Hospice

After the whole fiasco of him falling this morning and it taking a half hour or more to get him up, this afternoon around 4:00 or so, he insisted on getting up and walking to the bathroom and he fell again, facing the toilet so that he was straddling the toilet facing the back. He could not get up and I could not get him up. After an hour of trying, and him asking me why in the world the other people in the house weren't helping us (?), I tried to call a neighbor and he wasn't home. Gina was at another job.

So finally I found a small bench and set it up behind the toilet and he was able to slide his butt onto the stool. Then after a little rest, we were able to get his butt all the way on the stool and he was able to turn sideways. Still, I was unable to get him up. His legs kept giving out. So I went and got my office chair (on wheels) and after another ten minutes he was able to get on the office chair and I wheeled him to the bed, only took about an hour and a half total (!!!)

The guy bringing the hospital bed got lost and didn't get here until 11:00PM and when he was bringing the bed in, Marshall asked him if he would do him a favor. The guy said sure. Marshall said, "Would you go out and get me some peanut butter ice cream?" `

And while the guy was bringing in the various things, Marshall kept getting out of bed and losing his balance and if me and John weren't here, Marshall would have been on the floor again.

After John got the bed set up he started bringing in the oxygen setup. The girl that was here today from hospice did NOT describe this oxygen setup to me. What Marshall has right now is a great compact concentrator on wheels. It makes its own oxygen and it fits right in a corner of the room and can be easily moved.

What this guy just brought in is two HUGE HUGE oxygen containers (they are about two feet in diameter and 5 feet tall. And there are TWO of them. They are going to take up half of the bedroom and the oxygen containers have to be refilled every week. And refilling them isn't easy. We have to depend on some guy from Hospice to come out here every week, wheel these monstrous things outside, fill them and wheel them back in. That means disrupting the house every single week. It means my bedroom is so packed you can't walk through it. It means I have to get rid of my floor-standing jewelry box. It means I have to be here at a certain time each week for this process. I am absolutely disintegrating. This feels more like a prison every day. I tried to get the guy to take them back but he says he has to do what the hospice people tell him to do so he has to hook them up and get Marshall hooked up to that oxygen.

I think I may have made a big mistake calling hospice at this point. It's supposed to help me and so far (except for the wonderful hospital bed), it is raising my stress level beyond what I can handle. But the wheels are in motion and once I get my emotions under control I should be able to deal with this. (It is now past midnight and the hospice guy is still here. Sheesh.



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