My mother in law's back in the hospital

[chrisinhouston]

This has been an interesting month. My mother in law got a new shoulder back in early December. Her shoulder replacement had failed from a torn rotator cuff so they did a new kind of replacement called a reverse shoulder implant. Basically they put the ball coming out of the shoulder blade bone and a socket on the upper end of the arm. They rework a muscle to do the job of the rotator tendon. The surgery went great and she had a post op check up at Christmas and the doctor gave her PT orders to get her shoulder working again.

Then she got a bad cold and about a week later (like January 2nd) she started throwing up a lot so we took her to the hospital. They treated her for a few days and she went home but it started again so back to the hospital she went. We had our trip to Istanbul planned so we went ahead since our sons are here and could handle things and we figured it would only be a few days. Things went from bad to worse and they ended up removing her gall bladder and found she had a really bad urinary infection so treated her for that. We got back from our trip and it's been 2 1/2 weeks and we are just starting to feel like she may be well enough to be discharged. The Dr. said today that most likely Monday he will release her and she will need to go to a skilled nursing type place as she is still a bit weak to go to her independent living apartment.

My wife usually goes to see her on the way to work and tries to be there to feed her breakfast, she wasn't eating for so long that they were feeding her intravenously and she just has so little an appetite from her stomach shrinking and the lovely hospital food. I go at lunch and my wife goes back at dinner on the way home. The hospital is super busy with sick people so the nursing staff has limited time to sit and feed her.

Anyway, a bit of a long post here but it got me thinking again about aging and how we deal with it. She is lucky enough to have Medicare and a really good secondary insurance through her late husband's retirement package from Xerox. Just about everything is covered 100% which is good. But it made me wonder about the costs of keeping older people alive. Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating leaving her to die but one has to wonder about the costs. I have no idea what the shoulder surgery cost but I imagine a lot as it was at a special orthopedic hospital and the Dr. was one of the top guys in his field here in Houston. And then there is what will be 3 weeks in the hospital, the surgery and after the surgery when she was still not doing well she was on a floor with care just a bit less than intensive care, essentially pretty much every hour someone was checking on her and taking BP and temperature. I would imagine that this will be at least $25K or so for all this, maybe more. And then there will be the skilled nursing facility to come next week, maybe a 1 or 2 week stay. After caring for my parents and seeing myself and my wife aging I wonder if this is what I want to do. I think about the quality of life when you are at an advanced age and with all kinds of health problems.

Sort of a ramble here but I hope I don't end up in a situation like this. Maybe my kids or grand kids will just push me out in the snow.