Happy Memorial Day Weekend!

Well, the teachers at T's school cleverly scheduled the last floating holiday on friday...giving them and us a 4 day weekend, not just a 3day weekend. Yippee! A few weeks ago when it was announced, I thought we might do something fun or go somewhere this weekend. That's not happening for two reasons: my mom's medical equipment and I'm broke.

On the equipment scene, T and I spent our day off on Friday at my parents' house, waiting for the medical equipment to be delivered and picked up. As I said in the past, its been a logistical nightmare. My mom needs a hospital bed, an alternating air mattress, oxygen machine, nebulizer, and wheelchair. We ended up purchasing the bed and air mattress.

Medicare will only supply a semi electric bed, not fully electric. Semi electric works the head to sit up, and to elevate the feet. To raise and lower the height of the bed itself, one must use the crank. When caring for my mom, we are constantly raising and lowering the bed's height for various reasons. Our aide Icolene (and I) have bad backs and my dad has bad shoulders. None of us can easily (if at all) use a crank.

Re the alternating air mattress, that combats bed sores. My mom had bad ones after coming out of the hospital and nursing homes. Took us like 10 months for them to close and finally heal. We don't want them coming back, as that's one thing that could potentially kill her. Medicare only supplies an air mattress if you have a stage III sore, i.e. a bad one. Medicare prefers to wait until a patient develops a bad bedsore to supply the mattress, rather than prevent them in the first place. Then, once healed, the mattress would be taken away. We can't have all this switching out of medical equipment all the time. Its just too much. So we bought that as well. $1,500.00 for both: 850.00 for the bed, full rails, and reg mattress, 650.00 for the alternating air mattress. A veritable bargain since one equip. company quoted me a price for the mattress alone of 2,500, and another 1,450. Bastards.

So now, if my mom goes into hospice again, there will be no switching out of beds, as we will own the damned thing and its staying put. That's a good thing.

The reason I'm broke? On Tuesday I was going to work and my car wouldn't start. Luckily dot was in town and after my van was towed in, we drove to borrow my parents 2nd car. A chevy aveo they purchased in March of 2009. It has 2,200 miles on it. It was my mom's car. Dot drops me off, I go inside to chat. I come out and the Aveo won't start. I had to call Dot to return to give me a jump, then drove to sears to get a new battery. My car? needed a new battery (3rd in 4 years), needed the 30,000 service so that they wouldn't invalidate my warranty (the bastards), needed to flush the power steering line and add new, needed new brakes. Despite having a warranty, I dropped 850.00.

I hate car dealerships.

Yesterday, we picked up the car, went rollerskating (T is progressing EXCELLENTLY), went to a birthday party, and got haircuts.

On today's agenda: food shopping and bill paying at my parents, then a small bbq/swim party at a friend's house. Frankly, I'd prefer to just lay at home on the couch, but that's no fun for T, so off we're going to go. Sigh.

Hope your Memorial Day is lots of fun.