Saturday, my husband and I took my brother out for lunch at SuperDawg for a hot dog. SuperDawg is one of those 1960s type drive ins, we went there on the recommendation of the receptionist at the nursing home. I don't eat meat, so I ate some of my brother's french fries. My husband had a milkshake. The whole thing was overpriced. When we were walking into the restaurant, my brother's pants fell down. That's because he has lost so much weight, and he failed to use his belt. We had to holdup his pants from behind for the rest of the excursion.
I think this episode brought home to my husband how little my brother seems to be able to do for himself these days. Sometimes I think he thinks I was a little to quick to pull the trigger on my brother and assisted living. He is willing to cop that I was doing about 95% of the work to keep my brother going. Anyhow, I'm glad he saw this incident, although I'm sad my brother is in such a state.
Today I spent some time on the phone with various people from the nursing home. I am trying to straighten out with them that my brother has both private insurance (which will no longer pay for the nursing home) but also is on public aid. This is a very rare situation, and is because the State of Illinois has a program where the disabled who are working can get on medicaid. Once you're on, you can stay on, whether or not you continue working. So my brother has it. But it causes a zillion headaches because the health providers are not used to having to bill medicaid after the insurance pays. So the nursing home billing people first told me to call the pharmacy about the billing situation, and I pushed it back on them. Then the billing person told me it was the nurses responsibility since they order the medication. Then the nurses told me that it was the responsibility of the billing department, etc., etc, etc.
The next issue was physical therapy. My brother is now falling between the cracks because the insurance company is no longer paying for physical therapy, and they didn't realize that medicaid would pay for 3 sessions a week. We had a "care session" last week with the physical therapists and they guaranteed me that they would write into his orders that the CNTs would have to walk him at least twice a day, and of course, no one is doing a damn thing. He is just sitting in a wheelchair all day long, and every day he doesn't move, he loses muscle mass. Today I was told to talk to the head physical therapist, of course she didn't call me back today. I will try again tomorrow.
And at lunch time, I walked over to the jewelry center to have my brother's watch fixed. I had bought him a cheap replacement watch but the link band (that's the only kind he can use, one that has a flexible strap because of his cerebral palsy) was was too big because he has no muscle left on his wrist. So I gave the new watch to my husband, I have no interest in running to the store and returning the new watch. My husband seemed pleased. Sunday I bought him new hearing aid batteries, and was pretty pleased with my self for remembering, but now I can't remember where I put them. I hope they turn up.
And tonight, I spent at least an hour trying to figure out the finances that I have inherited from my father. I suppose I shouldn't complain about that, at least my parents were able to leave me hopefully enough funds to keep my brother comfortable in a nursing home, at least as long as he is on public aid. I am paying $500/month for Cobra insurance payments because I think he gets much better care when he is privately insured than when he is only on public aid. If he ends up back in the hospital, and stays there more than 10 days, which with him is always a possibility, he could lose his medicaid bed, so I need a backup. There is a 6 month period, from January 2012, when his Cobra runs out, and July, 2012, when his medicare starts (he gets to start early because he is disabled.) All this is so complicated!
I should have been practicing the fiddle tonight. I still sound very schreechy, but I have a wonderful teacher. I think he may be burning the candles at both ends. He is a mechanical engineer/salesman during the day and a fiddler at night. My lessons are on Saturday morning. This last weekend, he called to cancel because he had been playing at a gig until 6 am. Maybe I will take a nice hot bath instead.
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