Ron home

I brought Ron home from rehab last Friday and it's been a challenge. There have been nights in the last week where I felt like I was living with a newborn. Every little move he makes, I'm instantly awake. I'm worried that he's going to fall when trying to get out of the bed or get into the bathroom. The door from our room to the bathroom is too narrow for his walker, so he has to go out into the hall and then into the bathroom. He fell Sunday morning (lost his balance) and landed on his LEFT hip and that scared the daylights out of me. Luckily, he hit the wall behind him first and then down or he might have ended up back in the hospital. He did put a hole in the wall that I'm going to have to have someone fix. Oh well... better the wall than another hip! I had to call Rex at 8:00 in the morning to have him come down to pick Ron up off the floor.

I've had many conversations with Ron over the past week about his habits, his medications, and how he sleeps in between conversations and such. He scared me so much Sunday morning that I went ape-sh** on him when I found out he'd gotten into some medication that I had HID from him so he wouldn't take too much of it - and he took it anyway! I know that it slows down his response time and he can't afford to be any slower than he already is. Because he took this, I'm sure that it is the reason he fell because he couldn't catch his balance again. I threatened him with nursing home residency if he didn't straighten up. He has a lot of short-term memory problems, but he KNEW that I had this medicine hidden and he KNEW that I didn't want him taking any extra, and he hid the fact from me that he took it until the next day. So, he has enough memory to know when he's doing something that he's not supposed to do.

In all honesty, I'm not sure realistically how much longer he'll be able to stay home. I know I've said this before, but things have really changed with the hip replacement.

Speaking of... oh my - the bills (and insurance claims) are rolling in. His hospital bill was over $32,000, the surgeon and his PA each charged $2900 for the surgery, the ambulance was $650, the rehab was $9600 (that's just for the December portion; not received the claim for the first 11 days of January), the primary care doctor bill was $450 for the hospital, the PA and doctor for the nursing home (rehab) was $90 or $135 every day they saw him and "supposedly" one of them came in every day of the week. Insurance picked up the entire tab for the hospital and the December portion of the nursing home. They also paid all but $453 of the surgeon and all but $105 of the ambulance. I'm not sure how much of the various other doctor bills or the January nursing home bill will be paid by them or owed by me. At the very least, I'll owe $1750 (his deductible) and then possibly 20% of the rest (reasonable and customary) until the maximum out-of-pocket ($3500) for him has been met.  I'm hoping with the addition of Humana Medicare that most of the extra expenses will be picked up by them. We shall see...

In the meantime, we also have a visiting nurse (twice weekly), physical therapy (twice weekly), occupational therapy (twice weekly), and home health attendant (once per week to help him shower). Those are "extra" charges that I haven't got calculated into the above charge. I'm so glad to have the help that I'm just not going to worry about the financial aspect because I know they'll all take payments.

Payment plans are definitely in my future!