from bad to worse...

...with the auntie crisis: she is completely totally refusing to go to any rehab facility. Will not agree that she is unable to go home and care for herself. Even though when she fell last Sunday she cracked her pelvic bone and the femur where the artificial joint is glued in. I don't know what we will do. Or what she will do when she is discharged.

She is (thankfully) still an inpatient, at the medical center. We all know you should never go into the hospital on a Friday, or even Thursday. Nothing happens in hospitals on the weekend, so you are just paying for a very expensive motel room if you are there on Saturday and Sunday. Don't know how much longer her insurance is going to be willing to cover that expense. I desperately wish she could/would be talked into going someplace that would help her regain some mobility - as I am pretty sure she cannot get around independently at this point.

Here's what I can see, looking into my crystal ball. This is part of the conversation I had with the social worker at the hospital when I was there on Tuesday. As the next of kin, the cousins and I will likely approach this baffling situation in the same manner as one would go about eating an elephant:  One bite at a time.

I know, we all know - your choice would be to go home to your safe haven. To be allowed to return to your comfortable, familiar little nest. So when she is obstinate and stubbornly unwilling to be transferred to nursing care, and therefore demands that she will go home - that will happen. But we will insist she must have someone come and stay with her. With two falls in a ten day span, it is pretty apparent that living alone would be very risky.

I expect it won't take long at all for anyone who provides home health care to have their fill of her demands and disagreeableness. So when it is impossible to find people who will go in and provide care in her home, then it will be time to make some changes. I look into my crystal ball and see 'relocation' in the future. Not some thing she will accept graciously, but there comes a point when you have to take the approach you use with teenagers: 'You don't have to like it, you just have to do it.'