Attack of the Minor Crises

Things were going well. I’d gotten my knee to settle down and quit hurting. I’d gotten the VA to cough up another 8 visits to the punch doctor (chiropractor), with the first two scheduled for Tuesday and Thursday of this week. My shoulder and neck were behaving. I stayed up way late Sunday night planning to sleep in Monday so I could stay up half Monday night doing laundry. (There are people here who think nothing of stopping your load in the washer or dryer, taking your clothes out, doing theirs and just leaving your half washed/dried clothes sitting on top of the washer or dryer. The likelihood of this happening diminishes sharply after midnight, however . . .)

So Monday I went to bed after 9:00 a.m. in the morning and had planned to sleep until about 5:00 p.m. so I could stay up and do 2 loads of laundry. About 1:00 p.m., I get a call from our friend CK who is over visiting mom. One of mom’s hearing aids had broken. The little doodad that goes in her ear had come off. CK had called the ear doctor mom had gotten them from and they said her hearing aids were (way) out of warranty and they couldn’t fix it and she would have to come in. She had an appointment for Wednesday afternoon. I had bought mom some el-cheapo Bluetooth compatible hearing aids on Amazon to see if she could hear better on her phone with them but she hadn’t wanted to even try them.

I threw on some clothes, got the Amazon aids (which were still unopened in the packaging) and hiked over to mom’s. Turns out mom’s hearing loss was too profound for them to handle, and when you turned them up high enough to where she could just barely hear, they fed-back and squealed like a piglet caught in a fence.

Mom’s hearing aids are so old they use those little batteries and are not Bluetooth compatible. Even though her hearing deficit is worse in some frequencies than in others, all her current hearing aids do is just make everything louder. The newer hearing aides are adjustable to amplify most in the frequencies where the deficit is greatest. She’d tried to get some like that before but she has used the old ones for so long that the new ones make everything sound strange because she’s hearing in frequencies she’s not used to being able to hear (for about 20 years now). And because they’re not what she’s used to, she doesn’t like them.

We finally got her to where she was using her still-working hearing aid in one ear, and one of the Amazon ones in the other ear. These new hearing aid were rechargeable. She has an extension cord dohicky taped to her night stand that has two USB plugs (one for her phone charging cord and one for her Kindle charging cord) and (incidentally) two regular electrical plugs. These new hearing aids had a USB plug. So I had to hike back to my apartment and get a USB/electrical plug adapter so she could plug those in.

By the time I got back home, I was exhausted and my knee was having a hissy fit. I crawled into bed, put my feet up, and went back to sleep. No way I was schlepping laundry to and from the laundry room. Fortunately, I set both alarms because I glunked out again after I took my Tuesday morning meds and was ten minutes late to my appointment at the punch doctor’s Tuesday afternoon.

Wednesday. Getting mom anywhere is a big production. They have to take her places in a wheelchair van, and I have to climb in and out of them. Quite literally climb. Most of these vans/buses have the ground clearance of a pickup, which is about 2 feet. (People who are only 5’4″ tall have short legs. What can I say?) They teach you in rehab: “Up with the good, down with the bad.” You are supposed to step up with the good/stronger leg. You are supposed to step down onto your bum leg so your stronger leg can control your descent. Now if your bum leg is the left one, work out the mechanics of getting into and out of the passenger side of the van/bus. Yep. Tricky.

So we schlep mom from 17th Street to 114th Street, which is way the heck on the other side of town. We’re sitting in the waiting room at the ear doctor and I’m admiring this pair of prints they have hanging in the waiting room. Then I realize they’ve been hung sideways. Both of them.

They’re two identical prints of the same watercolor of a river bank with trees in the background. But then she’s an ear doctor . . .

Well. The upshot is that mom’s hearing loss has worsened slightly, which is not surprising. Her hearing loss is most profound in the higher frequency, which is typical and which is why she can’t understand (young) women with high voices (they mumble!). Turns out they can send her busted hearing aid off to get it fixed (2-3 weeks) for less than $500, or she can get new hearing aids for upwards of $5K. She won’t like the new ones because she’ll be able to hear frequencies she hasn’t heard in 20 years and things won’t sound the way she’s used to. If they can fix the one she has and that makes her happy, well . . .

She’s got loaners to use until hers get fixed. They’re rechargable, but they came with a USB plug adapter. She’ll have to put up with these until her old ones get fixed. (If they tell you two to three weeks, figure on a month at least.)

And not to put too fine a point on my week so far:

They’re only supposed to last a month or two. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed them since the end of March. Nearly five months. I have no room to complain. Still, I feel I’m allowed to be sad that they’re done. Sigh. Now I can repot all three of them in one swell foop.

Earlier in the month, my cousin and his Mrs. drove over from New Mexico. We go out to eat lunch together (Applebee‘s!), and then they have a visit with mom, and drive back. It’s about a four hour drive one way. Mrs. and I had a nice jaw about books. She’s a reader, too.