These home health care services from Medicare have been a mixed bag of bandages, advice (good and bad), and more weird requirements.

I have a nurse visiting every other day, who photographs whatever open wounds I have (several are finally healing up, despite still being horribly swollen) and then bandages and wraps my right leg, and bandages my left (I put my compression stocking on that one). I also have a physical therapist who visits twice a week, and she gives me exercises, evaluates such things as where I’m sitting, sleeping, and working, and makes suggestions to help my condition.

THE GOOD:
Silicone bandages with sticky edges. I hope whoever invented these got RICH from it. They’re the best. Ultra absorbent, physically cooling to wear, with a sticky edge that holds on tightly without abrading or damaging the skin in any way.

Having someone else to wrap my leg. Some do it better than others; the first one fell off after a couple of hours and ditto the third, but the second one was properly and deliberately done and stayed on for 36 hours! It’s so much easier on my knees to have someone else do this.

Exercises from the physical therapist. They are actually helping, both with mobility and also because moving things in the way she showed me acts as a “pump” to push the fluid in my lower legs up and out. It’s not making a big difference so far, but things are changing up a bit. Also, getting back on the bed to elevate the legs for 90 minutes every afternoon is giving me rest as well, which is good.

A sounding board. The physical therapist assigned to me has been great to talk to about such things as what furniture I should buy to help me the most, how to go up and down stairs without further aggravating the worst knee (both are bad but one is actively painful), how much it would help me to install grab bars in my bathroom, and so on. She’s also a fun person and it’s nice to have a visitor to chat with every once in a while!

THE BAD:
Mostly, just the arbitrary Medicare rules. They keep asking the nurses if I can’t bandage myself, which I can, but it’s increasingly difficult. They need reasons why I might skip an appointment that apparently need to be better than “I’ve been awake since 3:30 a.m. and I feel like shit.” In order to receive this care, I’m not supposed to drive myself anywhere or, in fact, leave the house, with certain exceptions, exceptions that I find both arbitrary and offensive. I am allowed to go out to the grocery store (haven’t done that for months, because I can’t stand—even with cart support—for long enough to achieve a complete shop, plus I then have to get the groceries into the house, which is way too difficult) but I’m not supposed to go somewhere like, for instance, a movie, where I would walk in, sit down in a chair that actually elevates my legs, watch the movie for two hours while elevating my legs, walk out, go home. I am allowed to go to a doctor’s appointment (that one makes sense). And I am allowed to go to church. Church. Can’t go anywhere to do something fun, but Medicare thinks it’s fine to make all that effort in order to “worship.” Okay…

I found out today that I am eligible for four or five more physical therapy visits, but that my nursing care is scheduled to continue through August 23rd. I’m really hoping that, long before that point, I get the pneumatic compression device for lymphedema, aka “squeezie pants,” and that they help me enough that my legs are at a manageable size, my wounds go away, and I can say Buh-bye! to these wearying and sometimes intrusive visits.

It’s not that they’re not perfectly nice people, and to a certain extent they will accommodate my schedule (although it’s a narrow window), but…if I know in the back of my mind that I will be interrupted at some point during the day to deal with my physical condition by interacting with another human in my home, any idea for making a painting goes out the window.

I know some people tap into their creative process for 15 minutes a day and keep an art practice going in the midst of a crazy schedule, but if I’m contemplating making a painting, I need an uninterrupted day, or even multiple days, to let the idea gel, to figure out who or what I will paint, using what medium on what surface, and what I will include to make it special, and then I need the actual time to do it. You may have noticed that no portraits have come out of my studio for more than a week. Here’s the reason. But…I have to keep pushing through with this schedule until the pants are MINE, bwa-ha-ha. So art may have to wait a little longer.