Sundays on the Phone with Mom

My experiences in 3 months of rehab in the Payson (AZ) Care Center taught me a lot about accepting things I can't change. Things like not being free from pain, being able to move my body freely, being able to move about the building, being in a place with no family or friends whatsoever, or being able to leave that prison. I learned to adapt. When I got placed on a commode without being sure my call lights were in reach, I did'nt howl 'help me' like some residents would, because I knew the nurses and aides had become hardened to it. So: (tune: Camptown Races)

"I can't reach my call lights here, scuba, poobah,
I can't reach my call lights here, oh scuba day.
One's stuck in the can, (In the bathroom which I could not yet move myself into)
One's stuck on the left,
The third one's stuck in the middle of my bed,
Somebody help me please!"

After three repetitions help came. "Susan, you're fun-nee" said the aide. The nurses would ask me for prayer if it looked like a hard day was coming up. The only grouch I had in the room was the night nurse with the 2am bedpan, and once physical therapy proved to her that I could get out of bed without falling her mood improved immensely.

I was shocked when my mom got caught in the 'automatic' door at the Whitehall Shell/A&W/Long John Silver's and it broke her pelvis. Didn't she carry enough weight to cushion the blow? or to have her bones built up to avoid osteoporosis? This was the beginning of the end of her independent living - at age 70. She's in a wheelchair, walking hurts her back.

"Mom, it just kills me that you have to be in a home," I'd tell her. "Your mind is still there." Since I was in California, my youngest sister did the actual placement, and I'm sure she feels worse for having had to be the one to do it.

I used to feel bad about calling her - until I'd walked a mile in her shoes in Payson. I lived for calls from my kids and was overjoyed when they got up the gas money to visit - Twice. Now I make a point about calling every Sunday, and if I miss, make an extra call. She says some weeks that I'm her only "visitor".

Since my middle sister in Oklahoma fell and got lumbar fractures, she has been in rehab in Oklahoma City since August. None of her immediate family can drive from Lawton, so she's up there alone. I swipe my daughter's cell phone and set up a 3-way call. Grace is harder to get to - bedridden - so she gets a cordless phone from the nurses' station. Then I call Mom, who usually gets a push to a phone in the hall. Mom asks about the weather, the usual how's the grandkids questions, and then sits back and listens to Grace and I go at it. Mom wishes the phone had 4-way so we could include sister Deb, niece Brandy, or even Great-great-aunt Capitola, who is 105, lives with a 65-year-old granddaughter, and has cheated the nursing home twice. "Nurses in homes are so busy, Aunt Tola, that you probably get better care from Carol."

Mom and Grace got extra calls on Wednesday about the fire. Take no chances having them fret about the national news.

Lord, You sure are teaching us patience with these (medical) high-maintenance bodies!!!

Computer School

For any of my old acquaintances reading my last post and wondering, "Accident??", I should clarify things.  I totaled my Caravan on the back of a slow-moving 3-axle dump truck west of Winslow, AZ, in 2006.  I now own a permanent handicapped parking placard, a cane, and enough hardware south of my left knee to sell to the Chinese for scrap, as my son Tom put it.

Because of same, I qualify for vocational retraining from the state of PA, since I can no longer tolerate standing in one place for more than a couple of minutes, or walk more than the length of a WalMart to get to the restrooms.  Goodbye skating, cross-country skiing, sledding, or even a good hike.  Goodbye lab tech, substitute teacher, or even librarian (I did interview, and was passed over).  Never mind I did volunteer library work for my kids' schools 14 years.

And it still hasn't dawned on my husband that MOM is not 'official' work experience, even though We Girls Know Better.  Roseanne was right, if the kids are still alive at the end of the day, mom's DONE her job.

So after so many dud resumes and applications, and my husband hiring on as a local bus driver - and being fired, I'm being set up to go to a local business school to become a Certified Medical Administrative Assistant.  Doctor's secretary, that is.

Once upon a time, i.e. when I was in high school, wasn't all one needed to work in an office were courses in typing, bookkeeping, and filing?  Now one needs Microsoft Certification, Intermediate, in Word and Excel, QuickBooks, an O-fish-al CMAA course,  course in HIPAA (those annoying privacy practices), insurance coding, and an online course in medical terminology.  And to think I never wanted to get good at typing because I was going to be a Scientist, not a Sexatery.  Who knew Bill Gates was going to overturn the business world so that the best businessman entered his data himself? (sexism intended here)

Prayers appreciated as I start this in February.  At least medical technology doesn't scare me; chemistry and geology have $1.98 words.  Try igneous, metamorphic, sedimentary; or our grad school favorite, biopelmicrite, which means petrified doo-doo from ocean bottom bugs.  Coprolite is the same, from dinosaurs. Or try pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, which is a lung inflammation caused by inhaling microscopic silica particles blown from a volcano; e.g. breathing Mt. St. Helens ash. (If you are reading this, Bill R., smile, since you inflicted this word on Anne in 6th grade.  Yes, Anne got the extra credit. I can hear Tom laugh.)

If I can figure out a Schatzger 6 fracture (how my leg got wasted) I should spout gobbledygook as well as any doctor.