Medicare Sucks, I suck at knitting, Sushi doesn't suck, although the waitress did
Forget that good news about Grandma. It turns out that Grandma is getting kicked out of the rehab facility next Monday, because Medicare rules state that you can't stay if you're not making progress. And Blue Cross is mindless and just goes along with whatever Medicare decides. Mind you, it's hard to make progress when you're medically not allowed to put any weight on your leg. Our only hope, apparently, right now, is that she has pneumonia (she's back on oxygen and just not feeling very well at all – when I talked to her on Friday she wasn't eating at all as she just wasn't hungry or able to eat) to the point where she has to go back to the hospital. Once at the hospital, she needs to stay a minimum of three days (or so I've been told) and then she can return to rehab for another 20 days. How bloody stupid is that???
She thinks it's all taken care of and she's allowed to stay until she can take care of herself. The pathetic thing is that is the way it should be. I realise there are people who might need a little incentive to motivate them to do their exercises, but Grandma isn't one of them. She even did her PT last Friday when she wasn't feeling well and had no energy. She needs to build up her upper body strength in order to use the walker properly (i.e., not put any weight on her right leg), and that takes longer than 3 weeks when you're 89 years old!
I'm very displeased.
Friday night at the Token Lounge was very good. I enjoyed listening to all three bands, although I couldn't watch the first band as the lead singer was annoying and pretentious. He seriously needed to be slapped. And holy shit, were they LOUD!!! I could feel my clothes moving from the percussion of the music. Thankfully Urs was prepared and brought a bunch of earplugs. I was saving mine for the YS who was coming down, but a few minutes into the first band, I broke down and shoved them into my ears. Dear God, I think that was the loudest show ever. I text the YS a few minutes before she got there and told her that if she had earplugs in the truck, she might want them. Thank God, she had some. Urs' OOMA's band played last and they were quite good and enjoyable.
The second band invited people onto the dance floor to mosh. As it was so hideously loud, the YS and I were communicating with each other using the text messaging feature of our cell phones. We weren't sending messages, per se, just typing them up and showing the other person and awaiting acknowledgement with a nod. Anyway, I told her that I would never slam dance (I'm old, that's what we called it) with kids these days since none of them knows the proper way to do it, or as I put it, they don't know how to pull their punches. They just slam wholeheartedly into each other thinking that's the proper way to do it.
As soon as OOMA's band finished playing, the YS and I were out of there as the cigarette smoke was killing us! I took a shower as soon as I got home to get rid of all that secondhand smoke, took an alka-seltzer nighttime cold & cough and a Bronkaid to counteract the effects of the smoke, and then slept until noon. I don't need to get sick as I'm leaving Wednesday after work for Southern California.
I couldn't sleep at all last week, for some reason, so I needed to sleep until noon. Once I got up on Saturday I went to visit Grandma and took her bed jacket project with me. After harassing Grandma for a few hours, Mom, the YS and I took off for sushi. We got a new waitress who was horrific. An hour after we got there, we had no food, while every table around us who came in after us had their food. She also missed my tempura asparagus order on the back of the sushi order sheet. At no point did she apologise, she just blamed the kitchen. Sadly for her, she didn't know that we know the owner and once he showed up, the YS gave him an earful. Amazingly enough, my tempura asparagus showed up very quickly – I wouldn't have bet money she submitted it even after we pointed it out to her. We're so nice, though, she still got a 15% tip.
Yesterday, I pinned out the back of Grandma's bed jacket on my cardboard thingie and then pinned the left front next to it. Ooops, too long. Then I re-read the instructions and realised that everything was all kerfluffled and I ended up taking the whole thing out and starting again. *sigh* The right hand side is still sitting on my circular needles, but I'll end up taking that out and re-doing it as well. I don't want to think about the fact that the armhole shaping for the left and right sides on the back doesn't look symmetrical. I'll be calling Soyon later today and asking her about that. I also need to ask her to translate the instructions where I got hung up yesterday on the armhole shaping. It made NO sense to me, whatsoever. *double sigh*
How was everybody's weekend? Do anything fun? Eat anything yummy? Not mess up a knitting project?
Labels: Acting like I'm in College, Grandma Update, Knitting, Sushi
posted by Kathleen @ 12:54 PM
16 comments
16 Comments:
Your weekend still sounded more fun than mine. It was 80 degrees this weekend, Coy and I tanned in Lafayette Park.
If it's too loud... you're too ol... actually... it's probably really loud. :P
Sal - 80F sounds fabulous to me. We had snow here. It was freezing and miserable. Man, I'm tired of winter.
LL - I'll admit I'm old, but in this case, it was LOUD! Hell, I took earplugs to Linkin Park and didn't need them. ;-)
I responded to the Vegemite post on my blog but forgot to wish you a great trip. Have a great trip!
That sucks about your Grandma - - health care always seems like just the opposite. :(
The last concert I was at I had to wear earplugs and I felt old. It was sad.
Medicare: The Medicare bureaucrats work things in every way they can to benefit the government more than the people they are supposed to be helping. That way (I suspect), the money can go to the military contractors for illegal wars (based on lies) instead of to the hospitals for the sake of the poor and elderly.
Loud Bar: I got a kick out of your creative method of conversing in that loud bar. ;-) I could have used that method on a few occasions a long time ago.
Temps: It was in the mid 80s here in western Nebraska yesterday (Tuesday). It was the first time it has been that warm here since last fall. Now, today, it is presently only 48 degrees, with a prediction that it will reach 54.
Sorry to hear about Grandma. Our healthcare system is a mess because it isn't a system at all - it is a hodgepodge of all kinds of different payors and patients, all with different priorities and rules. It makes no sense at all.
There is a "proper" way to slam dance?!?
During the last part of my dad's life I saw the failure of healthcare in America time and time again. The rules always hurt and never benefitted. You think a man who worked his entire life and never was on any kind of assistance would get a better deal than that, but insurance isn't about a better deal, it's about profit.
Kathleen, as far as knitting goes, I am having a terrible problem with the sweater pattern my husband picked out and if you could help me with it, I'd be so grateful. I can't seem to understand certain things about the pattern. There's parantheses and it doesn't talk about casting on. I posted about it so when you get a chance, please, let me know if I'm missing something.
Oh, and bad service. I get you. We leave big tips for waitstaff, but only 20% for bad service. My brother has been a waiter all his life and he said to always tell the waiter why you were displeased at the end of the meal and never tip less when you do it because, "They'll just think you're cheap."
I never tell someone when they're bad. I just tend to ask for the waiter who is good anytime I go to a neighborhood spot. Saves a lot of hassle.
We have one guy my husband tips 50 percent of our meal price, but man, is he Johnny on the spot for us. lol
The idea is to convince the American people that Medicare doesn't work, so the free-market goons can privatize it.
Judging from what I witnessed when I saw Rage Against The Machine some years back, that is the proper way to mosh. (Slam-dancing is like, so 80's.) Lord knows how rough they've gotten over the past ten years - I don't go to those sort of shows no more.
The type of treatment our patients get depends on what their insurance will pay for. It should be that they get whatever is optimal for the type of cancer they have. Maybe one day...
I wear glasses full-time now so I stay away from mosh pits, although it would be nice if the kids moshed to us when we start playing. The only show recently I saw where I really needed earplugs was Ministry. I wear them to every show now anyways. Got to protect what's left of my hearing.
Hope your weekend went well. Shoot... I even watched a little bit of the race just because...
Sounds like your health care there is as good as ours. They'd rather kill someone off or at least take them to the brink than take preventative steps.
How's Grandma?
I hope Grandma feels better. Stupid Medicare.
Some of the others have hinted. Here's a flat out request. How's Grandma?
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