Sorry, I just have to vent somewhere.
We’ve been moving Mom and my stepfather into assisted living because after stepfather’s last stay at the hospital, the senior community where they were living said they either had to go into assisted living or they’d have to move somewhere else because of the liability issue. That was about three weeks ago.
Stepfather’s daughter then got involved since she is his legal caretaker, and unilaterally arranged for them to move into assisted living at another community on the other side of town, for about the same amount of money they were paying in the other place. Which was huge, because a) their rent comes out of a trust stepfather owns, so we don’t control that anyway, and b) his daughter lives nearby and her husband is retired so he can help drive them around when needed (we’re trying to get Mom to give up her car — another story). Moving them into assisted living with 24/7 caregivers available gives me and the wife the warm fuzzies, because the old place didn’t have a nurse or doctor on staff, let alone 24×7 (and they do assisted living there — go figure how they do that without local, dedicated medical staff).
Mom, of course, has been fighting this move the whole way, primarily because she didn’t get a say, and also because she maintains she doesn’t need assisted living. To which my wife and I are both privately saying, “Tough shit, and you’ve fallen so many times that you damn well DO need assisted living.”
Case in point: We don’t even really know if either one of them were getting all their proper meds, because wife and stepsister found loose pills all over the apartment. At the new place, the aides come around to the apartment and make sure they get their pills. Well, stepfather, anyway; Mom is resisting letting them do that for her.
So they got moved in last Sunday, and stepfather came over from rehab to join Mom in the new apartment. All seemed well.
Stepfather had what appears to have been a stroke yesterday and is in the hospital. Mom is not freaking out, but might as well be.
So.
This morning at work, we had a major crisis that had to be fixed “immediately, immediately, immediately — and I didn’t get a harumph outa that guy!” I found out about this at 8AM when I logged in and started trying to wrap my head around that problem.
Mom called at 8:30. “Did I wake you up?” “No, but I’m working, and we have a big problem, and I can’t talk right now.” “Oh, well then, never mind.” CLICK. As if it were my fault.*
So I kept working on the problem at work, tried to call her around 10:30 and she wasn’t there (I imagine she was at the hospital), and we just finished fixing the problem about a quarter to noon. I’ve tried to call her twice since, I guess she’s still at the hospital.
But I’ve been sitting here fuming about it all day while trying to fix a major problem that affected half of our hosting customers, while fielding angry emails from the boss the whole time to boot.
If this is excitement, I much prefer the sedentary life.
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* To provide a sense of proportion, the major crisis was only affecting half of our hosting service customers, none of whom could reach their hosted services. You don’t screw around for family crap at that level, you fix the problem and then you worry about the family crisis. Sorry, but I need my job worse than I need to deal with my mother’s problems at this point.