To Illinois

Debbie's been at my brother's home in IL now for about 11 days. I think the biggest issue happening at the moment is getting her to take her medicine on time/at fairly regular intervals. While any of us siblings has no problem telling her to do it, my sister-in-law is not yet comfortable telling her what to do when it comes to things that must be done.

She is spending a lot of time in bed, but her physical therapist from Salem anticipated that happening, plus she has always been inclined to veg out a lot, anyway. They do have some home health care involved--mostly for bathing a couple times a week. Because the home health care team is involved, they suggest that she not do a lot of running around while the insurance covers it b/c of the possibility of injury while she is out--if she's at Walmart, gets hurt and an ambulance is involved, the hha can be charged with fraud. It's ALL so complicated--why can't they just let her live her life. I feel like putting these restrictions out there could almost shorten her time. As it is, when she was in the nursing home, she felt like everything was out of control because a lot of the staff at the nursing home wouldn't listen to her input. Several times we had to remind certain staff members "She has a brain tumor, she's not stupid". The feelings of things being out of control does not help her rest and try to get things on track. Even the fact that either she didn't remember or wasn't told about her appointment with her doctor at UVA when I was there really disturbed her, and she told one of the doctors at the clinic that day that she felt like they were hiding things because no one was talking to her directly like they had in the past.