Originally published in Cat House & Shooting Society on 8/8/26
If you haven’t read my latest, you can read it here. We needed to call my mom yesterday to let her know how my aunt was doing in the hospital.
Her phone was busy. It was busy all night. We texted the manager of the condo where she lives to see if they could check on her. Apparently they aren’t allowed to do that (THE FUQ!!!!!!), so she gave us the phone number of an agency’s non-emergency line to request a welfare check.
So hubby called, while I kept hitting redial on my phone on the off chance she had knocked the phone off the cradle (landline, no cell phone) and would get it hung up properly. I kept getting the busy signal.
We stayed up as late as possible in hopes of hearing something, but we finally had to drag ourselves to bed.
I did not have a good night; I got just shy of 3 hours of sleep. The problem with having an overactive imagination is that my brain went into overdrive, and all I could think about were the worst possible outcomes.
I did manage some sleep, but not solid; I was fried when I finally got up. I wandered out to the living room to see if hubby had heard anything. He hadn’t, so I threw myself in the shower to attempt to feel human.
On the off chance there might have been something wrong with the line, hubby started calling phone companies to find out which one she had. Ended up with AT&T, but didn’t get any answers.
We decided we had to drive up and hope things were okay. While I was packing in case we needed to stay the night, the condo manager managed to find a neighbor of Mom’s to check on her.
Mom was okay, a bit groggy. I suspect she hadn’t had a very good night herself. Unfortunately, the neighbor forgot to see about getting the phone back on the cradle, and we still haven’t been able to call Mom. I am hoping she will figure it out herself if the neighbor doesn’t get back to her.
So, no panicked trip to Spokane. I did get a call from my aunt, thanks to her nurse. She’d been trying to get a hold of mom, so I explained what was happening. She wanted my mom to come pick her up to drive her around to look at skilled nursing facilities.
SIGH! Not happening; my aunt is hooked up to an IV. But the one good thing is she is accepting that she needs skilled nursing since she needs IV antibiotics for quite a few weeks yet.
After she hung up, I called her nurse to give her a heads-up about my aunt wanting to leave to look at other places. I also had her pass a message along to the doctor to call me back.
He did, and I explained my aunt wanting to go out, and he agreed that wasn’t going to happen. But he did say my aunt is very agreeable about going to a skilled nursing facility, and when she is lucid during the day, easy to get her to see she needs the skilled help. I mentioned one of the places I thought my aunt would like; he said she thought it would work for her. Hence her wanting Mom to drive her over so she could look at it.
So, if things go well, my aunt will move to the facility this next week, and while it isn’t where we would like her to go, it is the best place for now. Hopefully, once the chaos that the fires in Spokane have created has passed, she could move to the one closest to Mom.
Now I just have to explain everything to Mom and hope she doesn’t go ballistic. She thinks she is perfectly capable of taking care of my aunt and knows more than the doctors. But every time we talk to her, we stress how sick my aunt is, and hopefully she will finally clue in that having to stay on an IV means my aunt needs to be in a skilled nursing facility.
Now, we just need to hope she finally hangs up the phone.
So, the latest crisis has been resolved; I ended up a nervous wreck, and we have been making inroads on a big bottle of rum. Though all the nibbles we’ve consumed seem to have absorbed the alcohol, and my lovely tipsy feeling is going away. So we’re pouring stronger drinks, and I am finally feeling WHEEEEEEE again.
Sometimes you just have to open a bottle of something and just keep pouring.
Update: after a couple of days, Mom’s phone is finally ringing. Now, if she were only home when I call, I would feel much better.
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