I don’t mean to make you jealous, but I have to talk about the TAM again (Twentieth Anniversary Mac). Take comfort, dear readers… this brief spell of apparent gloating will soon be tempered…
The wife and kids are taking a vacation from me. Well, that’s not really true (not completely anyway). We were supposed to take a grand tour of New England… our ancestral &…
My area of relative academic expertise is psychology. I say “relative” because I haven’t put this expertise to actual use since I graduated from UF. I didn’t go on to earn any advanced degrees, and it seems like it’s been a really, really long freaking time since I graduated.
Living through my own psychological thriller (of sorts) has given me cause to look back on my…
Earlier this week my mother was hospitalized involuntarily under the provisions of a Florida Law known as the “Baker Act.” When the legal requirement for the hospital to hold her expired, and they determined that her benefits (through her health insurance) had been used up, she was shipped out to the first facility that would take her. It was an assisted living facility, which…
The ill-conceived placement with the assisted living facility came to an abrupt end this morning. We got a call from the facility reporting that our family member was “out of control,” wandering the halls breaking lamps, overturning furniture, and upsetting the other residents. My dad left straight away, telling them he’d be there soon to pick her up, with no idea where we were…
I don’t know when it was, but sometime between my childhood and parenthood, bare footed children became the height of neglect. As a child, freedom from footwear followed freedom from responsibility. The backyard was our summer oasis, relieved from the yolk of academia. The bare, dirt stained foot was no less an icon of liberty than a bald eagle soaring on the updrafts of a hot summer…
Today’s events will be a boon to bank accounts, but it’s unclear wether medical outcomes will benefit or suffer. Yesterday, phone interviews with assisted living facilities produced the conclusion that my mother needed more care than they could provide. Today, with the Baker Act placement ending and my mother’s insurance coverage exhausted, the hospital has decided that an…
There’s a law in Florida called the Baker Act; a law which gives law enforcement and medical professionals the authority to hold people with mental illness – specifically those who show signs of being a danger to others or themselves.
There are few (if any) public facilities to provide this emergency care, so patients are cared for in private facilities… usually a floor set aside…
I’ve had a vested interest in the health care system this year, as some of you may know. Yesterday I got to live out the hospital admissions nightmare that some of you may have read about in the media. We went to the ER yesterday morning around 8 a.m. As of this writing, my mother is still waiting in the ER to be admitted. For those of you keeping score at home, that’s about thirty-one…
Imagine you grew up in a seemingly ideal home. Your dad worked Monday through Friday and was home for dinner and weekends. Your mom stayed home, cooked the meals, and handled the domestic duties… always there when you came home from school, or needed something to drink. Your dad was the king of the castle, but your mom was the queen of everyday needs. The only thing missing from Leave it to…