And it's not even 6.
16 Nov 2018 17:20![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nwhikerWhat a day.
Let's see....
I got some stuff together for donations and loaded a dead printer in my car mid-morning, and headed to a nearby town to empty the car and buy a few things I needed for the dessert I made for Linnea's coaches.
While I was unloading the printer, dh texted. FIL had had a stroke, they thought.
The roofing contractor was there, I guess, and realised something was wrong, called 911. He's been talking to his cousin earlier and at some point, they picked up his phone and called her back, she then called dh, and that connection was made. Dh talked to the paramedic, telling him that FIL had had brain radiation yesterday.
Apparently FIL was walking, and appeared aware, but his face was droopy and he couldn't talk.
Followed a long AWFUL afternoon. FIL, despite several requests, hasn't given anyone a healthcare proxy so nobody at UNM hospital would talk to dh, beyond telling him which room in the ER FIL was in, but since there are no phones, that wasn't an easy thing.
We found out, after I did some digging, that dh's friend from next door, who'd been helping out? Has actually moved for work. FIL didn't inform anyone of that little change. His wife is still living at the place, but she's out of town for the holiday.
So um.
And the dog is alone.
And nobody is getting back to dh.
And I'm trying to book flights, and they're effing vaporware. You get a price, click purchase, it confirms the price, add everything in, and at the second to last step it comes back telling you the flight is no longer available, you can get another one at 3 times the price (from $400 to $1200). And so you try again, and the $400 flight is still there and repeat. Try calling, which took even longer, and only flight available is now $1600. Try again online at the same time, and you can book the whole flight... until you find out that despite the fact that they are willing to sell you the tickets, there are no seats for three of the four legs, he can get back from Albuquerque to LA on Tuesday, only he can't get to New Mexico in the first place, and oh, nothing to get him back from LA to Seattle. Rolling my eyes. Jerks. Ended up going to with a ridiculously priced ticket, though less than $1600, on Alaska Airlines, though neither of us where happy to find out that even when he confirmed that $995 ticket, that he would still have to pay an extra $65 because the only seats left were an upgrade. WTF? Anyhow, stressful, but we did in the end get him a ticket. I'd packed his bag when we first heard, so off we headed to the airport.
Rush hour traffic was evil, but he got there is enough time to make the flight.
But. BEST of news for the day, once he'd had the ticket dh had texted his dad, which he'd done a few times prior, but no response, and FIL answered. MAJOR relief. He's alert, lucid, and grumpy. Not happy at being in the ER, which he'd been pretty much forced to go to by the paramedics... As dh said to me "Oh hey, if you didn't want to go, you should have told them that. Oh wait. You couldn't, because you could not SPEAK!" He didn't say that to FIL, though.
Anyhow. Dh is on the plane, my drive home only took about an hour, and I need to load up cakes and strawberries and whipped cream to take the the coaches. And pick up Linnea and our carpool kid.
And come home and attempt to start managing the chaos of the next few days without dh.
But I've got it easier. He's going to have conversations with FIL, ones that involves words like "medical proxy" and "move up here" and "you have no support left in New Mexico," and "we need to have the talk about the dog" and other stuff like that.
It sucks, having to be an adult. And HIPAA? Makes having ill relatives out of town even more difficult.
Let's see....
I got some stuff together for donations and loaded a dead printer in my car mid-morning, and headed to a nearby town to empty the car and buy a few things I needed for the dessert I made for Linnea's coaches.
While I was unloading the printer, dh texted. FIL had had a stroke, they thought.
The roofing contractor was there, I guess, and realised something was wrong, called 911. He's been talking to his cousin earlier and at some point, they picked up his phone and called her back, she then called dh, and that connection was made. Dh talked to the paramedic, telling him that FIL had had brain radiation yesterday.
Apparently FIL was walking, and appeared aware, but his face was droopy and he couldn't talk.
Followed a long AWFUL afternoon. FIL, despite several requests, hasn't given anyone a healthcare proxy so nobody at UNM hospital would talk to dh, beyond telling him which room in the ER FIL was in, but since there are no phones, that wasn't an easy thing.
We found out, after I did some digging, that dh's friend from next door, who'd been helping out? Has actually moved for work. FIL didn't inform anyone of that little change. His wife is still living at the place, but she's out of town for the holiday.
So um.
And the dog is alone.
And nobody is getting back to dh.
And I'm trying to book flights, and they're effing vaporware. You get a price, click purchase, it confirms the price, add everything in, and at the second to last step it comes back telling you the flight is no longer available, you can get another one at 3 times the price (from $400 to $1200). And so you try again, and the $400 flight is still there and repeat. Try calling, which took even longer, and only flight available is now $1600. Try again online at the same time, and you can book the whole flight... until you find out that despite the fact that they are willing to sell you the tickets, there are no seats for three of the four legs, he can get back from Albuquerque to LA on Tuesday, only he can't get to New Mexico in the first place, and oh, nothing to get him back from LA to Seattle. Rolling my eyes. Jerks. Ended up going to with a ridiculously priced ticket, though less than $1600, on Alaska Airlines, though neither of us where happy to find out that even when he confirmed that $995 ticket, that he would still have to pay an extra $65 because the only seats left were an upgrade. WTF? Anyhow, stressful, but we did in the end get him a ticket. I'd packed his bag when we first heard, so off we headed to the airport.
Rush hour traffic was evil, but he got there is enough time to make the flight.
But. BEST of news for the day, once he'd had the ticket dh had texted his dad, which he'd done a few times prior, but no response, and FIL answered. MAJOR relief. He's alert, lucid, and grumpy. Not happy at being in the ER, which he'd been pretty much forced to go to by the paramedics... As dh said to me "Oh hey, if you didn't want to go, you should have told them that. Oh wait. You couldn't, because you could not SPEAK!" He didn't say that to FIL, though.
Anyhow. Dh is on the plane, my drive home only took about an hour, and I need to load up cakes and strawberries and whipped cream to take the the coaches. And pick up Linnea and our carpool kid.
And come home and attempt to start managing the chaos of the next few days without dh.
But I've got it easier. He's going to have conversations with FIL, ones that involves words like "medical proxy" and "move up here" and "you have no support left in New Mexico," and "we need to have the talk about the dog" and other stuff like that.
It sucks, having to be an adult. And HIPAA? Makes having ill relatives out of town even more difficult.
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no subject
Date: 17 Nov 2018 02:51 (UTC)My mom has been hospitalized *a lot* this past year. I'm always surprised at how much information my sister gets out of doctors and nurses. I asked her once if it was due to some kind of legal designation (we may or may not have used the phrase "health care proxy") and she said no. But I'm thinking it must be the case. Mom mainly ends up at the hospital in Roswell, but she got sent to Lubbock in the summer (lonnnnnggg story) and even those doctors talk to her. Then they set up this secret phrase that I could use to talk to the docs, but I have no idea how to talk to them so I leave it all to my sister. (During that Lubbock debacle, my sister ended up driving from the KC area because she was sick of getting half stories over the phone. She ended up driving my mom back to Roswell once they got a portable oxygen tank, which was one of the necessary conditions...)
Anyway, all that to say that your experience reinforces for me that my parents must have done something official, as I suspected. I hope David is able to convince his Dad to stuff straightened out. It's so very hard to manage long-distance even under good conditions.
no subject
Date: 17 Nov 2018 05:02 (UTC)Oh maybe your sister has talking-to-doctor superpowers, and does she want to come visit Seattle for Thanksgiving? :-) It does sound like she's a good patient advocate, which is GREAT.
I can talk to doctors reasonably well, especially face to face. My biggest failure was Anne-Chloe's first trip to the ER with the epidural abscess. I tried and tried, but the doctor would not even make eye contract with me or dh, let alone talk to us, which is perhaps why it was dismissed as "girl with migraines", and since it was the same hospital system, I had to fight AGAIN the next day, for the same diagnosis, except this time it was "girl with migraines with bitchy mother who thinks it's a sinus infection, so doctor prescribed abx to shut bitchy mother up".