My brother is so much more talkative. He is like a new man. I was thinking today about all the effort I made to keep him alive when he was in medical crises. Now I am very glad I did. At the time I wondered if it made sense to use a lot of modern medical intervention, that maybe I should let him "die" as nature intended. But then I figured everyone else gets a chance to live longer with modern medicine, why shouldn't he get the same breaks. When he first started living in a nursing home, both my husband and I felt that he wouldn't live more than a year. This was somewhat based on what his doctors were telling us. Even after the first year at the old nursing home, his health seemed precarious, he had several bouts of congestive heart failure and pneumonia, and he "acted old", fairly listless, and very tired.
But if you saw him today after the move to the new nursing home, you wouldn't be thinking that anymore. He wasn't hoarse today. He seemed like he was getting out of breath a bit, but he was quite chipper and pretty talkative (by his standards). We talked about the Presidential debates, I read to him out of the paper about Jesse Jackson Jr's woes, and when we got back from breakfast, I helped him"paint" (he dripped fabric paint) on a white muslin square for the quilt that I making for my daughters. (All our family members are contributing a square.) He told me how he had gone to the guitar concert at the nursing home before.
Yesterday, I got a call from the social worker, who was sitting with my brother, to ask if we wanted him to join an HMO where a nurse practitioner who practices on his floor would handle his medical issues. The presentation was pretty confusing. Right now, if the nurses think he is getting sick, they are supposed to call a doctor and get orders. On the other hand, they are telling me that the doctors only come into the nursing home and see patients every 3 months. This ticks me off pretty much. Why should they get paid by medicaid to go see patients for 5 minutes every 3 months, and not be expected to come to the nursing home if their patients are sick? I supposed their reimbursements from public aid make it not lucrative. What a sick medical care system we have. The short of it is that I asked the social worker to send me the paperwork so I could read about what we are signing up for. Then I think about the fact that I am pretty well educated, my husband is in the medical care policy business, and we are pretty well informed, compared to most families. What about the people who aren't?
Meanwhile, my brother wasn't hoarse, but he did seem out of breath, so I am going to keep an eye on him. I am going out of town for the week for work, but I think he probably would not get that bad that quickly, if he is going into a decline. I am going to ask my husband to go visit him while I am gone.
That's another good thing about the move. Now that he is closer, my husband is going to visit him, mostly on his own, without me, which gives my brother more support. Very good!
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