It’s Tuesday night, 8 PM, in Far North Queensland. The dark falls rapidly in the tropics.
It was an emotionally horrific day, today.
But first, yesterday, since I didn’t report. Long story short: we got my mom checked into Carinya for her “respite” – a short, 3 week “sampler” at a nursing home that had been scheduled and set up BEFORE all this excitement and complication involving her fall, her stay in the hospital and my unplanned trip over here to deal with that. So despite the complications, the hospital urged us to attempt to avail ourselves of the “respite” anyway, and Carinya kept up their end of the deal. The problem, of course, is that now it is imperative (per Australian “authorities” – social services, doctors, etc) that Ann be in permanent nursing home care, but unfortunately Carinya ONLY had on offer this “respite”, with no permanent beds available.
So I’ve been shopping around for a permanent nursing home slot.
Meanwhile Ann got settled in Carinya. It’s not clear she considers it any better than the hospital – same issue with intrusive staff, same issue with not being able to just do her own thing… but that’s the whole point of being in care. The good: you’re getting care. The bad: people tell you what to do. Different people have different ways of deciding if the good outweighs the bad. It’s pretty clear that Ann feels the bad far outweighs the good. I suspect she may never change her mind about that.
This morning I had a meeting with the Centrelink people (they who denied my basic humanity on my last visit). This time I brought along an Australian (Ann’s close friend Kristen, who is Ann’s “nominee” for Centrelink since they only accept Australian citizens in that role, and which, apparently, a Power-of-Attorney fails to override). In this way, I got to have a good conversation with a friendly and competent Centrelink employee, which was refreshing.
Outcome: Ann’s finances are not much changed over the past year, and so we got about the same information as we’d managed to extract last year from them, but in a neater, more “ready-to-submit-to-care-facilities” format.
Which I immediately did. After the morning at Centrelink, I saw Ann, Kirsten and Tash at Carinya for a short time, then I raced down the hill to Redlynch (Cairns north suburbs) and interviewed with Christine there.
With the additional documentation, and a “pass” from the “clinical evaluation,” Regis Redlynch (a care facility) was ready to offer a permanent room.
Here is a picture of the actual room on offer – looking out the window. It’s not much different from the view out the window at Carinya, to be honest. A parking area and some tropical greenery beyond.
Some people have asked why I don’t post pictures of Ann on this. The reason is simple: Ann doesn’t like having her picture taken (she never has). And I’m trying to respect her boundaries in every way I am able, given they’re being violated in so many other ways.
So. With Christine’s offer in hand, I returned up the hill to Atherton, and found my mom alone in her new room at Carinya. She seemed unexpectedly lucid, so I decided that it would be as good a time as any to try to discuss with her what was happening. There was still a need to repeat the same information multiple times – it’s not much different from dealing with Arthur, in that respect.
When I told her how things were shaping up, she was, of course, heartbroken. It was never her wish to go into any kind of care. Of course, we can say that that was a very unrealistic wish. But that doesn’t change the fact that that has been her wish. But the options are limited. My understanding is that Australian social services will simply not permit her to return home – if we don’t find an option, she’ll get housed in the hospital or whatever care facility they can scrounge together, and sell her home to pay for it. This sounds drastic: it’s meant to reflect the worst-case scenario – if she had no friends, and if her overseas relatives neglected her.
Presenting her with this stark choice – remainder of days in hospital and/or state-chosen care, or, alternately, this facility in Cairns, she quite sincerely insisted she saw no difference. Neither choice was close to acceptable. “That’s so mean,” she moaned. “That’s awful.” She cried.
That was it. That’s where things stand.
I have to make the choice. It will be “on me” and “my fault” that she’s stuck in care, or I can walk away and it can be my fault for abandoning her. I get to feel guilty regardless. I’ve taken variations of both of those paths at different points in my life, many times. It’s the set up as it’s always been with my mom. Nothing new there.
So I’ll make a decision tomorrow.
Here is a picture from a turnout about halfway between Ravenshoe (my mom’s house) and Atherton (the main town, a kind of “county seat”). It’s a view out down into the valley where Atherton is, looking northward, from the heights where Ravenshoe is.
Anther small picture: did you know that the Australian state of Queensland and the US state of Alaska are almost exactly the same size, in land area?
