So far Leah and I are having about the worst week ever. As these things go, of course it didn't start this week; it all started when we were in San Diego. While we were there, Leah's mom, Babe, fell and broke her arm. She had been living with Leah's brother and his "friend," and since Leah's brother has been detained (again) by the state and his "friend" was at work she was found that evening laying on the floor in pain. Leah and I were both in California, so there was not much we could do, but Leah did talk to the doctors over the phone and learned that the only way her arm would get fixed would be with surgery. The only problem is that none of her doctors will approve the surgery because of her other health issues. Basically, Babe went from needing some assistance to needing 24/7 care in a single moment.
Over the course of that week and the next, a combination of friends and relatives sat with Babe to help take care of her while everyone tried to identify the best long term solution. Inevitably, the answer was a care facility, but the real question at that point was how to pay for it. Babe has basically no income and no assets, and the cost is over $100/day at the low price facilities. We've been navigating the waters of Medicare and Medicaid to try and answer these questions, and thought that we had found a solution in Garland. This past Monday morning, Babe checked in and settled into a room, and we thought everything was done until yesterday morning.
Yesterday morning, Leah went down to start the Medicaid paperwork and was told that we would need to pay for the room out-of-pocket until Medicaid came through. The process time for the Medicaid would be at least 30 days, so we were looking at about a $4,000 cost. No way! We can't afford that. After much fighting, talking, crying, and questioning, we ultimately took Babe back out of the facility and to our house. Leah has been making calls all day today to try and find a different facility that can take her and can handle the Medicaid situation better, but it looks like we'll still be out-of-pocket some amount no matter what we do.
As if that stress wasn't enough, we had a serious rainstorm here yesterday. Some people that live near me said that the recorded nine inches at their house. I had to make about four U-turns to get home because I kept going down roads that were closed due to high water. It was a big deal. And guess what! Reagan's bedroom window was open for the whole deal. I don't mean cracked either. I mean open as wide as it could be. An area about four feet square in front of her window was absolutely soaked along with all of the furniture, books, electronics, etc. that was in front of the window.
I went to Home Depot after I figured out a safe path through the water and rented a carpet cleaner to suck the water out of the carpet. It worked pretty well, but it took about two hours. It just kept sucking up water. When I was done, I had about 2.5 gallons of water in the reservoir! We left fans blowing on it overnight, so it would dry out even more. Hopefully, there is not any more damage that we can't see.
But wait there's more. We can't find Leah's cell phone. She knows she had it in the van yesterday because she was talking to me as she drove into the garage. She thought she took it inside the house, but we turned the house upside down twice to no avail. We supposed it were possible that it got left in the van, but we cleaned out every inch of the vehicle and couldn't find it. The best guess at this point is that it was in Leah's lap and when she jumped out of the van to run inside a restaurant for lunch it fell into the water (which was rushing under her van) and was swept out to sea.
Surely that would be enough, but whose week could be complete without a flat tire? That's right. Leah drove over a nail somewhere (probably washed up on the road by all the rain) and put a hole in one of her rear tires. She called me yesterday afternoon after she got home saying that her van was making a funny hissing noise, and in the process of searching for her phone realized that the hissing was the air escaping through the hole in her tire. That's a serious hole. Discount Tire couldn't even fix it, we had to buy a new tire, but thank goodness for road hazard insurance because it was only $15 to replace it.
What else could possibly go wrong? We're only halfway through the week. I'm seriously contemplating curling up in a little ball in a dark room somewhere and counting down the hours until this week is over.
