28 October 2024
First, thank you for following developments here. There are about 40 of you, as far as I can tell, and if I had to respond to emails and texts, I'd never get to bed. As it is, typing is still very difficult for me after the concussion, so this is really all I can manage.
Second, Joyce has been moved to a new room each day of the weekend. First to get window (after two weeks) and then because the sixth floor ward was shut down. She's now in Room 4321* with a nice window.
Christina visited her on Saturday, which was a very nice surprise.
Joyce still isn't eating even half of her sparse meals but she responds to some encouragement.
She has gotten out of bed three days in a row now, sitting in a chair for between one and two hours. That makes a big difference.
When she stands to move to the chair or the bed, she become afraid she is going to fall even with two people holding her up. I'm hoping physical therapy will address that this week so she can start walking.
Then she can go to the skilled nursing facility to continue to improve her walking work on stairs.
Of course, Kaiser would still like to know what The Plan is if that doesn't work out. If, in short, she has to return home as an invalid that I still can't care for.
There really is no plan. But Mae the social worker send a list of private resources for me to look over.
That's about $4,000/month, more (with our normal expenses) than we get with Social Security. So that's not what I'd call a "plan."
Neither, really, is a reverse mortgage, which offers a finite payout for an ongoing problem. That could eventually become twice as expensive should I need help.
So we're focused on walking right now. And climbing stairs. One step at a time.