LIFE CHANGES - BIG TIME!
In the beginning of this blog I didn’t plan on burdening anybody with a whole load of personal business but things change and here goes. My husband of 33 years, up to a month ago, was a full time practicing psychiatrist. He had some surgery at that point and has not done well to the point of being confined to a skilled nursing home. It is not clear whether he will be able to return home and definitely will not be able to return to work which is very sad for him. I guess most of you ladies have leaarned that men tend to define themselves in terms of their work and when that disappears they feel very lost and suddenly feel unworthy. The major difficulty, for me, is in medical planning and getting any physician to assume overall management for my husband’s health care. Primary care doctors state they don’t handle the patient in the hospital and turn it over to someone else. Then the hospital physician turns it over to someone else when you are confined to a nursing home and on and on. The whole issue is just incredibly frustrating and distressing. When I visit the nursing home though I see many patient’s families going through the same annoyance and impatience with service that is given to their family member. The whole scenario tends to make you feel very alone but I am very lucky is that I have wonderful family support and that just makes all the difference. Well, enough of this - if any of you have gone through something like this, please add a note - I really think sharing information on subjects like this is extremely helpful to everyone.