One Thing at a Time, Over Twenty Years Worth of Days

Temecula, CA December 2014

So, I was talking to a fellow caregiver yesterday who was having a particularly grim and hard day. Milestone birthdays were involved as was squabbling with The System, and my friend was feeling crabby and exhausted. I told her that as I've grown older and the years have ticked by, I find myself tackling The System in bits, handling maybe one thing a day -- or week or month. Maybe I should say that I handle only one thing a day or week or month not because that's all I can do in any given day or week or month but rather because the effect of doing that thing is generally so debilitating and stressful that it takes at least a day and sometimes a week and maybe even a month to recover. And maybe the reason why the effect of doing that thing is so debilitating is because I've been doing that thing or some other thing for nearly twenty years -- meaning, the effect is or has been cumulative. Meaning just the thought of being on hold and then dealing with Medi-Cal or Anthem Blue Cross or Assurant or the State of California or Accredited Nursing Agency or The Neurologist or The Wheelchair Broker or The Los Angeles Unified School District or The Powers That Be or The Diaper People in St. Louis or the $9,345 chariot bill or the texts from the teachers and aides about seizures or drooling or bowel movements or knees out of joint or constant stimming and humming is enough to have made and continue to make me just this side of crazy.

Or maybe I'm just burnt out.

The one thing I did today was make a call to the agency that helped me to fill out the paperwork and gain conservatorship of Sophie two years ago when she turned 18. I called an attorney at the agency to ask her whether she could help me to figure out Sophie's Medi-Cal situation (and I prefer to pronounce the word situation like the French sit U AH SEE ON with an emphasis on that last syllable because that's what people just this side of crazy do to cope). I'm not going to tell you why I need help with Sophie's Medi-Cal sit-u-ah-see-on because that would be another thing, and that another thing happened last week when I spent three hours with Medi-Cal themselves trying to figure it out. I told myself when I hung up the phone then that I would deal with the sit-u-ah-see-on next week, because I knew it would take about a week to recover. So, I made the call today and left a message and that's it for today. That's all I'm going to do as far as sit-u-ah-see-ons go.

I hope someone out there finds this helpful.

For the rest of you, here's a funny story.

Oliver has been using the word dildo in a joking, obnoxious, thirteen year old boy way for the last couple of weeks, and during one interminable stretch of it, I said, Enough! Enough with the word, Oliver! Just enough! And he stopped and said, Mom, do you even KNOW what a dildo is? and Reader, I controlled myself from bursting into flames or laughter and then told him that if he asked me another dumb question, I'd give him a lecture on onanism.