spike wrote:My stepdad now prefers to sleep in a chair at night, quite common I guess. Probably to do with his congestive heart failure and comfort breathing. He needs a more comfortable chair - a medical chair really - that’s like a big cushy recliner but also has a mechanism that will help him get up and out of it.
My mom has done the research and next step is to go to the local showroom and pick one out, but she seems to be dragging her feet. I’m assuming it’s a combination of cost, acceptance that his disease is progressing, and perhaps feeling overwhelmed. I offered to help last week but heard nothing back when I asked for the name of the place that carries them. It’s on my to do list to call her today and follow up.
Sometimes Medicare will help pay for one.
They will cover like 80% of the mechanism, not the entire price of the chair. Anyway, my mom looked into this and they do not qualify for any Medicare coverage.
She’s back to looking on Amazon; I just warned her that there appear to be a lot of too good to be true chairs in there for like $400-500.
spike wrote:My stepdad now prefers to sleep in a chair at night, quite common I guess. Probably to do with his congestive heart failure and comfort breathing. He needs a more comfortable chair - a medical chair really - that’s like a big cushy recliner but also has a mechanism that will help him get up and out of it.
My mom has done the research and next step is to go to the local showroom and pick one out, but she seems to be dragging her feet. I’m assuming it’s a combination of cost, acceptance that his disease is progressing, and perhaps feeling overwhelmed. I offered to help last week but heard nothing back when I asked for the name of the place that carries them. It’s on my to do list to call her today and follow up.
Sometimes Medicare will help pay for one.
They will cover like 80% of the mechanism, not the entire price of the chair. Anyway, my mom looked into this and they do not qualify for any Medicare coverage.
She’s back to looking on Amazon; I just warned her that there appear to be a lot of too good to be true chairs in there for like $400-500.
cover 80% of this mechanism
*points at crotch*
Malloy wrote:making this place inhospitable to posting is really the only move left.
My stepdad was supposed to get five staples removed from his head today, related to a fall he had ten days ago. Ended up having it done in the ER at 7am this morning, after another fall at 5am, so they could put ten fresh ten staples in.
This is all culminating towards transitioning him to a nursing home in the weeks before we move to Oz, which will be a challenge. It just isn’t safe for him to be at home anymore.
I just learned last night from my cousin I grew up next door to, that her mom/my aunt was diagnosed with early onset dementia a couple years ago. There will be no SS left for Gen X and after.
My sister and her family are down at the lake with us and last night she FaceTimed my mom and stepdad and my mom said she’s sad she couldn’t come because of the prison she’s in looking after my stepdad and now I’m totally bummed and don’t know what to do.
I got a call from my sister around 7:30 tonight that my stepdad started choking, my mom had performed Heimlich unsuccessfully, and then CPR until the paramedics had arrived. He was on the way to the ER and we were advised to come up. He’s in the ICU on a respirator and unresponsive, but his heart is still pumping (after two cardiac episodes tonight). It’s not looking good, but we’ll see what the morning brings.
Carl Sandburg wrote:There is a wolf in me . . . fangs pointed for tearing gashes . . . a red tongue for raw meat . . . and the hot lapping of blood—I keep this wolf because the wilderness gave it to me and the wilderness will not let it go.
There is a fox in me . . . a silver-gray fox . . . I sniff and guess . . . I pick things out of the wind and air . . . I nose in the dark night and take sleepers and eat them and hide the feathers . . . I circle and loop and double-cross.
There is a hog in me . . . a snout and a belly . . . a machinery for eating and grunting . . . a machinery for sleeping satisfied in the sun—I got this too from the wilderness and the wilderness will not let it go.
There is a fish in me . . . I know I came from salt-blue water-gates . . . I scurried with shoals of herring . . . I blew waterspouts with porpoises . . . before land was . . . before the water went down . . . before Noah . . . before the first chapter of Genesis.
There is a baboon in me . . . clambering-clawed . . . dog-faced . . . yawping a galoot's hunger . . . hairy under the armpits . . . here are the hawk-eyed hankering men . . . here are the blonde and blue-eyed women . . . here they hide curled asleep waiting . . . ready to snarl and kill . . . ready to sing and give milk . . . waiting—I keep the baboon because the wilderness says so.
There is an eagle in me and a mockingbird . . . and the eagle flies among the Rocky Mountains of my dreams and fights among the Sierra crags of what I want . . . and the mockingbird warbles in the early forenoon before the dew is gone, warbles in the underbrush of my Chattanoogas of hope, gushes over the blue Ozark foothills of my wishes—And I got the eagle and the mockingbird from the wilderness.
O, I got a zoo, I got a menagerie, inside my ribs, under my bony head, under my red-valve heart—and I got something else: it is a man-child heart, a woman-child heart: it is a father and mother and lover: it came from God-Knows-Where: it is going to God-Knows-Where—For I am the keeper of the zoo: I say yes and no: I sing and kill and work: I am a pal of the world: I came from the wilderness.
Last edited by tragabigzanda on Tue January 13, 2026 7:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.
My stepfather passed away this morning. I’ve known him for 31 years and he would’ve been married to my mom 24 years next week. It sucks losing two dads.
