Hi, friends!
Thank you to the folks who covered for me a few days last week! Things are still craptastic but not in the imminent “oh fuck” state.
That being said, just my advice on the situation of an aging asshole parent, don’t be low-income. Don’t be on Medicare and expect any sort of basic assistance at the home, even if a person lives alone. If you parent is on a dual enrollment plan with Medicare and Medicaid, you’re still potentially not covered for home custodial assistance even if Medicaid says they do. All I can conclude on this is it’s because it’s one of those dumbass Medicare Advantage plans that just seem sketchy as fuck. Home personal care is all private pay and too expensive for any sort of solution.
Also, don’t be an alcoholic. If you’re a dude or know any dude alcoholics, I can tell you from experience helping my father the last few days that it’s not gonna be a good endgame for what happens to your genitals.
So, as with anything else in America, if you don’t have money you’re screwed.
Getting old sucks. I understand what you’re dealing with. Physically my parents are fine, but mentally… no way.
I really want to talk to a case worker on what I need to do.
Do you have an appointment with a case worker? I always assume Canada is better about this kind of thing than we are here.
I was told they would call, but it all depends on when the paperwork is submitted. Hopefully tomorrow.
🤞🏼
I’m getting him a home assessment with a social worker on Wednesday.
Health care in this country is a cruel joke.
I pulled something in my back during yoga back in July. I thought everything was okay but today out of nowhere it flared up again. I went grocery shopping and I think maybe it was from lifting heavy bags. The pain isn’t as bad as it was earlier in the day but I’m still hurting.
I’ve got ruptured disks. They’re currently aching but not too bad. But my point is if it hurts go see an orthopedic doctor. Don’t half-ass it with a chiropractor or something like that. After I first ruptured my disks years ago I tried that (I’d had good results with chiropractors in the past). I put myself through weeks of needless agony when I should have just gone to a real doctor.
I will say if they start screaming “surgery!” slow things way down. My first orthopedist, who was very good and now retired, took me through a program starting with the least invasive option, which was medication and physical therapy (which honestly is mostly yoga). Eventually I got steroid shots in my spine. The next step was surgery, but the steroid shots got me to the point that I could move again, and I made it my business to lose weight. I still get sciatica, but no surgery yet.
I had another disk rupture in my neck and I went back to the same practice. My doctor had retired, and they immediately started scheduling surgery. I balked and told them no, we were going to take the same treatment route as before. They were kinda pissed but I’m kinda nasty when provoked so I won. Physical therapy and medication worked. Still no surgery … yet.
I should note that medication was short term to treat inflammation. I’m not on a pain regime or anything like that. The only medication I take regularly is for my allergies.
It used to be that surgery was a crap shoot. About a third of people got better, a third saw no change, and a third got worse. Those are shit odds. Things have improved in the last 15 years so I’m not so worried about surgery if it’s warranted. But I’d still insist on trying the least invasive option first, as long as they will give you anti-inflammatories to get the pain under control.
Ouch! I hope you continue to avoid surgery. I never go to chiropractors. I had serious neck injury as a child, was hospitalized in traction for a month. I’m terrified of somebody messing with my spine. But I should probably see an orthopedist if it doesn’t go away.
That’s my plan. Exercise and yoga have always worked in the past. And my current sciatica isn’t so severe that I’m impaired. I can pretty much ignore it, but it’s there.
I keep saying yoga because I did several months of physical therapy and would diligently do the home exercises. My wife took one look at me and said, “You know that’s yoga, right?” So I switched to taking yoga. The classes were way cheaper than my co-pay. And yeah, pretty much the same exercises. Except yoga had a lot more of them.
Yoga has been huge among NBA players for about a decade, but guys like Kareem Abdul Jabbar were doing it well before that. Everything I hear about it sounds like it’s good for you if you just keep doing it.
Sorry for what you guys are going through. We were lucky with my wife’s dad that he was too incapacitated by the time his mind was going that he couldn’t wander off or anything. He was lucid most of the time until near the end. Even with money & REAL medicare you can’t easily die with dignity in this country. We paid a ridiculous amount of money for minimum care where my wife or her brother’s family pretty much had to do all the hard work to take care of him until the end. They wouldn’t do anything that could cause liability for anything. My 97 year old Mom is losing it mentally at times but she also can’t walk anymore so can’t wander off. She also had my niece as her caregiver & my brother next door which has been amazing. We figured better to pay my niece who needed a job than pay a shitty place that wouldn’t care for her in the way she deserves.
How’s MrsShaq doing?
She is a stressed out wreck. Spent all of last 2 days dealing with making plans w/ her brother for the funeral while having to deal with 2 weeks of being away from work. Before we left her clinic has been dealing with a major cyber attack that has fucked all our computers. It is still not solved. She has definitely aged 10 years in the last month.
That’s a lot all at once. ☹️
All of my thoughts are with Brighter, Manchu, Shaq, hell, everybody. Take care of yourselves as best as you can.
👆🏼This
The same best wishes during difficult times to all of the above.
There are so many lies that are accepted as truths in the American “health care” system. Medicare Advantage is a straight up scam. Remember all those knuckle draggers with their “get your gubmint hands off my Medicare” signs when the ACA was working its way through Congress? Even as far back as 2012, research demonstrated that people with Medicare Advantage have much higher instances of having problems accessing care due to cost, and experiencing a major financial issue.
The other big one that makes me absolutely crazy, is the whole “we can’t just give it away because those dirty poors need to have some skin in the game.” Once again, those pesky facts get in the way. Repeated research studies have concluded that the more up-front costs that insured people are required to pay, the more they behave like the uninsured and they put off getting care until the problems become much more serious and–by extension–cost a lot more to resolve.
But, ultimately, all of the problems we have in our health care system are features, not bugs. Republicans, Corporate Democrats, insurance companies, hospitals and doctors all like things just the way they are, thank you very much.
Features is the right way to think about it. They’re not something like gravity or the density of water which are immutable facts of existence. They’re choices people in power have made, but which they’ve conned people into thinking are carved in stone.