October 2006 Archives

This is just absolutely beautiful.

Today is the sixth anniversary of my father's death, and it's incredible to realize just how much has changed in the past year. R and I are now living together, we've met some incredible friends, and strengthened other friendships. Meantime, my niece and nephew are getting SO BIG!, and their adult personalities -- who they'll be -- are starting to peek through. Incredible stuff all of it, and of course there's always the sad stuff, too.

In other words: life's moving on.

What I wrote last year is no less meaningful today, so I won't repeat myself. The only difference is that I think some of us may be finding our rhythm, however off-beat it may be. Not all of us -- Mom may never find hers again -- but a little, tiny, patter for the rest of us.

I still miss my father, and always will. That part's not changing, just the sharpness has been worn down from a giant grief to a well-known sense of sorrow and regret. No, I'm not grieving for him every day (not anymore)...but some days, it does still hit me.

Living in a Manhattan apartment building is like living in a giant college dorm -- without the bad sex and stale beer smell. (Well, most nights, anyway.)

In our building, R and I live at the very end of the hallway. Our elevator and laundry room are in the center of the hall, and there's an apartment directly across from them. I've never envied the occupants of that apartment, since I'm sure you can hear the folks in the elevator and people doing their laundry all the time.

This morning, while waiting for the elevator, I realized there's another reason I don't envy them...I could hear the occupants' conversation very clearly through the apartment door. And then, out of nowhere, someone singing the girl's part of "Paradise by the Dashboard Light."

Badly.

While I debated on the ethics of mining this comedy gold -- "Hey, can my cell phone record sound as well as video?" -- the elevator arrived and saved me from myself. So all I can say is this: I really, really hope those folks get something off their rent, and a soundproof door is in their future.

"It's like a koala crapped a rainbow in my brain!"
-- Captain Murphy, Sealab 2012

Mom's still at my sister's, and my boss is still leaving. Everyone's trying to hang in there as best as we can -- some days, it's an uphill battle, though.

On the other hand, R has been nothing but fabulous throughout all of this. I love my R. :)

Off to dinner, and then a night of World of Warcraft dungeons. Hey, the couple that slays together... :D

One thing that did make my day a little more bearable: seeing what people searched on to get here. Here's some of the weirder search terms lately:

• Muppets answering machine
  
• Spinach shoes (?!)
  
• Purse cake
  
• I hate khakis
  
• WarCrack
  
• "Gul's Angels" (yaaaaay!)
  
• She ringling clown
  
• Glitter smiley

"Glitter smiley" and "spinach shoes" are my personal two favorites. :)

Mom is out of rehab and is, for now, staying with my sister. Mom's frame of mind is not good, and that's all I can really say about that.

On the work front, my boss is leaving in three weeks.

I'm about ready to go home.

It was a very phone-intensive weekend...finally resulting in a conference call yesterday with my mother's case worker at the rehab, her social worker, my mother, my two sisters, and I.

Mom's appeal was denied, and from the sound of it, the bone that fractured during surgery is not healing very quickly at all. That means that she can't be upgraded to "weightbearing" any time soon, and so -- technically -- can't use physical therapy to improve the joint. We were hoping to hear differently from her doctor on Oct. 20th, and we may -- but from the sound of it, she'll be doing "no weightbearing" for some weeks yet.

There's a second appeal filed, but that won't be considered for the next two weeks -- given the state of things, no one's expecting her to get that one through.

This has boiled down to a set of options for Mom: to pay to stay in the rehab on her own dime, to stay with one of my sisters and a 12-hour aide per day, or to go back to her own home -- with all the stairs -- and a 24-hour aide. Right now, she's paying for herself to stay there. She needs to decide by the end of the day today what she wants to do and how she wants to do it.

We'll see what happens...

This is bad, gang, this is really bad. Here's the deal: Mom's surgery had complications, including her surgeon accidentially sawing through the tendon(s) around her patella. They were lacerated by 50%. That, along with additional complications, meant that she couldn't put weight on her leg -- and still can't, and won't be able to for a while yet. She's in inpatient rehab right now -- before surgery, her expected stay was three weeks, but now she's up to eight.

Except. Except. Her insurance company is denying her the extra rehab, and she could be out of rehab and home by Monday. Understand this: there is not a single floor in her home that has everything she needs. Her kitchen is on one floor. Her bedroom is on another floor. There are two bathrooms, but neither of them is on the same floor as the kitchen or front door. So to do anything one does during the course of a day -- sleep, use the bathroom, get a cup of coffee, answer the door -- she would need to go up and down at least one flight of stairs, which is impossible given the state of her other knee. They haven't even started her on stairs in physical therapy yet -- not even a bit -- so she doesn't even know the technique to do them, never mind that she's not supposed to be doing any of that yet.

An appeal is in; she could know as early as tomorrow what the verdict is. To pay for rehab on her own is $500/day -- if she loses the appeal, we're going to try to at least keep her in on Monday so she can get the equipment she'll need to leave with.

What makes me the most furious is that they denied her because she's not weightbearing; so they feel that she can't progress in rehab and therefore doesn't need to be there. Basically, they're punishing her because her recovery is taking longer. On top of that, when my mother frantically called her surgeon to ask him to change her weightbearing status, he not only refused, but virtually hung up on her -- he didn't even offer to assist in helping with her appeal. To me, that says he's terrified of being sued -- it's at least partially his fault that her recovery is taking so long to begin with. Fucking coward.

My sister's house is all stairs, too, as is everyone else local to my mother who could help. R and I have the most mom-friendly home...except we're in Manhattan, in a studio, with no doors except for the bathroom. Our family and friends would have a hard time getting in here to see her, and I can't even envision getting my mother in a cab to go to PT, not when she can't bend her leg and is in a wheelchair most of the day. We'd need to do ambulettes, and heaven only knows if her thrice-damned insurance would pay for that, either. too. R and I haven't ruled it out, understand, but it's not an attractive option for anyone.

A decision on her appeal is expected tomorrow -- they've expedited it because of her situation. If they reverse the insurer's decision, all is well. If not...again, we'll pay for her to stay Monday, which will give my family a day to figure out a stopgap living solution for Mom.

Cross your fingers for us, gang. We need it.

OK, folks, if they can pull this off...again...I will be in utterly happy shock. Oh, and there's about 100 nuns pole-dancing on the lip of a volcano in hell, too.

GO, WOXY, GO!

Every once in a while, I have no idea what to say here. Nothing pithy comes to mind. I've no idea what to do in these instances; do I say nothing and not post, or do I post about...uh...nothing? While I know Seinfeld was a great show about nothing, I'm not nearly as funny -- and there's also only one of me. Maybe an ensemble blog would work...but don't hold your breath, maties.

Anyway...I plan on doing at least one day of the Open House New York Weekend. I'll be away from the computer and communing with my camera...and I'll have something to write about. :) Sweet!

It's increment week here at metrocake! What the hell is "increment week?" Funny you should ask... Increment week is when you take a whole bunch of small steps on various things -- but all of the small steps add up to a nice big whole. Progress sometimes comes slowly, but it does happen.

Increment week events:

• Upgraded to MT 3.3 for a happier, safer, blogging experience.
  
• Cleaned out my bookmarks: my old bookmark file was over 1MB, since I tend to bookmark everything. Bookmarking something and being unable to find it again does nothing but increase file size, so I backed it up, cleaned it up, and threw stuff out. Del.icio.us, here I come...
  
• Cleaned out my e-mail. See above.
  
• Cleaned out my office. We had office "cleanup day" last Friday, so I went to town. I didn't recognize the place when I walked in today.
  
• Saw my Mom over the weekend, who's having "increment day" of her own -- she may be able to go up to 60 degrees of flexion (bend) in her knee replacement, up from 30 degrees. Not the progress she (or we) were hoping for, but it's still progress nonetheless.
  
• Incremental increments: did some work on the apartment, some work on a metrocake redesign (yes, again), and some work on my photography. I've got to get my stuff into iStockphoto already.
  
• Last but not least...leveled up to 21 in World of Warcraft. w00t!