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I read an interesting story the other day on www.cnn.com about Gary Coleman who passed away a few weeks ago. The story talked about his living will and how he wanted to be kept alive unless he was in an irreversible coma for at least 15 days. The problem is that Coleman’s ex-wife, whom he designated as his agent to make medical decisions for him, ordered the doctors to remove him from life support after just one day. You can read the entire story here.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/06/16/living.wills.coleman/index.html?eref=igoogle_cnn
It’s so important for you to decide now how you want to be treated when you’re unable to make medical decisions for yourself. You need to have an advanced medical directive that spells out every scenario and how you want to be treated. Do you want to be placed on life support if you’re in a coma? How long would you want to be placed on life support? Do you want a DNR (do not resuscitate) order if you have a stroke or heart attack? You need to think about it now and get it in writing.
We’re going through this now with my mother. She’s unable to make even simple decisions for herself. She can’t remember the simplest things these days which frustrates her to no end. Luckily my parents created a living will with an advanced directive many years ago when they were of sound mind and body. There is no way she could make medical decisions for herself today and she depends on us to make them for her. When the time comes that her health fails then we have the advanced directive to guide us.
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I was going through my mother’s bank statements the other day and I noticed a recurring charge for $29.95 from an online mall website. I logged into her email account to see if they’d been communicating with her and I almost fell out of my chair. She had subscribed to so many email lists that she had over 10,000 unread emails in her account.
She was getting investment tips from at least a dozen investment “gurus”. She was also receiving email from The Perfect Abs as well as numerous health “experts”. She was even learning how to cook organically even though she doesn’t cook anymore.
It took me over 2 hours to clear out her email account and unsubscribe her from the newsletters. I also discovered she was signed up for 3 credit monitoring services in addition to the online mall. She also receives a lot of junk mail that is targeted to seniors and many of the offers look very suspicious.
While I was unsubscribing Mom from the newsletters, I checked out some of the websites of these “gurus”. Many of the websites are very confusing and encourage you to click on links that will sign you up for recurring services. If you ever signed up for an account at GoDaddy.com you know what I mean. Their website is very confusing and they’re constantly upselling additional services to you.
It’s really sad to see these vultures preying on seniors who are on a fixed income and are struggling to survive financially. Even when you try to explain to your parents not to sign up for these services they just don’t understand. The websites, direct mail and telemarketers are designed to sell them services they don’t need and most of the time they don’t know they’re signing up for a recurring charge.
Keep an eye on your parents bank accounts and email accounts to make sure they aren’t being scammed!
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Mom was released from the hospital yesterday after 11 days. What a roller coaster ride it’s been! The doctors were stuck on the fact that one of her brain scans showed signs of a stroke and they were convinced that was the reason she could not swallow properly. They didn’t feed her for 10 days while they waited to see if she would get strong enough to eat. If she couldn’t eat she couldn’t get stronger so round and round we went. The strange thing is that she made a dramatic recovery in just 24 hours after barely hanging on a few days earlier.
We knew they were getting ready to release her because Medicare was about to stop paying for the pneumonia illness which was almost gone. Even though she was weak and hadn’t eaten in over a week, they were going to release her.
Finally they gave her some pudding to test her ability to swallow and she did fine except she sneezed 4 times in a row as soon as she swallowed it. We all looked at each other and said “Mom’s back!” because she’s been sneezing after every meal forever. Her Mother also sneezed after every meal so we assumed it was a family trait.
The doctor said it wasn’t good that she sneezed after she swallowed because that’s a sign she was aspirating. She’s been aspirating most of her life and it was never a problem until now. They stopped feeding her and said we may have to think about hospice since she didn’t want a feeding tube.
We were perplexed. Mom looked better than she’s looked in years despite being on just IV’s for more than a week but they were talking about putting her out to pasture. When she was at her weakest point she said she just wanted to die and didn’t ever want a feeding tube so they took that literally and gave up on her.
On Sunday morning we received a call from the hospital and they wanted permission to put in a feeding tube because she needed nutrition. Mom agreed it was okay so they were ready to put in the tube. Before they put in the tube they decided to try some soft food to see what would happen. Mom ate the food and wanted more. No sneezing, no coughing, no problem!
Finally we were heading in the right direction and Mom was on the road to recovery!!
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Mom has been in the hospital for 8 days now and her pneumonia is almost gone. She’s still having trouble swallowing so she hasn’t eaten since last Thursday, over 9 days ago. It looks like she had a minor stroke at some point which could have caused the swallowing problem, hence the pneumonia.
We have a meeting this afternoon with the hospital case worker and I know what it’s about. We went through a similar meeting with the hospital when Dad became ill. The hospital will say the initial illness has been cured so they have to discharge the patient even though there are other issues. In Mom’s case, she can’t eat anything but since the pneumonia is gone the hospital can’t bill Medicare any more. Of course they discharge the patient ASAP so they’re not on the hook for the bills. When the patient enters a new facility for rehab, Medicare kicks in again. You wonder why the hospital doesn’t keep the patient until all problems are resolved? I do see their point that the patient needs more attention then they get in the hospital and special care so a rehab facility is a better place for her.
In my Dad’s case, they just discharged him and said they were sending him to a rehab facility. We didn’t know anything about the procedures and the reasoning so went along with them. It turns out they put him in a horrible facility where they yelled at him when he tried to get out of bed. He was weak and disoriented and they treated him like a piece of meat. It was horrible.
After about 10 days they told us they were discharging him. In other terms, Medicare stopped paying for his care. We had to find another place for him in less than 48 hours and we didn’t know what to do. Here’s a man with stage 4 stomach cancer without a place to go to be cared for.
Later we discovered that a hospital or rehab facility can not discharge a patient without providing us 3 options. If we don’t like any of the options they have to keep the patient until they provide us an acceptable alternative. I’m sure they’re going to tell us today that Mom will soon be discharged and will be moving to a rehab facility before returning home.
Wish me luck!
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Mom usually calls us a few times a day if we don’t call her first. I usually call her every morning on my way to work but I didn’t call today because Friday morning is her “hair” day. She’s usually up and out the door by 9:30 to get her hair done and I don’t want to make her late.
On Friday none of us heard from her and she didn’t answer her home phone or cell phone. Since she didn’t answer we assumed she was just out on a field trip with her friends.
Finally her caretaker reached her at 4:30. Mom said she got her hair done and went to lunch. She’s had a cold and she said she was tired and didn’t feel well but we didn’t think there was any reason to worry. She’d be heading down for dinner at 5 followed by Bingo or poker after dinner.
We tried to call her at 8 for our nightly check in but she didn’t answer either phone. Finally my sister called the front desk to have them check on her. The night clerk went upstairs and said he thought he woke her and she was tired but fine.
I decided to go check on her in person because she’s never hard to reach. I had the night clerk open her door because she wasn’t answering the door. We went in and she was passed out on the bed partially clothed. We tried to revive her but she was very weak and dehydrated. There was a trail of clothes and jewelry on the floor and we couldn’t find her cell phone. I called 911 to get her to the hospital.
I was worried because she was wearing the top to the sweatsuit she wore on Thursday and never wears the same clothes two days in a row. Also the Friday morning paper was still outside her door so it looked like she never left her apartment.
Did she really get her hair done and have lunch in the dining room? Her hair was a mess and she was completely out of it. I asked the night clerk if she really did go down for lunch and dinner and he wasn’t sure. It looked like she’d been in bed since Thursday night and couldn’t get out of bed to call for help. Our worst nightmare was happening.
It turns out Mom has pneumonia and possibly congestive heart failure. She’s in the hospital now struggling to breathe and is very disoriented. She’s not responding to 2 1/2 days of treatment and we’re very concerned. This doesn’t look good.
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