Beyond At This Point.

[dodger_sister]

You guys, I am ass-to-the-ground tired, but I haven't posted yet this month, so I am going to commit a cardinal sin and copy/paste some stuff from my Tumblr and from a comment section with a good friend, to explain where I have been and what has been going on.


This bit here...-....The first week of the month has been a bitch and a half. Mom was suppose to go home to her house on Thursday, but instead Halloween night, around 3am, she went to ER by ambulance from the rehab. Sodium levels had dropped dangerously low and they couldn't get back up - from the heart stuff. Finally did, and released her back to rehab for a few more weeks, but in the meantime, she needs $2000 a day (nope, not a typo, it's 1k a pill, 2x a day) for helping to keep her sodium absorbing properly, cuz her insurance won't cover it. I am trying to find a way to get her the pills, also working on a stack of medical bills, a spend down on her Medicaid/Medicare she didn't know she had, and a year's worth of unopened mail we found shoved in her file cabinet. Taking care of my mother has become a full time job...-...

And then there's this...-...If your sodium level drops low enough, you can have seizures or, you know, die. Today we found out that the pill my mother needs to take in order to absorb her sodium pill properly, and thus keep her sodium levels up to a non-dying level, costs $1,000. Per pill. And she has to take it twice a day.

To put it another way - it will cost $2,000 a day to keep her alive. $14,000 a week to keep her alive. $60,000 a month to keep her alive. $730,000 a year to keep her alive.

And her health insurance will not pay for it.

She was just released from the hospital after nearly crashing completely on her sodium levels - causing her severe confusion and hallucinations. She is stable now, but without the medicine, she will be right back in the hospital in no time. And, eventually, it will kill her...-...

I am so tired. I just want some time to write again. I have ideas. But instead, here I am working almost 20 hours a week - on top of, you know, being chronically ill - on my mother's snafu-of-shit that (aside from the health stuff) she basically caused herself by, idk, Not Ever Opening Her Mail.

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[dodger-sister.livejournal.com]

So rehab is releasing Mom in a week. Not because she's ready to go but because her insurance has run out. The system is broken. But my aunt is taking her for awhile anyways, while she keeps getting stronger (which I doubt since once she isn't in a place where they push her hard like rehab, she's just gonna stop doing her exercises and eating and all that). I'm sure eventually she'll insist on going home and have another accident and we'll start the whole thing over again. But she's not taking my dog back, I'll tell you that! (M says not to worry about that, because Mom'll never stay out of the hospital long enough for that to be an issue).

But we have worked out the mail system! J picks it up, gives it to me, I sort, throw out junk mail, label the rest with stickies - Pay Bill, Give To Mom, File, etc - and put it on J's desk. Once she gets to Aunt's house, I am sure the whole system will break down!

Ugh, I just depressed myself.