How did I get here?

Let me start out by saying I never expected to be living in a nursing home at the age of 55. Actually I never expected to be living in a nursing home period. Few people do I suspect. Ten years ago a tumor was found inside my spinal cord. They removed it and I learned to walk again. Easy Peasy... OK, not Easy Peasy, but I went from wheelchair to walker to cane to walking. I did it and while not fully functional, I got around. Two years ago I quit a job in Pennsylvania because I was miserable. I've worked in TV for 30 years and have always been able to find work so I didn't worry. Then the recession/depression happened and no one was hiring. In order to save money I let my Cobra health care go, then discovered no one else would insure me with my disability. To make matters worse, the money was running out, my 401K was a quarter of its former bulk and then in April of '09 I started losing feeling again in my right leg. Did I tell my family or go see a doctor? No, I'm stupid and decided to see if it will get better by itself. Big mistake. Then I fell in September and to quote a bad commercial "could not get up". So I laid there on my apartment floor for a week until my brother and sisters became frantic and called my landlady. She broke in, then there were ambulances, hospitals, MRIs, CAT scans, etc. Finally they did a test called a mylogram, a lovely procedure where they inject dye in your spinal cord and hang you upside down, and discovered that my spinal cord had not healed correctly after the original surgery. According to the neurosurgeon, I have a "tethered spinal cord" and my next fall could tear my spinal cord out. My family (who all live in North Carolina) freaked and I now find myself in a Pennsylvania nursing home learning to walk again and waiting for disability to kick in so I can move to a rehab facility in NC. Since I have to be here anyway I thought I would give people a preview of what could be your future in a nursing home.

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Things Overheard in the Hallway 2


"I'm not gonna go sit in that room, it's full of old women", Verna, age 92.
Verna and I were in therapy together (Verna calls it gym) and developed a friendship. After we both "graduated"/got booted out of therapy, they tried to get Verna to take part in the Walk to Dine program (some of the aides call it the Drag to Dine program). Verna objected to being in the company of old women, even though physically she was one of the oldest in the room. Mentally, she is around 35.
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1 comment:

  1. AnonymousJanuary 22, 2010 at 9:53 AM

    Her mental age is probably why her physical age is 92! Hope we all have that mentality when we reach her age!

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