I was originally planning to head out to the feed store today, but I completely forgot about that, because of something that happened last night.
I was having a late snack of brie and pimiento stuffed olives. My first thought, when I felt something hard and immediately stopped biting down, was that I’d found a broken piece of olive pit. I’d already found one earlier.
I immediately discarded that idea, because it felt wrong. In fact, it felt more like a piece of tooth.
Yeah, I’ve had that happen before, too.
After very carefully clearing my mouth, I spit out the hard thing. Sure enough, it was a chunk of tooth. The far side of a molar at the very back of my mouth. One that already had a root canal, done probably close to 35 years ago, so there was no pain.
The weird thing?
I’d been to the dentist a few months ago because I was having pain and thought I had a cavity. There was no cavity there and nothing on the Xrays. Mostly, though, I have been having trouble chewing on that side. I’d bite on something – even something soft – and there would be a sharp pain. The problem was, the tooth that seemed to be where the pain was, had a root canal and should not have been having any pain at all. Which meant it could have been one of the teeth on either side of it. All the tests the dentist did to try and recreate that pain, failed, and he could not work out which tooth was hurting me. So, nothing was done.
That was in the lower jaw. The tooth that broke is in the upper jaw on the same side.
Yet, I no longer have pain in that area of my lower jaw.
So there is no pain in that area at all, upper or lower jaw, but I do have a sharp bit my tongue is catching on where the piece of tooth is missing. There’s now a risk the filling might break off, or more of the tooth will break.
This morning, I called the dentist to see how quickly they could get me in.
After explaining what happened and confirming that I am not in any pain right now, they booked me in as early as possible.
March 27. More than a month from now!
I am, however, on their cancellation list, and they will try to fit me in as quickly as possible. If I do start having problems with the tooth, I’m to call them back and they’ll get me in on an emergency basis.
That particular call for an appointment was unplanned. I did have another planned call. This time to my doctor to book an appointment. Got some womanly stuff at issue. I’ve been happily post-menopausal for more than 20 years. I hit menopause very early, and had zero issues of any kind. Well, now I seem to have started my cycles again. Nothing big, mostly just spotting, but still, it shouldn’t be happening. I’m not overly worried. I’m at the age women typically go into menopause, so who knows. Something to check out, anyhow.
I’m not looking forward to it.
That’s the not so good news.
Now for the good news.
With the calls and appointments made, I settled in to work on my crochet for a while, when I got a call from the hospital.
They have found a temporary care unit bed for my mother! She’s being moved today.
It’s not in her top choice location, but we stressed with her to take anything that comes available. Once she’s in the system, it’ll be much easier to get her transferred to the nursing home she actually wants to be in.
The temporary care unit is in the nearer city. When they built the new hospital we’ve been going to so often, as that’s where they have the diagnostic equipment needed, the old hospital was converted to temporary long term care. Which means they’ll have more activities and such available.
They still had to go through the process of doctors talking to doctors, nurses to nurses, transferring of files, and then they will transport her over. I’m supposed to get a call once they actually move her and give me as much information as they can. Right now, we just know the building she’s going to be in. Nothing about what floor or room or anything like that. I should know that by the end of today, if all goes smoothly.
Once that is done, we will officially be the furthest away from my mother. My sister will be just 15 minutes away, and even my brother will be closer than we are! Casual visits from our end will be far less often. That will change back again when she is eventually transferred to where she wants to be, since that’s only blocks away from the hospital she’s in right now.
That self warming cat shelter is just crushed. 😄 When it’s time to clean out the catio, I’ll have to find a way to add supports inside it. Even under a shelf, that cats still jump on it.
One of the things I’ve been doing in the last few days, as things have been warming up, is removing the snow from the roof of the catio and the isolation shelter. They did their job as insulating in the winter, but now I actually want more light to get inside them.
The isolation shelter is a bit easier. There was a fair bit of ice under the snow that needed to be broken loose; heat from inside was enough to melt the snow, which then froze in sheets. Once that was clear, I just needed to lift the roof and allow the last bits of snow and ice fall off, and anything melted to drain.
The catio, however, is different. Not only does the roof not lift off, but the top under the roof is just wire mesh. There are no supports other than the frame itself. That meant things started to sag in the middle, where I found a sheet of ice almost 2 inches thick in places! I could also only work at clearing it from the front of the catio, since the other three sides are deep with snow. I did have to access the end facing the house to do some repairs. I think, when my brother used the snow blower to clear enough space in front of the storage house to back up his truck, snow was hitting the end of the catio and tore the plastic. Some snow had even gotten inside and onto the cat shelf at that end. I have clear repair tape (looks a lot like packing tape, but is much stronger, with better adhesive) and had to stand in snow above my knees to get at it!
Now that the tears are fixed and the roof is as clear as I could get it, the inside of the catio is brighter, and quite warm. I spotted Fancypants and Larence in there this morning. This afternoon, there was a fluffy kitten in there. It seems to really like the catio and hangs out where quite a bit, but is feral enough to be quite alarmed when I go to add food and water. I didn’t need to add water this afternoon, though. It was warm enough in there that the water I added this morning was still liquid!
Aside for the usual outside stuff, I’ve kept things quiet today. I’ve started working on a crochet project, using some new self-striping yarn I picked up last month. I’m a little ticked, though. I re-wrapped them from skeins into center pull balls. About 3/4 through the first one, I found a knot, with a dark colour tied off to a light colour. Then I found three more knots, within a few feet! So much for graduated colour changes. The other skein didn’t have any knots in it, so I started my project with that one. I’m planning to make a hooded cowl.
I did do something else that was more frustrating than it should have been. I’ve been trying to buy a chicken coop kit. There’s nothing local available that is affordable. My first attempts failed because the designs I found don’t ship to our location. Then I found ones that did and tried to use the “Affirm” payment plan to order one that can hold up to 10 chickens. (The best I could find locally could only house 4 chickens at most, and cost twice as much.) The problem with that is, they couldn’t verify our address. They couldn’t even verify the address for the store the post office is in! Which makes no sense.
After several attempts, I finally just ordered it without the payment plan. A larger chunk on my credit card than I wanted all at once. Well, I know where my tax return will be going… *sigh* Remarkably, it will actually ship to our post office box, and could potentially arrive before the end of the week! If so, I might be able to pick it up on the way home from taking the truck to the garage on Thursday.
Assembly required, of course, and we’ll have to figure out where to store the boxes until spring. This is something that can be placed fairly close to the house, for better shelter from the elements, and will hopefully last us until we can finally build the mobile chicken coop I’ve been wanting to build for years. Until then, little by little, we can pick up the supplies needed to feed and water them, etc., and order chicks in the spring. Or buy adult chickens. The homesteader I used to buy eggs from has been selling off her birds in batches – she went way overboard in chickens! – and she might still have some available in the spring. I’ve already been thinking ahead for growing food for the chickens in the garden, too, so we’re not using only purchased chicken feed. (Which we can buy at the store the post office is in.)
Hopefully, it will be a better growing year this year than last!
It’ll be nice to finally have our own eggs. Plus, I want to make mobile runs for them that will fit over our garden beds, so they can clean up the weeds and seeds and fertilize them, at the end of the season. Chickens are good for the garden!
In other things, I got a strange call from my mother last night. She started out by lamenting about how it’s been soooooo long since I visited her (I had visited her two days before) and no one was calling her, etc. I told her, I was just there! Oh, well, when will you visit next? I told her, the only day I know for sure I’ll be in town is Thursday, when I’m dropping the truck off at the garage for some more work. Oh, but that’s so far away (meaning in time, not distance)!
*sigh*
Then she started on the reason for her call.
She apparently asked the nursing staff and they said that yes, she can do this. She wants to start getting her prescriptions herself, instead of through the hospital.
She is still convinced they are giving her the wrong medications. On purpose.
I told her that I would have to call her doctor to get her prescriptions sent to a pharmacy where she is. I had to explain to her again, they still won’t be the same. They have different suppliers than her pharmacy in the town she lived in had. It would be the same medications, but they would look a bit different. Probably exactly the same as the ones she’s getting in the hospital.
Then it got to the main point.
Her vision is getting “dimmer”. She thinks it’s because they are not giving her the vitamin she was getting in her bubble packs.
After a few more questions to figure out what happening, I had to walk her through her wet and dry macular degeneration again. The vitamins she was taking were for her dry macular degeneration – where she was seeing straight lines as wavy. The “dimming” that she is seeing is from her wet macular degeneration, and that is what she was going to the special clinic in the city to get injections into her eyeball for. A trip she can no longer handle, without proper transportation assistance. There is no where else she can go for that treatment, because no one else does it.
She still wanted to get her meds switched away from the hospital providing them (which would be covered by our province’s pharmacare insurance, either way). She is simply convinced they’re giving her the wrong medications, and nothing will dissuade her.
In the end, we talked about how she’s there temporarily, so maybe we should deal with that after she’s in a permanent location.
After our call, I called the hospital back to talk to someone at the nursing station. I told her about my mother saying her vision is getting worse, but that this would require a trip to the city for testing/treatment, etc.
What we could do is make an appointment, and the hospital would arrange a HandiVan to transport her to it. Even then, we know it would be very hard on my mother to make that trip. She suggested we try getting her an appointment at the one local eye clinic in town. It would be much easier for them to arrange transportation, and the eye doctors there could give us more information on what our next steps could be.
I also explained about my mother wanting to get her own prescriptions and what I explained to her, which was confirmed, and that she agreed to wait until she was placed somewhere more permanently. Any news on that?
Nope. Nothing. In fact, they’ve got others in the hospital that have been waiting for months to get into a personal care home.
*sigh*
Frustrating, to be sure, but my mother doesn’t understand how fortunate she is to be in the hospital right now, rather than back in her apartment. Especially with how unreliable home care has been. She has exactly what she was wanting: to be living where there is someone available, particularly at night, should she need help with things. Unfortunately, now that she’s there, she expects them to “fix” her somehow.
These issues with the truck have totally wrecked our grocery budget. Mostly with cat supplies.
Speaking of cats, here’s some cuteness for you!
I got a call from the medical devices people this morning, about picking up the commode from my mother’s. After giving directions to find us, I mentioned that I needed to go into town, so they suggested I leave the commode outside. I warned them that they might have to remove some cats!
Meanwhile, I headed into town to drop off the truck early. After leaving the keys, I had lunch at the nearby Chinese restaurant, then walked over to the hospital to visit my mother. Talking to the owner of the garage before leaving, he told me they would just replace the oil sensor and do the oil change this time. Fixing the leak on the differential is a 2 hour job, and they didn’t have time for that today. The part, at least, is cheap. It just takes a long time to replace it.
When I came got to my mother’s, she was in the wheelchair with her back to the door. I could immediately see she had something in her ears.
Cotton balls.
Because of all the noise.
*sigh*
She says the noise seems to be coming from all over. At one point, she asked me about “the thing with holes” in the wall next to where the call button cord goes into the wall. She said she asked the nurses, but they didn’t know what it was. Meanwhile, I was saying, “you mean the speaker?”
So she thought the speaker was piping in noise from other parts of the hospital, into her room. I explained to her that when she pushes the call button, they hear it at the nursing station, and they can talk to her through it from there, that’s it. It’s not connected to anywhere else.
Clearly, they don’t actually use it, if the nurses didn’t know it was a speaker!
She was also asking about magnets. Are there magnets in there? I said yes. Oh, so that’s what’s magnifying the noise!
I had to explain that magnets have nothing to do with magnifying things.
Then she asked if I knew when she would be out of there, and talked about how her “service” was so much poorer. I told her (again, but she doesn’t remember) that she is not a patient anymore. She is a long term care resident. She would be getting the same level of care now, as she would be getting in a nursing home. She was actually surprised to hear this. I think it just finally clicked.
She then started telling me about how she was feeling so poorly and had called for help. They hooked her up to “all the wires” (an EKG), but that was it. No one has said anything to her. I asked her if this happened yesterday, but she couldn’t remember. Finally, she just said yes, yesterday. I told her that someone would need to look at the results, but if there is nothing wrong, they won’t have anything to tell her.
By the time I left, I completely forgot to stop at the nursing station to ask.
It was a pretty quiet visit, overall. My mother was having one of her good days, as far as her mood and attitude goes. Of course, she complained that my brother never calls or visits, but she always does that. I told her, he has been very busy taking care of her affairs. At the very least, he’s going to have to stop by to pick up the keys my sister dropped off.
After a while, it was time to head out again. It was getting so warm (we hit 4C/39F today!), I wanted to enjoy it as much as possible, too.
On the way back to the garage, I pass a couple of gas stations. Prices went up 5¢/L since I walked past them earlier!
The truck was still in one of the bays when I came in, but I knew it wouldn’t be much longer, so I just went into the office to wait. The owner was working on our truck himself, though he was frequently interrupted by phone calls and messages! They are a very busy garage. People know a good thing when it’s there!
It was maybe 5 or 10 minutes later when he backed the truck out, then we had a chance to talk.
He had done some research, trying to figure out why our sensor, which was replaced maybe a year ago, was having issues again. Based on what he found, he told me he removed a screen from inside the sensor. It’s there to prevent blockages. However, in our make and model, it actually causes blockages. With our winter conditions, moisture eventually gets into the system. The sensor is located off to the side, instead of next to the air filter, so it ends up with ice on the screen, causing a blockage, and faulty readings.
In the end, it cost me $230.86 in total, for the sensor, the oil change and a new oil filter. The sensor cost only a dollar less than the oil change!
He did not charge me for labour.
Meanwhile, I am now booked for next week, this time with an early morning drop off. He’s got a 2 hour slot to get that differential leak fixed. That’s going to cost another $300 or so, after taxes. Only $50 of that is for the part itself.
*sigh*
I had been thinking of doing the Walmart run after getting the truck back, but I just didn’t have the energy left for it. Instead, I went across the street to the grocery store again. I had a couple of requests from my husband, and asked the family if where was anything else we needed. Of course, when I did saw some good sales, I took advantage of it.
I didn’t take a picture of the cart again, but here is the receipt for $179.20
Once again, the most painful price was the dry kibble. This time, I got a bag for the outside cats, since I haven’t been able to get to a feed store to get any 40 pound bags. We aren’t out, but getting low, and I didn’t want to take a chance of running out completely, in case I don’t make it to the feed store soon enough.
The canned cat food was on sale, so I got enough to last us for a few more days of cat soup.
My husband requested nacho fixings, without the cheese. 😄 The chips were on sale, so I got four bags for him – but forgot to get olives. Oops. I did grab some more of the sour candies for him, though. I also got a giant bag of potato chips for the girls.
There was a good sale on BBQ sauces, so I got a couple of bottles. Flats of 30 eggs were also on sale, so I got one of those instead of the 18’s I got last time, which were no longer on sale. The girls requested some oat milk.
They had bagged avocados on sale, so I got two of them. We really enjoy avocados, but they have gotten so insanely expensive. There are 5 to a bag, which worked out to 60¢ each. These days, they are usually more than $2.50 each.
They also had hoagies on sale, so I got a couple of packages, along with another locally produced sausage ring. As a treat, I also picked up some smoked Gouda.
Last of all, I could a couple of loaves of rye bread that was also on sale, plus a package of “imperfect” chocolate pieces as a treat for myself.
All of that, except for the bag of dry kibble and the flat of eggs, easily fit into only two hard sided bags. Twenty nine items in total.
I could have had $30 taken off with my loyalty points, but I’m saving that for another time.
As I was loading things into the back of the truck, it started to rain! I’m glad I didn’t try for a Walmart trip. The roads would have been icing over by the time I was driving home.
After we unloaded the truck, I emptied the bag of kibble into the bin for the outside cats, then fed them before trying to move the truck out of the yard. They went absolutely nuts over the kibble! I think they were getting pretty tired of the feed store kibble.
We almost got an extra indoor cat again. While bringing things to the door for my daughter to grab, I stopped to tell her something and left the door open for a split second too long. Sir Robin made a run for it! We got him out quickly, but that cat wants to be an indoor cat, so badly!
Once all unloaded and the cats fed and watered, I could safely move the truck out of the yard. The cats were far more interested in the new food than going under the truck!
At this point, I will need to decide what sort of trip to the city I’ll be making at all. We still need to do a proper stock up trip of bulk items. So at least a Costco trip.
I don’t know if I’ll be doing that tomorrow, or on the weekend. It depend on whether my husband is physically up to getting to the lab tomorrow morning, for his blood work. Tomorrow is Friday. If I go on Saturday, it will be after we do a much needed dump run. We can’t even get rid of my mother’s mattress and box spring yet; there’s no room for those, plus our regular garbage and recycling, in the back of the truck. Plus, the mattress and box spring are longer than the truck box, so they’ll need to be strapped down with the tail gate open. That will need to be done on another day.
The main thing is, I no longer have to worry about the truck starting to scream at me because of a faulty oil sensor!
I did get messages back from the garage about the truck, but nothing about coming in. I’m not sure the problem is the sensor, after finding some oil on the ground in the garage yesterday. It was a while before I went out to move it today, so that I could check the oil levels, and see if there were any new oil stains under it.
There was. Just a couple of drops.
*sigh*
Oil levels were fine. I’m going to have to take a chance, though, and at least make a trip to the nearest Walmart. We’ve used the last of our canned cat food today, and the dry kibble is starting to get low, too.
It was a nice enough day that, after checking on the truck, I stayed out to clear some of the paths that got filled with drifted snow, after two days of high winds. Happily, the plows have gone by, so the roads will be clear. Things are supposed to keep warming up over the next few days, which is going to be quite a relief.
Of course, that makes me think of gardening!
The peppers and eggplant seeds that are set to pre-germinate aren’t showing any radicals yet, nor to I expect them to, this soon. Next on the list was things like tomatoes and herbs, but after watching the above video, I will just be doing the herbs, first. I sorted seeds I’ll be starting by how many weeks before last frost the packages recommend starting them. In theory, I could start the tomatoes in April.
I just really, really want to start more seeds! 😄
I realized it’s been a while since I updated about the onions. All four snail rolls now have seedlings.
They’re tall enough now that I raised the light a bit today. Should they get big enough to need “potting up”, they can be unrolled, more seed starting mix added, then rolled back up again. I made sure to leave enough excess length of the packing foam to accommodate extra width.
Just a little green growth to sooth the gardening soul, as winter drags on!
Before heading to the garage, I backed the truck up to check the oil levels. They were fine, but there was fresh oil drops in the dirt floor under where it was parked for the night. During the drive in, it was the same as yesterday. The pressure gauge started off in the normal range, then slowly dropped during the drive in.
I dropped the truck off at the garage, then walked over to the hospital to visit with my mother. She was doing better today, thankfully. She was able to move around without the screaming and yelling in pain.
The irony of this is that she complained about the noise the other patients and staff were making. Hospitals should be quiet, because sick people need quiet.
I talked to her about making sure to accept painkillers regularly, BEFORE the pain gets bad. She can ask for more and, if it’s an issue, they might schedule her for painkillers more often or something.
I think she would prefer to yell and scream, to be honest. I don’t want to make light of her pain. Lord knows, I can empathize with it a great deal. It’s more about her behaviour over it, and refusal to actually do what she should be doing for it, while expecting some doctor (not a black one) to fix what can’t be fixed.
I got there just as her lunch tray was about to be delivered. My mother was in her favourite corner chair, with the bedside table already in front of her, ready and waiting. As the woman dropped off the tray, she asked conversationally, your daughter is visiting? My mother, however, was just staring up at her, and didn’t seem to hear. I acknowledged that I was her daughter, but said I didn’t think my mother heard her. She went on to put a tea bag in the hot water for my mother, then asked if she needed help with the sugar packet. My mother was still just staring at her. Glaring, really.
The woman looked to be Vietnamese, which would be why my mother was staring and not answering.
I told her I would help if my mother needed it, and made sure to thank her as she left.
Once she was gone, my mother started behaving normally.
*sigh*
The lunch looked delicious. She had a slice of mushroom and pepperoni pizza, Caesar salad, vegetable soup with a packet of crackers and a bowl of canned fruit salad for desert, along with her tea. My mom said it was the first time she got pizza. It smelled awesome, and my mother polished it all off. The quality of the food is one thing my mother does not quite complain about, though she did say something about how they never give her bread (pizza crust doesn’t count). To my mother, bread should be part of every meal! 😁 She is happy with the food, though.
We had a pretty good talk. No really weird stuff. I got some messages from my sister, who was still at my mother’s place, it turned out. Then I got a message from my brother saying that my sister should keep the keys she has and lock up the apartment, rather than leaving them there, so I passed that message on.
That turned out to be a really good thing.
One of the things I’d left in case my sister wanted them was a set of dishes she had bought for my mother, but she said I could take them, as she won’t use them. We have so many dishes of our own, but they can join the other items we now have stored in a shelf in the root cellar, until we can figure out what to do with them.
I told my mother I planned to go to her apartment after I got the truck back, and she asked, to finish taking everything? I just had to laugh. I told her, you have no idea how much you have! I certainly can’t move her furniture by myself.
Some of the conversation was typically odd with my mother. She was wondering why I was back to visit, two days in a row, and I explained about the truck, and how our mechanic was going to get it done in between other appointments. Somehow, that got around to her talking about how garages take advantage of women (because, apparently, only women take their vehicles to a garage, and men all fix their vehicles themselves. She truly believes men are born knowing how to fix cares. She literally has said that to me!), and how it’s all moneymoneymoney.
I told her, people do need to be paid for their work! She seems to think everyone should be doing things for free – except her, of course. She wants to be paid back $10 for the extra keys she had copied, before turning them over to public housing when her rental agreement is done.
When I told her I wasn’t going to be charged for the work being done today, because it’s under warranty, she changed the subject.
I refilled the thermos travel cup I’d brought for her, and she said she was very happy to have that hot water. She isn’t even doing her half water, half milk thing. She just prefers to drink warm water, and adds it to the water from the pitcher they leave with her. As I was setting up the cup, plus a few other things for her, like refilling her crackers bowl, she started saying how I couldn’t understand the troubles she’s having, with her mobility. When I’m 90, I’ll understand!
I told her, I do understand. I have many of the same problems. She said this as I was reaching to set her bowl of crackers back on the window sill within her reach, and could barely do it because my elbow was giving out. I ended up telling her about falling and hurting myself, twice, last year, and how I still can’t put weight on my right knee, because that’s the one that landed on concrete. She asked what happened, and I told her about coming in from shoveling and my glasses frosting over while I hung the snow shovel up in the sun room, so I couldn’t see and tripped over something.
Her immediate response?
Why was I the one shoveling snow?
…
So… It’s my fault I got hurt, because the girls should have been shoveling snow, not me.
Got it.
I told her, I LIKE shoveling snow, but the girls do it, too, if I can’t. I just happened to be the one doing it that day.
The other odd thing was something I later called the nursing station back to warn them about.
My mother needed to go to the washroom, and was able to get herself there on her own, using the walker – I offered to help her with the hospital’s wheelchair, and she said no. Then she asked me to get a second garbage can set up with a bag. I was setting it under the bathroom sink, when I found out what she wanted to for.
To pee in.
There’s a commode, but it’s being stored in the washroom right now. She said, they want her to get up and walk around to use the toilet (I explained about the necessity of movement to help with her OA, which got a glare), but she didn’t want to use the commode. It had been beside her bed, but she claimed they forget about it and didn’t change it after it gets used. So instead, if she needs to go during the night, she planned to use the garbage can.
Well… at least it isn’t an ice cream pail, like she had been doing at home, until we got a commode for her!
I told her, don’t do that! Her response was, do you want me to pee on the floor?
*sigh*
Even with the odd stuff, it was a good and fairly quiet visit. When someone came for her food tray – a white person, so my mother was willing to talk to her – my mother started complaining about the noise. The nurse was good at deflecting!
My mother was soon ready to lie down for a nap – rejecting my offer to help her get into bed – and I headed out. After the wonderful smells of my mother’s lunch, I was really hungry! My husband had messaged me that he needed more needles at the pharmacy, so I headed in that direction and ended up stopping at the Dairy Queen for lunch this time. I had a store to stop in as well, but that was directly across the street from the pharmacy, which was handy. Once done at the pharmacy, I headed back to the garage, figuring they might be done by then.
When I got to the parking lot, I saw the truck in the lot, with the engine running. They had just finished it, and was running it to check on things. Outdoors, rather than the closed garage!
When the mechanic was free, he told me it was looking good. The leak was fixed with the highest quality seal available – he still doesn’t understand why it started leaking again. I got instructions to keep an eye on the gauge, check for fresh leaks under the truck, and check the oil levels. The oil level right now is fine, and everything seems to be running smoothly.
When I got in the truck, though, the needle on the gauge was even lower than before.
It obviously wasn’t something he felt was a concern, but I don’t like it!
My next stop was my mother’s apartment, but I needed to get gas, first. So I drove to a gas station that was on my usual route towards home. I figured, if I shut the engine off for a while, the gauge might reset itself.
It didn’t.
On the plus side, it wasn’t dropping, either. It was really steady. The only time the needle almost reached that first line above zero was when I decided to test things and gunned it to 110kph. As soon as I returned to the speed limit, down it dropped to the same level and stayed there.
With the route I was taking, I could drive to the highway closer to us, then decide if I’d be turning towards my mother’s apartment, or heading home.
Thanks to knowing my mother’s apartment would be safely locked up, I headed home.
As soon as I was stopped, I got the picture to send to our mechanic. I then went into the garage to brush aside the oil stains in the dirt floor, so we could tell if there were any new drips, before parking. Once inside, I sent the picture to our mechanic, describing what I was seeing (and what was different), though I don’t expect to hear from him necessarily today. He was so swamped, even with two other mechanics in today.
I also updated my siblings.
Now, I’ve driven with that oil gauge at zero for quite some time. When we were having MAF issues, the oil sensor also got replaced. So this is still a new sensor. It shouldn’t be misreading. Yet, he could find no other problem that might cause the sensor to be reading low oil pressure. For all I know, the sensor is reading “normal”, but the needle is simply stuck at the wrong spot.
My brother will be out here tomorrow to dig out his own truck, so I will follow them with my truck to my mother’s place, and help bring things here. The truck should be fine. My brain knows that – but I am so bloody paranoid about it, I don’t want to make the drive on my own in case something happens along the way. We depend on it so much!
This is where I remember my mother was promising to buy us a car back in the summer, but apparently my sister talked her out of it. Granted, my mother thought she had enough money to buy a new car, with zero understanding of how expensive new cars are right now. With my mother’s habit of promising things, then backing out at the last minute, none of us expected her to actually do it. Still, it does… frustrate.
Hopefully, all will work out with the truck tomorrow. I’ll be a lot more comfortable driving it with my brother nearby.
The thing is, with all this stuff going on, we still need to go our stock up shopping trips to the city, a trip to the dump, a trip to the feed store, etc. Thankfully, we have enough kibble to last another week, for both indoor and outdoor cats, but we’re almost out of wet cat food for the indoor cats. Even without having to get my mother’s apartment emptied, this is the time of the month when we do most of our driving.
This truck is certainly not the first vehicle we’ve own that’s been like this, but for having it for only 2 years, there has been a lot!
When I first checked, before 8am, it was still -32/-26F, with no wind chill. Almost an hour later, the temperature hadn’t changed, but the wind chill dropped to -37C/-35F
I waited until later than usual to head outside, partly so the yard cats wouldn’t be disturbed and start running around in this cold. I worry about the littles! I also wanted to text the garage. I mentioned how cold it was, and that I was okay with coming in, in the afternoon, and that I would see if the truck would start.
Then I headed out. After topping up the kibble bowls in the sun room, I stepped outside and immediately saw something wrong.
Across the yard, where I’d shoveled the turn around area for the truck, there was something dark that wasn’t there before.
Yes, it turned out to be a frozen cat. A large adult tabby. I could tell it was male, but there was too much frost to identify it. I think it might be Larence, though. Either that, or that big tom that’s been visiting.
For the rest of the time I took care of the food and water, I was watching all the cats to see who was missing. That doesn’t actually tell me much, since they don’t all show up at the same time when the food it put out.
Once the cats were fed and watered, I grabbed the snow shovel to move the remains. Normally, with the ground frozen, I would put the remains in the branch pile for later cremation, but we can’t access it right now. I had to leave it in the spruce grove, as far as I could get into it.
Damn.
All that bitter cold we had, without finding any losses until today. Last night should be last night with lows of -30C/-22F or below for this winter. One last night, and he didn’t make it.
We have so many shelters, I don’t know why he was out there, in the yard yet far from the house. I can make guesses, though. One is, it looked like he’d just taken a dump, though we have litter boxes in the sun room and isolation shelter available. The other is, we’ve been hearing more cat fights lately, and other cats may have driven him out. Still, we have so many shelters, plus the ferals have other hidden shelters somewhere in the outer yard. They can get into the pump shack, the barn, etc. So many places he could have stayed warm.
*sigh*
Once that sad duty was taken care of, I went and started the truck. It didn’t like it, but it did start and seemed to be running okay. I can’t tell if any oil has leaked under it until I move it out far enough to access the hood and check the oil levels. As I came in, I found Fluffy, pretty posing for me.
The long haired cats, at least, have lots of insulation!
When I got inside, I found a response from the garage. He laughed about my wanting to wait until things warmed up before coming in. He said he was swamped this morning, anyhow and to touch base in the afternoon.
By this time, it was already warming up. As I write this, it’s coming up on 11, and we’re at -26C/-15F.
Last night, I was messaging with my sister about how to get my mother’s keys. In the end, she suggested she go to my mother’s apartment this morning – she might have already come and gone by now – and take more things, then leave the keys there. That means leaving it unlocked, so I HAVE to go to my mother’s apartment today to get the keys and lock up, as well as take more things here to the farm.
So I messaged the garage back suggesting I drop the truck off around noon or shortly after, then go visit my mother at the hospital, adding that I needed to go to her apartment. It can be later, but I have to get there today. I don’t know if he’s seen the message, yet, if he’s so busy, but I need to get the truck fixed. I’ve got too much driving to do over the next few days.
Which means that, in a little while, I’ll be heading back outside to move the truck, check the oil levels, top it up if I have to, then head into town.
Hopefully, he’ll be able to squeeze me in fairly quickly. We shall see. At least the day is warming up fairly quickly!
I look forward to the time of year when we no longer consider anything higher than -20C/-4F as “warm”.
Today was my day to bring the truck in to the garage to see what was going on with my oil pressure. I was sure there was a new leak somewhere.
I’m so glad I did.
While unplugging the block heater, I made sure to look under the truck, but could see no soil of oil leaking. That doesn’t mean much, though. When we had major issues before that turned out to be a leaking oil line seal, we never saw any sign of a leak under the truck. I got that fixed and our pre-winter oil change at the same time, so this was just a few months ago. It had been fine since then.
While driving back from my mother’s apartment a couple of days ago, I noted the check engine light had turned off. This morning, it turned back on again, less than a mile from home. The code for that is not something essential, and related to the cold. The more relevant thing was that, in the 20 or so minutes it takes to drive to town, I was watching that oil pressure gauge slowly dropping.
I dropped the truck off a bit early. The owner was there on his own today, and the bays were all full, so I figured it might be a while. I updated him on what I was seeing on the way here, then dropped off the keys.
I’ve been messaging with my sister regarding my mother. Yesterday, after visiting at the hospital, she was able to go to the apartment and take the things she was supposed to grab for her place. We were trying to figure out how to get my mother’s keys back, though. While we were chatting, she mentioned my mother was out of crackers. Since it was warm enough (-21C/-6F), and the grocery store was along the way, I picked a box up for her, then walked to the hospital to visit.
My mother was happy to see me, for the most part. Glad that I brought her crackers. She was in bed and, when I asked how she was doing, she said she was in a lot of pain. Then started saying, since my brother and I are so smart, maybe we could find her a good doctor that knows what to do about it.
*sigh*
I had to explain to her, she has osteoarthritis. There really isn’t anything that can be done, other than taking pain killers. Apparently, a nurse told her that her mother gets injections every three months for her hip pain. I said yes, that works for some people, but that requires a referral to a specialist (like the sports injury clinic I was referred to) in the city, because nowhere else does those injections. That would then require getting her transported for the appointment in the city. I explained about my own OA, and my husband’s back injury and his pain levels. He’s on the strongest painkillers available, and highest doses, and his pain levels are barely affected. In her case, all she can really do is take those painkillers, because there’s no fix to her condition.
Not long after, a nurse came by to check on my mother, asking if she needed help with pain. She told him no, she was okay. I asked if she was sure, since she was just telling me about how much pain she was in, and she said yes. After he was gone (she made sure to wait until her door was closed), she told me she’d just taken 12 pills that morning, and she didn’t want to take more. Her painkillers were scheduled for 2:00, so she would wait.
It was 10:20. I asked again, was she sure? It would be almost 4 hours of a wait. She insisted. She wanted to give all those other pills time to work.
She gets her meds at 9am.
Okay. If she didn’t want to take them, we can’t force her.
The rest of the visit was a mix of good and strange and, is it time for me to leave now? I was able to distract her away from her usual rants, for the most part, at least. She asked about what was being done with her apartment (and why doesn’t my brother phone her? never mind they visited, not that long ago), and I filled her in. Then she started giving instructions on what to do for things, even though she had no idea about the process, like how to get the commode returned. She also insisted that we not give public housing the extra keys she had cut for my brother and I, unless they are willing to pay her “back” her $10. I pointed out that we would have no use for keys for an apartment she doesn’t live in. Oh, we can label them and hang them somewhere. Why? Well, maybe if someone moves into her apartment. How would we even know about that? She had no answer, but she really didn’t want us to turn over those keys unless she got paid back for them.
She also went on a rant about how the hospital staff just doesn’t care. The doctor never comes to see her (she is officially no longer a patient, but a long term care resident, now that she’s been approved for a personal care home), etc. Also, people are in the hallways, talking and laughing, and they shouldn’t be doing that.
*sigh*
After visiting for quite a while, as I was getting ready to leave, about to put my coat on, she finally mentioned she got another visit from our vandal. So I went back and sat down, asking her questions about how that went. She said he was behaving, at least, but when I asked when he visited, she couldn’t remember. I asked if it was the same day as my sister’s visit (yesterday) and she looked confused and said she couldn’t remember. So I don’t know if this was actually a new visit, or if she was referring to the same visit from our vandal she told me about, the last time I visited her. At least now the hospital has a picture of him on file, so they can recognize him as someone to watch out for. They can’t stop him from visiting, but they can make sure he doesn’t have a chance to start verbally abusing her again.
By this time in the visit, my mother had moved from lying in bed to sitting at the side of her bed. She then wanted to get up and move to her favourite chair. As soon as she started trying to stand up, though, she started yelling and screaming in pain! I tried to help her and she was able to stand up to the walker the hospital provided. She said she needed to go to the washroom, but only managed to transfer herself to the chair I’d just vacated. I kept asking her if she wanted me to get a nurse to help, but she wouldn’t answer. Finally, once she was seated, but couldn’t stand up again, I told her I was getting help.
I found the nurse that had come by earlier, just finishing up with a patient in another room nearby, so I asked him for help, telling him about my mother’s pain and that she was wanting to get to the bathroom. I added that, while my mother had just refused painkillers not long ago, she will probably need some, and he agreed. He started following me, as I rushed ahead to let my mother know help was coming.
As I got to her, she started telling me, she thinks the hospital is giving her medications to cause this pain.
Which is when the nurse came in behind me. He started bringing the wheelchair over so he could help her get to the washroom, when she started taking to him that she thinks they are giving her the wrong medications, and that’s why she is in so much pain. From the resigned body language, I get the impression he’s had issues with my mother. Being both a male nurse (to my mother, nurses should be female, doctors should be male) and Asian, it’s likely she has been less than kind to him! He told her, they can’t give her the wrong medications because, if they did, they would lose their license.
I don’t know if she really heard that, though I know it would have made no difference if she did, but she went back to screaming and yelling in pain, trying to transfer to the wheelchair. They’re going to have to get the chair she was in, cleaned. 😢
He wheeled her to the washroom, so I got myself out of the way, grabbing my things and heading out- making sure to thank the nurse for helping my mother as I left! She was already making things hard for him.
*sigh*
Before I left, I took the time to update my family about how things went, then headed out. It was getting close to lunch time by then, and there’s a Chinese restaurant in the motel next to the garage, so I headed for there. I took a quick look at the garage parking lot and couldn’t see the truck anywhere, so it was at least in the garage by then.
After I had my lunch and headed back to the garage, I still couldn’t see the truck, so I was surprised when I didn’t see it in the garage, either.
The owner was on the phone in the office when I got there, so he was soon able to update me.
He found the leak, in exactly the same place as before – except worse! He was really surprised by how much oil had leaked. It even leaked onto the floor of the vehicle bay, which it didn’t do the last time it was worked on.
We talked about it for a bit, and he has no idea why this new seal is leaking. Perhaps a defective part? He ordered me a new one, this time going with a higher end brand, just in case.
It will be covered by warranty, too, so that helps!
When he mentioned that it was leaking enough to drip onto his floor, I told him, I saw no signs of leaked oil under our truck. Which means it got worse, just during the drive in, today! I asked him if it was possible that it got damaged when I tried to start it while it was frozen (thinking of those noises I heard when I did). He was very doubtful. Still, we had had no signs of a problem until after that deep freeze. Granted, with having to pull the truck all the way into the garage so we could close the door, I couldn’t access the front to open the hood and check the oil levels. So I can’t say with 100% certainty that it hadn’t started leaking earlier. The only evidence of there being a problem was that oil pressure gauge suddenly dropping, two days ago, while I was driving to my mother’s apartment.
We are both perplexed.
The part he ordered will arrive tomorrow morning. He told me to text him in the morning about coming in. He is fully booked tomorrow, but he’ll have a couple of other guys in, and he will squeeze my truck somewhere in there. I asked him if he topped up the oil level, and he told me he didn’t have to. It seems that I over filled it with my last addition when I got home from my mother’s apartment! He did instruct me to check the oil level again, before coming back tomorrow, in case I needed to add more. That’s how bad the leak was!
When it was time to go, I had to ask him where the truck was.
He checked his cameras…
… then went out to move the ambulance waiting to be worked on out of the way, so I could back out and leave. 😄 No wonder I couldn’t see it!
Once I was clear, I stopped just long enough to let my family know I was on the way home.
Then watched the oil gauge slowly dropping again during the entire drive.
I am so glad I got that checked before doing any major driving around. Especially before doing our first city stock up shop!!!
Before pulling into the garage, I stopped to double check, confirming that there was zero sign of any oil leak visible on the dirt floor.
Once I was home, I updated the family in more detail, then updated my siblings. In talking keys with my sister, and my hopes of getting to my mother’s apartment tomorrow, she told me she could meet me there in the morning, but only for a short time. Now that I know I’ll be back at the garage tomorrow, I suggested she leave them with my mother tomorrow morning. That is likely the best way to get them to my brother, who is dealing with public housing in regards to my mother’s rental agreement.
At that point, it was only just past 1pm, and the weather was so nice (-18C/0F), I wanted to take advantage of it and headed back outside to do some shoveling. I needed to clear the drifts blocking part of our turnaround space in the yard, as well as a couple of paths that were blocked in places with drifts. I was out there for a couple of hours.
Gosh, did it feel good!
I’ll have to be extra diligent with the meds tonight, though, or I’ll be barely able to walk, tomorrow!
By the time I was finished, it was time to feed the outside cats.
They were enjoying the lovely weather, too! Especially this bunch.
I am so glad we had that old catio roof panel to scavenge as a wall for the shelf shelter! It makes for a lovely greenhouse effect, and they can see out at the same time. There are at least 9 cats in that photo! Plus I think one ran out when I went by to put away the shovel in the sun room.
That done, I finally headed inside for the day – and a lovely supper featuring bacon wrapped pork tenderloin, my daughters made.
Today was quite pleasant, but we are supposed to drop to -30C/-22F tonight. If the long range forecasts are at all accurate, we won’t get that cold again for the rest of the winter. Tomorrow’s high, however, is supposed to be sunny and almost as warm as today, so I expect I will do the walk to the hospital after dropping off the truck and be able to visit my mother again.
I can’t believe we’re at the end of January already.
Hopefully, she will have accepted the offered painkillers and will be doing better. For someone who complains so much about her pain levels, she is so unwilling to actually accept the only thing that can really make a difference. Yet very willing to expect some magical doctor somewhere (a white male, of course) to magically fix something that has no fix, while at the same time convincing herself that the people taking care of her are deliberately causing her pain.
If all goes well, my truck will be worked on and finished early enough that I can still get to my mother’s apartment and bring some things back with me. I especially want to get that wheelchair, as the hospital asked me to bring it in a while ago. Then on Saturday, I plan to be back with my brother and SIL as we take the last of everything out, and try to find somewhere to store them here at the farm.
After all that, I should FINALLY be able to do our stock up shopping in the city!
We are still getting hit with the polar vortex. We’re not getting the storms hitting parts of the US, but as I write this, we’ve warmed up to -27C/-17F with a wind chill of -29C/-20F. We’re staying indoors as much as possible, and avoiding going out anywhere.
Which is frustrating, but I’ll get to the why of that, later.
First, the inspiration! This video showed up in my YouTube feed. I’ve never seen this channel before. Looks very informative.
We are fortunate to have the luxury of space in our garden – space that will be utilized for accessibility and mobility – but this video covers a lot of what we are planning on, including chickens and our food forest (in this video, it’s an orchard). Fencing the entire garden is not really an option for us, given just how big it is, and how many trees there are. Cattle panels are not an option, either. I keep hearing about how cheap they are, but maybe that’s a US thing, because every place I’ve looked, they are ridiculously expensive. I’ve had stucco wire recommended by my cousin. Those are a lot more affordable, but obviously, not as heavy duty.
I’ve been wanting to have chickens for quite a few years now, and intended to build a portable coop large enough for at least a dozen chickens. That just hasn’t been happening, for a variety of reasons. So we’re breaking down and are going to try to buy a small chicken coop, with an enclosed run, on a payment plan. It’ll only fit up to 6 chickens, which would be enough to keep us in eggs a bit. That can tide us over until we can build something larger and house meat birds, too.
All in good time.
Now for the updates.
My brother got a call yesterday.
My mother’s panel for a personal care home has been approved!
That was waaaaayyy faster than I expected! They must really need her room. 😁
It does mean that she is no longer covered by our health care system, and is being charged by the day as a long term care client, rather than a patient. Meanwhile, they will find a bed for her in a temporary long term care facility and transfer her, once that happens. I expect that to go relatively quickly, too, if only because they need to free up the room she’s in.
My brother has already cancelled my mother’s cable, and today he’s gone over to pack up the cable box to send back to the company, before going to the hospital. He found a fairly recent photo of our vandal to include on her file, so that staff know who to look out for, and wanted to get that over as quickly as possible.
Now we need to focus on clearing out my mother’s apartment – but don’t throw anything away!!
She is so attached to her material goods, even to the point that she wants to control what happens to some of them to the next generation. She doesn’t actually have anything of value, really, other than in her own mind, or sentimental value – and by sentimental value, I mean for me and my siblings, mostly, because she doesn’t seem to actually have sentimental attachment to anything. She quite happily destroyed things that belonged to both my late father and my late aunt.
I need to get to my mother’s apartment and start packing and cleaning, bit by bit.
Hence the frustration.
I intended to start this some time ago, but with the cold, and now the check engine light turning on again with the truck, I have been leery of going anywhere. We only have one vehicle, and if that breaks down, we are in serious trouble.
*sigh*
I just checked the temperatures again, and it’s actually gotten colder instead of warmer. It’s still a few hours before we’re supposed to reach the high of our day.
Tomorrow is looking to be less severe, though, so I might try to head over then. After tomorrow, the extreme polar vortex temperatures should be over, and we’ll just be dealing with normal cold again, and I should be able to head over regularly.
I don’t expect we’ll have it empty by the end of the month, but we might. It’s the bigger furniture that’s going to be an issue. The loveseat she has, which matched the sofa that’s still here on the farm, is broken, though not badly. It will likely be thrown out. The mattress and box spring will have to be thrown out, of course. The rest…
*sigh*
She crammed so much into that little apartment.
My brother and SIL assured me, we’ll figure it out.
At least I won’t have to worry about all my mother’s papers, pictures and basically anything fabric. That’s my sister’s problem. We will be dealing with her kitchen supplies, nic nacs and furniture. My brother and SIL can’t really take anything, other than the papers my brother needs to take care of my mother’s affairs as PoA. I doubt they’ve even finished unpacking themselves. Where they are now is meant to be temporary, as they’ve gotten on a list for a privately run supportive living apartment in a complex that was still under construction when they sold their acreage. The waiting list was already years long but, once there’s an opening, they need to be able to move quickly.
The plow went by, increasing the snow ridge at the end of the driveway. It really wasn’t that bad and we could have driven through. The problem is, between the plow ridges and the driving, the end of the driveway was getting narrower and narrower. I needed to get that opened up, before the next polar vortex hits.
I love that ice scraper. It does a bang up job of cutting through hard packed plow ridge snow!
Technically, today was warmer, and there was less wind, but even a slight breeze brought was was -20C/-4F to a “real feel” of -31C/-24F. I was well bundled but, by the end of it, my toes and finger tips were starting to feel it!
While I was out there, my mother called from the hospital. I didn’t see my daughter’s message until I was putting things away, almost an hour later. My mother apparently sounded frustrated.
So when I called back, I made sure to talk to the nurse, first. I found out that she has been refusing her afternoon pain meds. Because she’s been in so much pain with her back, and the Voltaren wasn’t enough anymore, they now have she scheduled to take painkillers 3 times a day, instead of “as needed”. She’s apparently been having better days and saying no to the pills.
When talking to her about it later, she told me, she’s taking so many pills! Which makes it sound like it isn’t that she’s in less pain, but that she just doesn’t want to take another pill.
*sigh*
I asked the nurse about my mother getting Xrays, but she could find nothing on the file about it. She made notes to talk to the doctor about it. I also brought up that we need to have a meeting with the doctor, so she made notes for someone that can check his schedule, and to call my brother to book a time. My schedule is flexible, so I can work around his.
Then I got transferred to my mother’s room.
*sigh*
She was shouting right from her “hello”. It actually hurt my ears. When I asked her why she was shouting, it was “so you can hear me.”
Yeah, Mom. I can hear you. So can everyone outside your door and down the hall!
No, I didn’t say that out loud.
She then starting complaining. No one is calling. No one is visiting. No one cares (she includes the hospital staff on that). Why doesn’t my brother call or visit?
So I told her about his going to her place to replace the window from the AC set up, then about the woman who fell. She actually knows the woman, as she often does the Gospel readings in church. When I told her about the fall and my brother taking her to the hospital, she only wanted to know, which hospital. I told her, and she started saying, she has children, why did my brother drive her. Her (adult) children weren’t there (I think they live in the city!). Even when I told her, my brother probably saved her life, because if he hadn’t seen her, there was a good chance she would have frozen to death before anyone got to her.
She didn’t care.
She also didn’t have any appreciation for my brother going out to her apartment in the severe cold, getting the window done, helping a neighbour, and still driving her to the farm to drop off the AC, in the dark.
Instead, she kept complaining about how no one calls or visits her. I finally told her that, right then, she was making me regret calling her back, and called her out on how nasty she was being.
She – sarcastically – thanked me for being open with her.
*sigh*
After that, the call was better. She did complain that money was probably taken from her bank account for her apartment. I told her that she IS still renting it. All her things are still there. Of course she has to pay for it. That got us to talking about her things and what she wants done with them.
Don’t throw anything away, she keeps saying.
We’ve got an entire building filled with personal belongings we packed from this house – a building we could really use as the workshop it used to be – that she insists we don’t throw away. Now, we’ll have more, and we’ve already run out of storage space.
Then she demanded I tell her what I planned to do with a particular mirror she’s had stuck in her storage closet for the past 10 years. Something she gets obsessed about, every now and then. I finally had to tell her, don’t worry about it. We’ll take care of it.
Then she started going on about how, really, my sister should be taking care of her more, she and her husband are both on pension, she doesn’t need to be working, she should be taking care of Mom.
I’m sure my sister has been nagged about that a few times, already!
I was eventually able to get a word in – right after she told me, she wants to get out of there! – and told her, I think her problem is, she’s bored. She’s there by herself, with nothing to do, and she’s bored. We talked about it a bit, and she agreed. She is bored and lonely! Which, I told her, is completely understandable!
Well, this post got interrupted by a call from my brother.
We have a meeting booked with the doctor. They got us in as quickly as they could, and it’s an evening meeting, so that works for my brother. It was noted that, since we are dealing with cognitive issues with my mother, she won’t be there, and won’t even be told about it. Our concern was that, if she knew in advance, she’d end up telling our vandal about it, and he could cause problems.
It sucks having to even consider these things.
As for me, I am done for the day. I’m glad I got the end of the driveway cleared, but I’m really going to be paying for it, tonight, even with my meds!
I have to admit, though, I did quite enjoy the shoveling!
Almost. They moved before I could get my phone out to take a picture. When I first came in, Grommet’s chest was plastered against the window screen, with Stinky plastered over top of him. Enjoying the warm air coming from the bathroom! We keep the bathroom door closes, so none of the inside cats come in, so it doesn’t affect our thermostat. The window gets opened when someone is in the shower, to let moisture out, since the ceiling fan stopped working. Again.
They want in. 😄
My first order of business today was to go to my mother’s apartment and check on things. As I was doing the morning routine, though, it was still so incredibly slippery. I knew the roads wouldn’t be as bad, but just walking around the yard was insanely dangerous. I ended up grabbing a bucket and a spade and collecting ashes from the fire pit. There wasn’t enough to do all the paths, but I was able to scatter ashes on the main ones, including to the garage door. What a difference that made!
Happily, the roads were well plowed and nowhere near as icy, and the highway was mostly clear. What wasn’t was wet, rather than icy. We exceeded our predicted high and reached 3C/37F, though the town my mother’s apartment is in was a bit warmer, and the town the hospital is in reached 5C/41F, according to one of the announcement signs I passed while on my way home!
I hadn’t had breakfast before I left and by the time I got to my mother’s town, it was lunch time, so I paused to pick up some fried chicken and wedges at our favourite gas station, and took it to my mother’s to eat.
When I got there, I found a message from my daughter. She had been in the shower when my mother phoned, and she could actually hear her shouting to the answering machine. She was asking where I was, sounding very angry and out of breath.
So I immediately called the hospital to talk to someone at the nursing station. I told her I was at my mother’s apartment, but my mother had called our home, yelling at the answering machine and sounding out of breath. Before I had a chance to say I was going to be there later, she said she would check on my mother right away and ended the call. I was good with that!
I started to eat my breakfast when I got another message from my daughter. My mother had called again. My daughter wasn’t near a phone so it went to machine again, and she could hear my mother demanding to know where I was, and that it was an emergency.
!!!
After that call, my daughter told me she was going to keep a handset close by, so she could answer before it went to the answering machine. Thankfully, it turned out to be unnecessary.
I called the hospital back.
When I got the nurse again, it seems she heard my mother making that call, and saying it was an emergency.
There was no emergency.
My mother tried to say, oh, it was just to my daughter. The nurse told me she explained to her that when you say “emergency” it can mean very different things.
What she wanted was for me to visit.
*sigh*
I’ve since listened to both messages. They were both very short, and wow, did she sound furious!
I told her that I was checking on my mother’s apartment in another town at the time, but that I would be visiting her in the afternoon, with a few errands in between, and she promised she would let my mother know this.
After that, I could finally finish eating!
I then packed up a few things, mostly canned goods, and shifted things from her freezer to the fridge before setting it as low as it could go. I’ll come back soon to clean out the jars of frozen stuff (I can’t quite tell what some of them are). After that, the fridge can be shut off entirely and cleaned.
I took care of a few more little things before heading out. My next stop was the hardware store, looking for some Roof Melt, but they didn’t have any. Then I drove to the next town to visit my mother in the hospital.
When I got to her room, I was surprised to see her door wide open. There was quite a bit of bustle going on, with my mother in a wheelchair and some of her things packed up. They were in the process of moving her to another room!
My arrival paused things. They had been about to have my mother set up in the hallway while they cleared her room, but with me there, did I want to take her to the cafeteria, instead?
Which is when another nurse walked in and said, no.
??
My mother wasn’t going to be moved. They would move someone else.
The shuffling has to do with the size of the rooms. People like my mother, who are there for longer periods, get the “corner” rooms, as they are larger, and single beds. They were going to move my mother so that someone from a smaller room could be moved into hers, but decided to instead move the other patient to the room they were going to move my mother to. So my mother could stay where she was!
This hospital only has 8 extended care beds, and 4 “special care” beds. I think my mother is in an extended care bed.
So, that commotion done, I helped my mother transfer from the wheelchair to her favourite chair in the corner. She was clearly in a lot of pain.
Once everything was settled, I jokingly said, “so, I hear you’ve been difficult!”
I then told her that, when she had tried to call me, I was at her apartment, checking on things. I could see she was torn between happy that I was doing that, and angry that I wasn’t there when I called!
She chose angry.
For the next while, she ranted about how they are not taking care of her, they don’t care. She hasn’t seen a doctor. They don’t care. They see all these other patients, but not her. They don’t care. They say she’s been seen by doctors, but she has eyes and she hasn’t seen any doctors, the entire time she’s been there. They don’t care. They walk around in the hallways talking, instead of taking care of her. They don’t care.
She wants to leave.
She even said, she could go back to her apartment.
*sigh*
I totally understand that she wants to leave! She’s been there for about a month now. It took a while of explaining (you’re on their side! you always make excuses for them!) things like she can’t leave without a doctor discharging her. She can’t go back to her apartment, because she would have the same problem of not having help available when she needs it. No one knows where she is going next and yes, we are frustrated about that, too!
Thankfully, between that and a nurse coming in a couple of times to refresh her water, etc., my mother finally calmed down and we could talk normally.
One of the things she brings up is her pain. Apparently, she ran out of Voltaren, so she went into the hall with the empty tube, asking for more, but they aren’t using it on her (she’s now scheduled to have it applied twice a day). Someone finally took the empty tube and said they would get a new one, but they were running around tending to other patients, but not her.
…
I had to explain again, that she is actually doing really good. Her treatment right now is all the pills she’s taking (thirteen! Yes; they’ve added in her painkillers…), checking her vitals, etc. She asked, why are they weighing her all the time, so I explained that it’s to keep track of any changes. A sudden change in weight is a warning sign.
She was somewhat mollified.
As for her pain, I told her I would talk to the nursing station and see if they can get some Xrays done and see what’s going on. It’s probably arthritis, and there isn’t much they can do about that, but at least they would have a better idea of what’s going on. She was very happy at that suggestion.
Then I found out my sister had come by yesterday, which is her mid week day off. My sister never complains, I was told. And she’s never in a hurry, I was told.
*sigh*
My mother is so determined to drive wedges between us.
Then she told me our vandal visited yesterday.
Twice.
!!!!
It seems he was being treated yesterday, and he visited her before and after treatment. During one of them, he brought someone along. My mother wasn’t sure what they were, but it sounds like they were a therapist or counselor or something like that. He was, of course, on his best behaviour, and even asked her to sing some songs for him.
…
Red flags, all over the place.
Also, the doctors have apparently told him there is nothing more they can do for him. Which means his condition is terminal.
More red flags.
Based on past history with my late father, we’re going to have to be on the lookout that he doesn’t show up with a lawyer or something, and try to get Power of Attorney away from my brother. My mother would be very easily manipulated at this point.
Someone from the hospital, meanwhile, had called my brother last night and requested a copy of his PoA documents. I have copies of them, so I was able to bring them today. That, at least, has been taken care of.
Meanwhile, my mother talked about how our visits were “like medicine” and she felt so much better.
I’m not sure what she expects. She had visitors yesterday, but today she was calling us in a fury, demanding my presence? The only reason she told me about her visits yesterday was because I mentioned I had originally intended to visit yesterday, but the conditions were too slippery. I told her, now that she’s in town, I will be able to visit more often, but I don’t know when that would be exactly, from week to week. She told me, she would at least be happy with a phone call.
Then she started complaining that my calls weren’t getting through to her, and the nurse had to pass on messages. I explained to her that when I call, it’s to the nursing station, and they transfer me only when I ask them to. Since I was at her apartment, I had instead asked them to pass on the message, that I would be visiting.
I had to repeat it a few times, but I think she got it.
I’m happy to say that, when I left, it was on a good note. Very different from when I first arrived!
As promised, I stopped at the nursing station to pick up the documents, then talk about the possibility of getting X-rays for my mother. I mentioned that my mother still insists a doctor has never seen her. The nurse I was speaking to told me that she was with the main doctor when he saw her – this would be the one black doctor in the entire hospital that my mother doesn’t remember seeing. She did admit that it’s been a while since he’d seen her.
When I mentioned her pain, I was asked if my mother had been in any accidents, and I told them about her car accident, years ago, that is why one of her knees is currently bent sideways. As for her back and hip pain, it’s probably osteoarthritis. We talked about her current pain medication, which clearly isn’t cutting it anymore, and even the Voltaren doesn’t seem to be working as well anymore, either. The nurse promised to talk to the doctor about arranging X-rays, so they can have more information and determine any changes in her painkillers, at least. That’s about as much as they can do right now!
That done, I did the rest of my own errands before heading home. With how warm things got today, I knew the roads were going to get quite icy again.
If all goes well, I expect to be back at my mother’s apartment this weekend. Possibly with my brother, if he can squeeze out the time.
We’re going to need to get moving boxes or bins and packing material soon. We still don’t know where my mother is going but, with my brother’s availability, it would be good to get things mostly packed up before the end of the month.
We really need to get some idea of what’s happening next with my mother! All we know is “she’s not going home” – but until that’s official, there still is the possibility that they’ll discharge her to go back to her apartment.
The Re-Farmer 