Remember Me? Summary, Part 1

Blessings, Darlings!  Remember Me?

It's been a while, hasn't it?  Let me give you a quick summary of what I've been up to since the middle of November.  BTW - this 'quick summary' is going to take several blog posts.....

Around noon on Saturday, November 17, 2012, we got a call from my Mother In Law's live-in boyfriend called, saying "You better get here quick, she doesn't have long."  Uh ... what?  Turned out she had fallen in the kitchen and couldn't get up.  He and a neighbor had moved her to her bed .... where she was agitated and fallen out of it, too.  I insisted that he call an ambulance (which he was against calling, on the grounds that they couldn't afford the bill.  Never mind Medicare and co-insurance ... but more on the co-insurance later).  I won that battle, the ambulance was called and they took her to the hospital. 

BROKEN HIP

My MIL being 92, no one should be surprised that the issue was a broken hip.  So the Hubby, as next of kin to his very confused Alzheimer's-stricken mother, had to decide what treatment path to follow.  Bed rest until ... healed? Surgery?  Would it require a hip replacement?  The surgeon didn't exactly burn up the lines getting in touch with us with details on what surgery would be required...   While we waiting for more details of the surgical options, I looked up probable outcomes.  None of them were good.  Huge likelihood of death (from infection from bedsores or other complications) if no surgery, huge likelihood of death (from general decline and other complications) if surgery.  But her level of pain would be reduced if the bone was surgically repaired.  So, we chose surgery, which fortunately would NOT include hip replacement.

Very few will be surprised that by that age, she was already on an assortment of medicine ... one of which was a blood thinner.  By the end of surgery (which was several days after the hip broke) she had needed several pints of blood and, due to the fall, was a bruised mess. 

Worse that that, going under anesthesia had made her Alzheimer's FAR FAR worse.  For a while she didn't know her name.  I don't know if she ever even remembered her boyfriend's name (she certainly recognized his face) or remembered the H at all.

Now .... where to go for 'rehab' after the hospital stay would end?  Only two places in her small city would take Medicare patients with Alzheimer's and dementia.  We picked the one with a slightly lower death rate of patients .... but after she got there we discovered that Medicare only covers 21 days.  After that she'd need to rely on medigap insurance or apply for Medicaid. 

But her boyfriend had fucked up payments on the Medigap insurance.  Hubby started to work on seeing if that could be fixed, we researched what was involved with getting her on Medicaid.  Oh, and guess what - the rehab place didn't have any available Medicaid beds, so at day 20 she was switched to the other rehab center, anyway.  Because we didn't know if the insurance thing would be resolved in her favor or not.

Oh, wait - I left another thing out.  We couldn't find the POA (power of attorney) giving Bob authorization to make medical decisions for his mother.  And there was no POA giving him authority over her finances.  We needed that to file for medicaid for her, and should have had that to work on the medigap insurance issues.  So we contacted an attorney chosen almost at random, and paid HIM almost $4K.

During all this, the H flew out there to try to go thru' all her insurance paperwork and such.  During THAT her boyfriend was ... shall we say uncooperative.  So much so that CH moved from staying at his Mom's house (not at ALL her in BF's name) into a hotel, and renting a car.  As if just getting emergency air tickets to her small city wasn't expensive enough.  With all this, our credit card was damn near maxed out.  And with the CH not working .... it's not like we get paid vacations or medical leave, this being our own business and no money comes in if he doesn't work .... our finances went even more to hell.

Oh, and the BF insists that my husband left the paperwork 'a mess, and took lots of stuff'.  In fact, he made copies and gave EVERYTHING back .... and is a Virgo -  organization is his middle name.  He HATES messes, no way he left a mess.

So, that's part 1 of what we've been up to.  Stay tuned for more!

Frondly, Fern

Video Making

Blessings Darlings!

Having a home business means pushing your limits and doing things you never thought you'd do.  And that you have NO training to do.  Which is how the Chubby Hubby and I have found ourselves spending today (Saturday, tho' I'll schedule this post for Monday) working on a video.  Andy Jenkins is running a contest for a free subscription to The Video Boss - see the details here.  We want to win it.  Actually, we NEED to win it - you should see how painful our video is.  Actually, you WILL be abe to see it, since we'll be uploading it to Andy's YouTube channel to enter the contest.

I've filmed mega mansions (and the CH being dragged away from them).  We've done Oven Cam shots (with the camera 'mounted' in the oven in a bowl of raw rice to hold it at the proper angle).  Most those shots showed how dirty my oven is - ooops.

We are battling gnats outside and the learning curve on Camtasia software inside.  We're not done with the outside filming, but the noon time sun is preventing us from getting the right camera angles.

I plan to make some Wiccan, Druid, general Pagan, and Magic videos sometime, so doing this will help that goal as well!  Never a dull moment here.

Frondly, Fern

My Husband's Still an Ebay Virgin

Blessings, Darlings!

Being frugal combined with having a home business means looking for bargains on products.  A product that saves hours of time and frustration is an asset, and usually worth buying - but we still want to get it at it's best price.

Husband has decided that we need PowerPoint 2010 only from Office 2010 (hey, BTW - I'm not getting paid to promote any  products, and I'm up front when talking about products we sell that, hey, I own that business) that works with Camptasia 7 and makes it easier to create then relocate full slide shows.  Okay, but what's the best way to do that?  We have Office 2003, and the Evil Empire of MicroSoft won't let us do a cheap upgrade to 2010 directly, which would be our choice to do.  They WILL let you have a free upgrade if you have Office 2007, but only thru' the end of this month.

So, off to Craigslist, Ebay, and Google to see what's available in at what price for Office 2007 Pro.  Found one suspiciously cheap, couldn't find out a THING about the company, decided it was too likely to be a scam.  Found a good looking one on Ebay, but some of the fine print on the MSFT end of the deal makes it harder to use with Ebay purchases, and this was a lab bench copy.  Craigslist didn't have anything.  Amazon prices were sky-high.

So, husband is buying Power Point only, not the full suite, for whatever point one of the local office supply stores has it at.  He can get it today, which is nice, it won't cost what a full copy of Office (either 2007 or 2010) would cost.

I just hope he doesn't bring home a fax machine - story about THAT some other day!

Frondly, Fern