then shows back up in a couple of weeks, as if it had been out on a beach vacation. Sometimes it goes away and never comes back and they never find a reason. Sometimes there’s a virus or a tumor. An sometimes there’s a severe wax buildup.

Mom’s quality of life has diminished quite a lot with her sudden deafness. She no longer attends the weekly Bible study, since she can’t hear what’s being said. She doesn’t have conversations with other residents of the nursing facility. She doesn’t even watch TV, unless it’s a baseball game, something she can track without the sound. Her family can’t call and chat with her over the phone. I almost always call on days I don’t visit in person. But now I can’t. My 15-year-old son is learning guitar. He’d been planning to go with me last Saturday to visit and play a couple of songs for her, but there was no point in taking the guitar after all. She is doing a lot of reading, so there’s a silver lining.

I suppose tomorrow I’ll have more information on whether she can recover her hearing or whether this is the new normal. If it’s the latter, it will be a big adjustment for everyone.

I’ll Take My Validation Where I Can Get It

Yesterday, my telephone ring tone – and by extension I myself, for choosing it – became an object of derision for my 15-year-old and a couple of his friends. Their conversation went on for what seemed way too long to me, as they found one reason after another why nobody should be subjected to listening to that particular ring-tone.

Thing is, it’s one of the presets. “Marimba”, for those who have the same phone options I do. It’s not like some embarrassing song I searched out and downloaded. It’s not “Baby Beluga” or “Take This Job and Shove It” or Rod Stewart singing “If you think I’m sexy…”

My sole defense was “Hey, I’m too cheap to pay for something when so many options came free with the phone. I picked one I liked.”

My son assures me nobody who knows anything about music would ever like that one. For what it’s worth, he does know quite a lot more about music than I do.

Today, I went to a movie with a friend: “20 Feet From Stardom.” It’s an excellent documentary. I highly recommend it. It’s about the lives and careers of back-up singers. One of the featured singers, Lisa Fischer, has supplied vocals for some major stars, including the Rolling Stones, and is praised left, right and center by many musicians in the film. At one point, she’s shown waking up to the sound of her cell phone. Guess what ring tone she uses. Yes, the same as mine. Ha!

I couldn’t wait to get home and share this tidbit with my son. “If it’s good enough for Lisa Fischer, it’s good enough for me,” I said. Not such a loser after all, am I?

Bonus: a relevant comic.

The Nearly-Empty Closet

Sometimes – often – I narrate my memoirs to myself as I go through my days. I think to myself, “and if this day were a chapter, what would be its title?”

I have a title for today: “The Nearly-Empty Closet.” Sounds a little like something from Edward Gorey, doesn’t it?

That’s it, all that’s left. My 15-year-old son (aka Bigfoot, aka the incredible growing boy, aka he who is taller than us all) and I went through his closet this morning weeding out the clothes he’d outgrown. Above is a picture of what’s left. Not even kidding. To add context, though, I should mention most of the clothes he wears regularly are kept in a dresser. He’s a jeans and t-shirts kind of guy. But he needs a few things other than jeans and Ts. I suppose it’s time to going shopping. Again.

Random Thoughts on My Sandwich Generation Life

Does life ever get easier and simpler, or does it keep getting harder and more complicated? I’m so worn out I don’t feel I have the wherewithal to write a coherent post on one topic. But here are some random thoughts generated by my life recently.

If I had a dollar for every time my 15-year-old rolls his eyes, I could treat myself to a frou frou coffee at Starbucks every single day.

My kids are 15 and 18, but they still need me. Sometimes, they really need me.

On my July calendar, there are eight different medical/dental/eye appointments, none of them for me, but all of them requiring my presence.

Being elderly and poor is scarier than any horror movie.

Sometimes I can’t wait for my kids to move out. This usually lasts ten minutes until I start tearing up because they’ll probably both be moved out in a few short years.

Am I ever going to get my entire house cleaned?

My mom is wasting away, literally. They’re not sure why. Since February, she’s down from 111 pounds to 94 pounds. The doctor has ordered a calorie-dense nutrition drink to be added to her daily diet. It’s like she’s disappearing before my eyes.

If I had a crystal ball that would tell me exactly how much longer my mom will live, then many of my decisions would more clear-cut. But I don’t really want to know.

A couple of days ago a friend asked if the people at the Medicaid office could help me resolve a certain issue. I said, “You mean the people who don’t answer their phone, give me incorrect phone numbers, assign my mom a caseworker from a county 120 miles away, and supply contradictory information within the same letter? I suppose I could try them.”

The very things that make me want to drink are the same things that make me realize why I can’t. This seems unfair somehow.

My 18-year-old has the equivalent of a PhD in all things Tolkien/Lord of the Rings. My 15-year-old spends hours every day in the summer working on music – both composing and playing. His instruments are guitar and piano. It’s very cool seeing my kids grow beyond me in some areas. They broaden my horizons.

Ever since taking on responsibility for my mom’s finances, I think about my own retirement account every single day. I don’t have nearly enough saved, I’m afraid.

Since I was a midlife baby, my mom has been an “old” grandmother to my kids. They love her and she loves them, but I wish they could have known her when she was able to do a few more things.

Death by a Thousand Paper Cuts

I’ve seen a recurring theme in my life lately. I find myself with a responsibility to get something done, but not the authority. It always comes down to dealing with bureaucracy. Three examples:

1. After more than a year of frustration in dealing with Social Security on my mom’s behalf, I finally decided I needed to go ahead and have myself appointed her Representative Payee. Power of Attorney gets you nowhere with Social Security. Occasionally, if you get a sympathetic person on the other of the phone, that will get you somewhere. But for the most part they want only to speak to the person herself and not her daughter or anyone else, even if she’s given that person Power of Attorney to act on her behalf.

I kept waffling on the Representative Payee thing because it means Mom’s money will be paid to me and I’ll have more forms to fill out accounting for it. However, it’s gotten to the point that I simply have to do this. Mom can’t even make a phone call without help any more. I did get her permission; I didn’t want to feel I was doing it on the sly.

First I had to get a letter from her physician stating she’s not competent to make her own decisions. This was an emotional wrench, let me tell you. I took the letter plus all of her personal papers down to the local Social Security office, where a very kind woman asked me 20,000 required questions. (Okay, only about a dozen really.) She typed a bunch on her computer and said my application had been submitted. Meanwhile I was supposed to go to the bank and change my mom’s account – my name is on it, too – to reflect the new status, and send proof of this change to Social Security. That’s the only way they’ll be authorized to send her checks there. My understanding was that I was to do this immediately.

I toodled on down to the bank, only to be told they can’t make the change without something from Social Security stating I already am the Representative Payee. Okay then. Thank goodness for patient customer service type folks. The bank guy actually called Social Security while I was sitting there to make sure we were doing things in the right order. Yep, I had to wait.

The letter came a couple of days ago naming me as RP. So I went back to the bank and got the account changed. Now, hopefully, the government peeps will talk to me next time I have to call about her Medicare or something.

2. This one isn’t about my mom. It’s about my phone service. We still have a landline in our house, with the same phone number we’ve had for 19 years. Our phone company is also our internet service provider. I did, however decide to drop the long distance service we had (through a different company) because we use our cell phones for that now, so why keep paying the monthly fee?

I called the long distance company and everything was fine there. They advised me I’d need to call – okay I’ll name them – CenturyLink as well to make sure we were good and cancelled. I called CenturyLink and was told I was not an authorized user on the account. Only my husband held that status, so he personally would need to call to make any changes. Hoo boy.

Here’s some background. I have always handled all of our household bills and utilities. I have always put everything in both of our names. I remember personally walking into the phone company office way back when we moved to town and setting up our account. We’ve always been listed in the phone book under both names. Through the years, the name of the phone company changed and we added internet service through them, but we kept the same phone number and I was always the one who dealt with them. We’ve moved four times with this phone number and I personally switched it to our new residence each and every time. I was the one who originally dropped long distance with them and switched to a different long distance provider. My husband has called tech support a couple of times for internet issues. Otherwise, I have handled everything with them for 19 years. Until, suddenly, in the year 2013, they tell me I have to get my husband’s permission to speak with the phone company.

I sent an email stating all of this, plus asking if they were operating from a 1950s policy manual. They said they’d send a form so I could be added to the account. Meanwhile, my husband called and gave his say-so to put my name on there. But I’m still upset because he shouldn’t have had to do this. I should not need my husband’s permission to do grown-up stuff.

3. Medicaid. I’ve been helping my mother apply for Medicaid. And by helping, I mean doing everything because she can’t. Yesterday, she received a letter, care of me at my address, saying both that she’d been approved for Medicaid coverage and it was retroactive to April and that she was ineligible for Medicaid at this time. I kid you not. I certainly didn’t see that one coming. At the bottom of the letter is a name and a phone number to call if you have any questions.

This morning, I called. And got a recorded message telling me to dial a different number. I called the different number. Did you know that having Power of Attorney and also being Representative Payee through Social Security for someone does not mean that Medicaid will talk to you in order to help that person? It’s true. Missouri Medicaid has their own form, specific to their agency, that you have to fill out and get signed in order to be authorized as a representative for someone else. They won’t accept the Power of Attorney form plus the physician’s letter plus the authorization from Social Security plus an immediate family relationship plus the fact that you’re the one who has provided every piece of information to them so far as evidence that you have any right to find out from them what the letter means that they sent to your parent in care of you at your home address.They also won’t answer general questions, phrased as “Say a hypothetical person got a letter from you saying thus and such. What would that mean?” So now I await the form to be mailed to me so I have will have authorization to call them to find out whether “yes and no” means yes or no.

To some extent, I get it. I really do. I know privacy is a huge issue. I know identity theft happens and older folks are particularly vulnerable. I appreciate the fact that they won’t let any random citizen call up and get personal information about my mother. But she has signed a legal document stating she wants me to handle her affairs. If I have a signed and notarized form to this effect, plus my name on her bank account, a birth certificate showing I am really her child…why can’t they let me help her? Why is it so complicated? And as for the phone company, I cut them no slack.

Dealing with bureaucracy – death by a thousand paper cuts.

Nesting?

I clearly remember being nine months and one day pregnant and insisting I had to flip the mattress on our bed. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t done it in so long. It’s supposed to be done every few months and I tend to forget it for years. If I didn’t do it before the baby came, it wasn’t going to happen for another long time. I felt a real urgency to take care of long-neglected chores; I’d already dusted the lightbulbs.

After my daughter’s birth, I laughed about my stereotypical and somewhat manic pregnant behavior. Then I did all of the same things again three years later, right before my son was born, including flipping the mattress.

I’ve never been a domestic diva. But the third trimester of pregnancy placed me in the fierce grip of the nesting instinct, nonetheless. Never had I harbored such an intense desire to have every piece of laundry done. Every inch of the house clean. Every bit of clutter disposed of. Everything. In. Order. Now.

Was it hormonal? An attempt to exercise control? A reaction to transition? Whatever the cause, I’m experiencing something similar now without the pregnancy component. I have entered perimenopause, so maybe hormones are a factor. Or maybe it’s the sense of impending transition. My kids are growing up and my mother is in her final months of life.

And I suddenly want to do all of things around my house. My husband gave me a deer-in-the-headlights look this afternoon when I, out of the blue, asked, “So when are we starting the entry room project? How about next weekend? Can we get the materials then and start?” There might have been an unhinged tone to my voice.

Perhaps part of it is seeing my mom fading. It reminds me of my own mortality. It reminds me I don’t have forever to make this house the home I dreamed of. Then, too, when she does pass – in a few weeks or months, or a couple of years if I’m feeling optimistic – people will gather here. I need the house in some kind of order. And I’d like to have it nicer for the kids in their last little while at home.

Today I took advantage of the holiday from work to address my container hoarding. I have a teeny problem. But see, they can’t go in the curbside recycling and I do re-use them sometimes…

In case you can’t see from the photo, the Target bag is nothing but lids. ALL lids. But most of this is gone now. We can now open the cabinet doors without yogurt cartons spilling out around our feet.

I also went through every item of my mom’s that I have stored in my house. I made a list with the intention of asking her to specify who gets what when she dies. She’d already given me permission to use any practical everyday items we had here.

And here’s a reward for my work – found in a box I’d never opened because it was marked “coffee mugs.” I figured Mom didn’t need coffee mugs at the nursing home, so I never bothered to look in the box. I should have.

Extra Medicare Help for Low Income Seniors

Well, it’s happened. My mom has reached the end of her money. Her Medicaid application is in process. I’ve also discovered that low-income seniors can get extra help with Medicare prescription drug premiums. It’s easy to apply on-line. I wish I’d realized sooner that she qualified.

The hard part comes when the Social Security office double checks with the bank and gets inaccurate information. When my mom moved to town, one of the first things I did was open a checking account for her at the bank I already use. My name is on her account, as well, because I take care of her bills.

My name is on five accounts at this particular bank, in fact: a joint checking account with my husband, a joint savings account with my husband, my daughter’s savings account, my son’s savings account and my mom’s checking account. Despite the number of accounts, it doesn’t add up to all that much somehow. But enough to disqualify my mom from help with her premiums when the bank erroneously reports the sum total to Social Security as *all* belonging to my mother. Hello. Her name is on exactly one account, the tiniest one. Her account is not even tied to the others; it’s not like I can transfer money back and forth.

I think I have it straightened out now and have her application moving forward again. Nothing’s ever simple, I tell you.