more CA travel

[nosrednayduj]

So the bad news is that my stepfather has some kind of sepsis and infection, originally caused by diabetic foot syndrome where he had an infection in his foot he was battling for over a year, and now, instead of being all fixed like we thought, it has gone visiting in other parts of his body.

He went to the hospital a little less than a week ago, and it took them a long time to figure out what was going on. Now he's going to need a month of IV antibiotic infusions, and the doctor says that he should be in a more sterile environment than your typical home, so they are sending him to a rehab facility. Unfortunately they are not going to let him leave the facility in between infusions due to the lack of sterility in the general world, which means that he can't come visit my mom. So we need to work on transportation for her to visit him. It looks like her assisted living place will facilitate some of this, though not every day like they would like.

I think I'm going to go out there sometime next week, and stay for my usual week, which will give my mother some more solid visiting right in the middle of the ordeal before Clyde gets done and is able to return to his regular visits. It's sounding like he will come out of this all fine.

I'm kind of sad that my mother's old friends never come by to visit her. I guess that's what happens when you disappear into assisted living. Not that there was really any such visiting when she lived in the regular house. So maybe that's what happens when you become disabled.

Comments

[lauradi7dw]

Lots of people stopped visiting during Covid. Before vaccination, most assisted living places didn't even allow relatives. My mother's bridge club used to be her main social outlet. They were scheduled to play on March 17, 2020. Didn't. Haven't since, although three of the members visited Mama in 2021, once each. The assisted living place in which several of them live didn't let people socialize even within the facility for a while, then allowed knitting group (sitting separated), but not cards, which has people sit close together. I think they're back to usual (?). My mother is much weaker now and I don't know that she could sit in a straight chair for long enough to play two hours of card games. We keep pondering how to do a short meeting, but I haven't organized anything.

[nosrednayduj]

Visiting has been slightly restricted but generally fine since my mom has been at her assisted living place. She went in May 2021, after vaccines were available. She briefly was in an assisted living that had very strict restrictions in October 2020, pre-vaccine. This is very different from that experience. Apparently the skilled nursing place is being extra cautious.

[apparentparadox]

I think that moving to assisted living really does affect visiting. There's an "independent living" community here with an "assisted living" place basically just across the street. I've heard lots of comments about how people who used to visit each other when they were in "independent living" won't cross the parking lot to visit someone in the "assisted living" building. I suspect it's because going in there reminds people that they could lose their independence, and they just don't want to be reminded of that.