Message for InHome Care, Inc. and Medicare...

I don't pay rent. Since I don't pay rent, I should be prepared to hear a representative of Medicare make the following argument:

"Why should we give you someone to help your mother with housework? You don't pay rent! So, you should do it!."

Thus, you hear above the sort of wise words/thought (that's not an exact quote! but only the gist of it) supplied by a nurse from InHome Care Inc.

Yeah right! I've just come from the grocery store, where I bought the groceries my parents need. Then I started scrubbing the pieces of my mother's stove. Then I was interrupted because my eighty-six year old father had to "make a bowel movement". He is moaning, and he is groaning. He is whimpering like a baby. "It hurts," he says, from time to time.

And, it stinks. The whole house stinks.

And I've got to go round opening the windows. And when my father is done, I will help him stand up. I will remind him to wash his hands, and I will give him the salad I've just prepared.

This whole process takes from forty to fifty minutes----every day.

But, I don't pay rent. So, I must be a bad boy, not contributing to the wealth of the already wealthy and all that jazz.

Oh, no! That's what the nurse said. She was warning me about the people at Medicare, what they might say. In other words--what she did not say, but the message is clear---they will look around for excuses so my parents wont' get help....

In other words, my parents should regard me as a source of income----and I, presumably, should do a "cost-benefit" analysis of my relationship with them. (In which case, I would move out immediately, and find a job and an apartment of my own....)

The nonsense I hear in this country----out of the mouths of so-called professionals---makes me want to puke.

Oh yeah, I feel guilty because I actually haven't done any vacuuming for a month. --That's the sort of thing clever visiting nurses notice. But when my father is shitting, they ain't here, are they? When he's moaning and groaning, and my mother is struggling to help him. When the house smells like a cesspool, and I'm running around opening the windows, I hear the wise words of the so-called professional care-givers echoing in my ears...... since you don't pay rent you should do the housework....

What a clever insight into our situation. For that I needed a nurse to appear with a thirty minute warning, and to take three or more hours of my time.......(Of course, we shall be lucky if at the end of the process my mother and father each get physical therapy once a week.....)

how very generous is the USA system!!....... a genuinely don't-care system!