June 28, 2010
It’s Good to Be the Queen
I need to stop thinking of having a total stranger giving me a shower as a humiliating episode and start pretending I’m some sort of ancient queen who has minions attending to my every need.
What happened was my husband had been waking up every day with a pain in his side which turned out to be chronic appendicitis. Solution: appendectomy, a fairly routine laproscopic procedure with one unfortunate side effect: while recovering he would be unable to lift anything heavy for a week. That would be me.
All I can say is thank goodness for the whole referral to hospice episode, which resulted in a month of home physical therapy visits and the acquisition of a hoyer lift, a sort of combination crane/hammock thingie for lifting decrepit people like myself and moving them from point A to point B. Anyway, because of this I had the number of a good home health agency. Did I mention home care isn’t covered by health insurance? Apparently bathing and going to the bathroom aren’t considered medically necessary. Don’t get me started.
Let us draw a veil over the intimate details of the last few days. Suffice it to say that so far it hasn’t been as awful as I feared. On the plus side I’ve had a manicure and pedicure, and the morning aide did my hair in a cute new way. I can’t wait for it to be over, but I need to keep reminding myself: Chris needs the rest, and royalty used to get waited on like this all the time. And I’m worth it!
Jen's Journey 
Trish said,
June 28, 2010 at 10:42 pm
Hey there, Jen! It was so good to read your writing again. I really love when you post to your blog and was hoping that you’d write again soon. You make me laugh and cry all at the same time!
Yes, you ARE royalty! And YES, you deserve to be treated well. So glad to know that you found the positives in all this. And glad to know that help was there when you and Chris needed it – that’s truly the most important part.
Angela Bloch said,
June 30, 2010 at 9:56 am
How typical that the insurance companies don’t/won’t pay for something as basic as personal hygiene. I think that all bathroom challenged people should go to the companies’ offices and stage a shit-in!