When we were teenagers and dating guys we now know were losers, when
one of us was being mis-treated in an effort to get the heartbroken one
to dump the jerk, we'd ask "what has to happen?" in order for the
dumping of the loser to occur. What bad thing was our limit? What jerky
thing could the guy to do make us stop seeing him? Once the thing happened, that was it. We still play this
game in other life situations and yesterday it was the day our lifelong
limit of dealing with total idiots while not losing our cool was met.
We're totally done. We no longer have to deal with idiots!
Yesterday we went to the hospital to pick up our mom and take her home.
She is on a feeding tube and oxygen and in need of a caregiver. She'd
been in the hospital ten days and during that time many doctors, case
workers, and social workers came and talked to her and us about the
level of care she'd need. We asked about how we get the special food
for tube feeding (oh, it will be delivered, they repeatedly assured us), when
physical therapists would be coming, what days the nurse would be
checking in (the day following discharge), and what insurance pays for.
When we arrived to pick Mom up, they started the discharge process and
the nurse gave us 5 cans of tube feeding food. Karen asked her when the
delivery of the rest of the food would be (as the primary social worker
explained it would be) the nurse said she'd get the social worker to confirm the details.
About 15 minutes later, Saul the Suicidal Social Worker slithered up to
the room. Both his wrists were still bandaged from his suicide attempt,
his sweaty shirt unbuttoned to his kishkes, both shifty eyeballs going
in different directions. We knew then we were done, done, done! We
asked him when the other food would be delivered and he said he'd look
into it but his back was killing him and he needed to sit down. Then
some tumbleweeds blew in.
A few hours later, he saw nothing in the file about the tube feeding
food, mom's nurse, or physical therapy and said he couldn't release Mom
until there was a plan and blamed the other social workers. So we told
him where to look and what the plan was and got mom the hell out of
there.
We were in a rush to get back to Mom's to meet the new caregiver and
had only 20 minutes to spare. While Karen and mom waited in the car, I
ran into the pharmacy to drop off Mom's prescriptions. There were 12
people in line and one pharmacist who was having a hard time reading
prescriptions because he forgot his glasses. The girl in line behind me
was talking to her friend on her cell phone about how she was in line
to get new birth control pills. The last ones her doctor gave her made
her so fucking crazy that she told her to either change the
prescription or prescribe some Prozac too because nobody would fuck her
while she's this crazy. So I turned around and told her not to worry,
men fuck anything. That was my good deed for the day.
With 3 minutes to go, we get to Mom's place. Karen is pushing Mom in
the wheelchair and I am pushing the oxygen tank. In the lobby of the building is the dining room, which was full of people.
Mom wanted Karen to push her in there so she could say hi to her
friends. Along the left wall of the entrance to the dining room was a
giant blue and white vase that held canes and a small table that held
the evening menu and a set of dishes. Was. Somehow, because we are us
and the day wasn't quite weird enough, Karen lost control of the wheel
chair and it crashed into the giant vase, knocking it and the table
over and breaking into many pieces. And then we lost our ability not to
burst into hysterical laughter.
Things only got worse for us from there. At least we're laughing.
*On our way home, we went back to the dining room to get a photo of where the vase used to be.
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