In a real-life enactment of a nightmare, Dr. B, the "hospitalist," told me last week that my mother, who is in the hospital after a fall, has compression fractures in her spine and dementia in addition to a broken patella. She had been fitted with a long-leg cast perhaps permanently and was about to be sent to rehab. What do you suggest I do? I asked. "She needs to move in with you," said Dr. B. Never mind that I live with Other and our daughter in a one-bathroom walk-up apartment in New York and my mother lives in San Francisco with my father, or that I work full-time.
Then I called the office of Dr. S, my mother's internist, and was transferred to Dr. S's assistant. "Oh, yes, your mother is being released into hospice," said Joy (her real name). Turns out the hospice part was a misunderstanding on someone's part. But it's a fact that my parents need some help. And they're resistant to accepting it.
I head to San Francisco in a few days, shortly after she's released from the rehab clinic, and I'll be carrying a to-do list of 21 items and counting, and some of those items are multiples—like visit five assisted-living residences—all of which I'm hoping to accomplish in a week.
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