The Newsletter Thingy
The Sybarite Newsletter: Still Alive, Kinda
Back in the saddle but smoking a lot of cigarettes. Also: sandwiches.
Greetings from my bed — otherwise known as Sybarite HQ. It’s been a long time since I’ve written a newsletter, because life got really messy. Again.
My father’s assisted living facility was bought by another company, and apparently they don’t give the level of care he needs, even though the first company did. Their suggested solution? To hire a full time caregiver to hang out with him at the assisted living facility.
The assisted living facility for my father costs $8,600 a month. Same goes for Mom’s care. We are therefore spending $17,200 a month. An extra private caregiver is $12,600 a month (at least, you you pay them minimum wage and all the relevant taxes). When I explained to the assisted living facility that my family can’t afford $29,800 a month, (and if we could he’d be at home), and that when I moved my father in they assured me they had the ability to care for my father until the end of his Parkinson’s nightmare, they sort of shrug. “This new company just doesn’t do that care level,” the Assisted Living Coordinator told me over the phone.
And yet when I tell them that I’m going to look for a new place for him, they change their tune. “Oh, we’re caring for him really well,” said a wellness nurse. “I’m sure you are,” I said calmly, “but then why are you telling me to hire someone else?”
I’ll spare you the end of that conversation. I’d like to say that I’m being gaslit by the facility, but that word isn’t quite right, mostly because it’s now used every time the guy we’re seeing doesn’t call us back. And this is on another level entirely. Organizational gaslighting? Corporate gaslighting? Word suggestions for whatever this is are welcome.
Also, guess what? It turns out that you can’t get someone into a skilled nursing facility unless they first have a three-day hospital stay. This means, for example, that if your Dad is unable to feed himself, he still can’t go to a skilled nursing facility because he’s otherwise healthy as a horse and doesn’t need to go to a hospital. When I asked someone who works at another assisted living facility what other people do in this situation, she answered “I don’t know. It’s a quagmire.”
But seriously, what do other people do? When I’ve told people about the saga of caring for aging parents, people confidently say things that just aren’t true: that Medicare should cover assisted living (it doesn’t); that having a trust should protect my parents’ money (it doesn’t). People comment that I should just ask people “how can I make this happen?” as if that changes the idiotic Medicare rules about a 3-day hospital stay.
I’m also considering putting a hit out on the Kaiser “social worker” I’ve been dealing with over the last two weeks. I mean, fuck it. When I got a list of the skilled nursing facilities that contract with Kaiser, I looked them up on Medicare.gov. Two of them were cited for abuse by the state. So I called the social worker back to let him know, Hey, your hospital contracts with places that apparently beat the shit out of seniors.
“Oh, those reviews are exaggerated,” he said as if Medicare.gov was actually Yelp. “They aren’t reviews,” I said through gritted teeth, violent fantasies starting to dance through my head. But I kept it together, and calmly explained that the Medicare.gov website showed the state actually cited these places for abuse. Not the same thing as a review about an espresso martini being too sweet.
Moving on to another issue, I said to the social worker, “if your policy is…” he interrupted me and said “Adeline, it’s not my policy..” And that’s when I started screaming. “Listen,” I yelled “I when I say ‘your policy’ I obviously mean Kaiser’s policy.” But what I really wanted to say, and what I want to say now, is politically incorrect. So politically incorrect it likely goes against Medium rules, which don’t allow you to disparage a group of people.
So I’ll be more vague, and ask: What the fuck is wrong with the generations that came after GenX? Why don’t young social workers know that Medicare.gov is different than a Reddit thread? I realize this one social worker is only anecdotal evidence, but I also know that the world seems to be increasingly filled with total fucking morons. GenX is comprised about by about 65 million people and the Millenials clock in at 72 million people. Same with GenZ. About 144 million people in these generations. You do the math.
So I’ve been sitting in the backyard, smoking a lot. So much that I think that I got nicotine poisoning the other night; I guess I’m nothing if not committed. And this is why it’s been a long-ass time since you’ve heard from Sybarite. I’m smoking cigarettes, barfing, crying and screaming a lot. Somebody should probably take over this publication for a bit.
I have gotten some submissions for Sybarite over the last month, all of which have promise but are just not quite right. I blame myself: I’m still not effectively explaining what this publication is about. And I think I might give up on that too, and just say in the immortal words of Supreme Court Associate Justice Potter Stewart “I know it when I see it.” So send in whatever you want, and just be down for some snarky, intense editing. As I said above: fuck it.
However, if you need some inspiration, I’m really fascinated by sandwiches lately, perhaps because sandwiches are having a moment in The New York Times. There’s an article arguing that the best sandwiches show restraint. And there’s another about the tomato sandwich. If, like me, you were a nerdy kid who spent a lot of time reading, you know that the tomato sandwich is the bête noir of the cook in Harriet the Spy. Because I loved that book so much, the tomato sandwich has always held a central place in my psyche.
This is a long way of saying: send in your favorite sandwich recipes, meditations on sandwiches, riffs on the tomato sandwich. Sandwiches that go with cigarettes and tears.
AD, Sybarite-in-Chief
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