Elder care

Well, Dave's dad fell and hit his head again.

The care giver got there for her Saturday visit, found Pop, and took him to the E/R.  Dave got the text literally as he was driving down for his weekly check in.

Dave notified his eldest brother, who has, up until now, refused to consider putting Pop in assisted living, and letting Dave deal with incidents like this (and other things) over and over.

Dave suffers from his mother's mental health issues, and is here alone with no decision making power,  and Mike does not seem to understand the impact this pressure has on Dave.

Anyway, they did a CT on Pop, and his head is fine.  It's just a surface wound, but he has an irregular heart beat, so they transferred him to a bigger hospital, where they have a cardiac unit.

That's where they kept him overnight.  Dave took the nurses a list of Pop's medications, went by the house and made sure the dog went out, was fed, and there were lights on.

It appears that, when Pop fell, he must have been in the kitchen, because the faucet has been torn out of it's place in the sink.

My guess is Pop was at the sink, his irregular heart beat made him dizzy or faint, and he reflexively grabbed the faucet as he was going down, or he fell TOWARD the sink.

Dave hasn't gotten details from the care giver yet as to where she found Pop, or why the mop was in the kitchen, too.

My guess is she cleaned up any blood from his head wound.

Pop's spirits were pretty good last night, but he has no memory of what happened, which is typical.  He has dementia, and doesn't remember anything anyway.

Dave is headed down there this morning.  First, he'll stop at the house, let the dog out, turn lights off, and collect some clean clothes to take to Pop.

My guess is that they'll keep Pop until some time Monday, after they do a few more tests.

In other news, we got the bills for Dave's stress test that took place in December.  Suddenly, we have to come up with $1000.00

I am grateful that it wasn't more like $3000.00

(We HAD planned to do our taxes today, so we can get our refund, and pay the bills, but then this happened with Pop.)

The stress test results shows that Dave has a little valve regurgitation (a valve that was damaged by scarlet fever when he was a kid), and some thickening of the right ventricle.

Nothing to be overly concerned about, but that needs to be monitored none the less.  For a man of almost 60 (his birthday is this coming Friday) who had a heart attack almost 10 years ago, his heart is in good shape.

He also is being put on stronger blood pressure medication, and a higher dose of statins.

Sigh....

This, after our "new" net pay for the year has revealed a $200 per month drop (due to increased cost of benefits, and my starting to finally contribute to a retirement account for myself).

Just freaking great.

Be that as it may, BEFORE we got those bills, and before we realized our monthly net income loss, we spent $50 on tickets for a dinner show to celebrate Dave's birthday.

We're looking forward to it.  It's "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" at the drag club we've been to a few times.

Our friend Lindsay, whose birthday is a day or two before Dave's, is meeting us there.  Should be fun!  Dave needs some fun....and we won't be able to afford much in the coming weeks and months.

ADDENDUM:  Mike sent an email to Dave and their other brother, Larry.  He's finally open to considering placing Pop in an assisted living environment.  I think it was Dave saying last night:  How many times are you willing to let Dad fall and split his head open before you'll think about moving him?"