Bad Business!

Last week really was!  ...Naughty, bad hospice company!

Some of you know that I am a caregiver for my mother who has Alzheimer's Disease.  She is now bedridden, and is in a bad way mentally and in rapid decline, but her nearly 99 year old body is still pretty healthy.  Anyway, I had been very dis-satisfied for a few months now with the hospice company that has been providing services for her.  They changed over leadership, and have been so corrupted by greed that they were making good, solid experienced employees leave and the others were fired, and have hired less satisfying employees to replace them.   Care has been a chore with the new people, and supplies were not brought in sufficiently or appropriately.  So, last week I decided to change to a new company.  Well, there is huge $$$ in hospice care.  Medicare pays an average of $150 per day for patients and my mother requires so little additional care that they only met the basic requirements of one nurse visit per week and one social worker visit per month and a re-certification visit each 60 days.  That means for around 4-1/2 hours per month they get about $4500.  Do I wish that the government was putting all that in my pocket!  My mom is a "cash cow" in other words.  Minimal care and cost and maximum $$moola$$.  Long story short:  they made all the trouble for me to switch that they could, including withholding transfer forms and trying to get Mom bumped out of the system  They wanted to pick up the bed and all her equipment the very next morning at 9 AM.  Considering she sleeps about 20 hours a day now I had to tell them I was not home and wouldn't be able to accommodate them until later in the afternoon.  Luckily, the new company jumped through a lot of hoops and we had a bed and other equipment by 7:30 that evening.  I don't think Tidewater is done with me yet, as I plan to let a few people know like the referring doctor, Medicare and the Better Business Bureau.

I Played Hookie..

Yes, I played hookie knowing full well that this time of year is ALWAYS devoted to getting taxes done.  For me, it means forcing my focus into unavoidable paper sorting, shredding, QuickBooks and TurboTax, and gathering various forms to fill out.  I have no time to dream of creative pursuits, yet ideas and inspirations  seem to flood in on me and will even wake me from a deep sleep.  So, this morning I gave in and allowed myself to whip out a few more of these Tribal Gypsy bangles that I did pre-taxes. They provided just the relief I needed!

I got the recipe from FancifulDevices on etsy.  I love Marina's work and ingenuity.  She is my latest jewelry heroine.