This and That and The Other

I was sitting with Gregory today having brought a bag of chocolate covered mini-donuts as a gift. He ate two of them in bites that I offered. Then he leaned forward and pointed to what I thought was the glass of water on the dresser. "This," he said insistently, "This."

Surprised I said, "Do you want some water?"

He replied, "Yes." So in my amazement I helped him to take a few drinks.

"Do you want more?" I asked.

"No," he calmly said.

Now did I read into the conversation or was he communicating? I know what I would like to think. What do you think?

• • •

Next chapter in the Broda wheelchair fiasco. As you may have read in past posts, Gregory has had over one dozen chairs and maybe one or two of them worked "well enough." Sometimes when it stopped working, Advocare, the chair rental company,  would replace the old chair with one that was worse. How do you figure that?

Lieberman pays for the chair rental as part of the monthly fees. Medicare and/or Medicaid do not pay for chair rental. Go figure. M&M would pay for a custom chair if made for Gregory but not a Broda custom chair. Go figure.

Broda is a really good chair for Gregory, when it works, as he basically lives in the chair. It supports his back and by the nature of its construction has helped his skin from breaking down. Also it can be tilted into a comfortable angle for resting and even further when he wants to take a nap.

So I talked with Broda and got a lot of information about how the whole thing of chair rental works and was given the name of the VP of Advocare who provides the rental chairs to Lieberman. 

Today I called Advocare, under the guise of wanting to find out more information and talked with the VP, dropping the name of the VP of Broda who gave me her name and phone number.

I told her my dilemma and how this has gone on since Gregory started at LIeberman some 18 months ago. I also supportively told her about what seemed like quality control issues and dropped the hint that many family members and RCAs have complained that the chairs just do not work well.

I understand that Advocare has a fleet of chairs that are reconditioned and reissued as residents change. Maybe they are having quality care issues or maybe the reuse life of the chairs is past.

Either way, the VP of Advocare assured me that Gregory would get a perfectly working chair today (which arrived a few hour later as I was leaving) and that they were going to send out a crew to check all of the chairs at Lieberman!

I didn't want to get into trouble by inadvertently overstepping my boundaries, so I let the Nurse Director (who usually orders new chairs) know what happened, and the Assistant Head Nurse for the Building (who previously got involved with the possibility of a custom chair,) and the Director of Facilities.

I explained what had taken place "just because I had inquired about Medicare and wanted to understand how the wheel chair situation worked and that I was thinking of just buying one of the $3,500 chairs brand new for Gregory.

The Director of Facilities laughed when I lovingly told her I was letting her know about what happened because she is in charge of everything that goes on in the building. She replied, "No you are in charge!" I laughed. She continued, "You get things done, and I like that!"

• • •

Sometimes when you are trying to take off a dirty or put on a clean undershirt and/or top shirt; Gregory is resistive. I helped Manny with the task today and it was difficult.

I asked Manny if when he is helping Gregory with his exercises, does Gregory resist, I was just curious if it was because of the changing or that Gregory's arms were somehow in pain? Manny replied that the resistance is usually because of the ordeal of being changed but that usually Gregory is pretty cooperative. 

He added that when they are exercising, "if Gregory resists or 'goes into himself,' I stop what I am doing and let it rest. I go back last when Gregory is present and try again."

How intelligent, aware, caring, and loving is that of Manny? Our Saint Manny or at least a Very Highly Placed Angel. (P.S. Hi Manny! He keeps up with my "ravings" by reading this blog:-)