Habit (23 page)

Every time I called Arp, Medicare, or ESD, they would try to trick me into their automated phone system's deathtrap. Here's how to bypass their robot questions (maybe mark this page):

—Are you calling about a claim?

—Agent.

—I'm sorry; before we switch you to an agent, we need some information. Please enter your member number by pressing the touchtone buttons on your keypad, or if you have a rotary phone—

—Agent.

—I'm sorry, but that number is not in our system. Please—

—Agent.

—I realize you would like to speak to an agent. To assist us in directing your call, please spell your last name—

—Agent.

—Please hold for the next available agent.

Click.

Followed by forty minutes of sporadic, sputtering Muzak.

I've learned to use speakerphone so I can be hands-free to put away the laundry or check out Medicare websites for more information. On one of these sites, I notice a familiar name: an old neighbor whose photo keeps turning up on all the websites for Pennsylvania's senior citizens business, right under the state seal and Governor Ed Rendell's beaming Democrat face. Andrea, whose daughter Noni went to school with Eliza. So
Andrea
is Secretary of Aging? Our home intercom systems were so similar they used to interfere with each other. Occasionally, I'd be alone in my house and hear Andrea's clanking pots and pans and her voice crackling out of the intercom:

—
Noni?

—What?

—I can't hear you. NONI?

—What?

—WHAT?

After the novelty wore off, we decided it'd be safer to use different channels. I think I have Andrea's home number in the school book. Hmmm . . .

Click.

Medicare's sputtering Muzak stops playing. I leap to attention, and snatch up the phone.

Foreboding silence.

Ring. Ring. Ring.

—If you'd like to make a call, please hang up and dial again.

If any of this seems familiar, you have my sympathy. You also probably know what comes next:

• Medicaid:
  Not to be confused with Medicare. Medicaid pays for the total health care needs of low-income people who can't afford drugs, or even things like co-pays. This is what people in Ma's situation can turn to if they still need to stay at their Sniff but Medicare won't pay the room and board any longer and their funds are running out, their children are not made of money and their grandchildren would like to go to college.
  

At this point, I am showing signs of wear and tear. David is still away doing
The Seafarer
, the Broadway play he's waited for eons to do. For ten years, David has nobly turned down every stage offer, Broadway or no, because the schedule had been too hard on the kids the last time he did a play. But for this show, I told him we were finally ready—it's fantastic. Now this
get-out-of-ESD-with-the-rats-and-move-into-Arp
thing is happening and I hate to regret our decision, but wow. The fear factor has catapulted me into a strained mental state for a couple of weeks now. Colette is busy drawing up fresh Operation Ma financial projections and trying to keep Felix up to speed on the spreadsheets, which is no mean feat. She's alternating between being unbelievably helpful and sort of scarily, cold-bloodedly efficient. She knows we can't commit to pay indefinitely for Ma's health care, and she tries really hard to give me the space to face facts and deal with them in my own way, but what it boils down to is that talking to Colette these days is like having a root canal in the middle of a tax audit.

Ma has agreed to close up the apartment, and we are confronting the possibility of literally hundreds of thousands of dollars needed to get her comfortably through to the end, which is looking less and less pretty.

Colette's waiting for me to say the word and she'll fly over here. She is like a rock, every morning on the phone and throughout the day, too. So is David, who's getting a little concerned because he's never heard me sound so utterly, hopelessly stumped. It feels like every ounce of energy is being used calling, calling, thinking I have a plan, then having some new insurance person on the phone shoot it down.

When the boys stayed home for a snow day recently, they carefully steered around me, pacing back and forth in my headset, on their way in and out from sledding. Sam impresses me. This morning on the way to school, he informed me that there is
something not right with this ESD stuff.
Either he's reached a breakthrough and is emerging from adolescent narcissism a little ahead of schedule, or my condition is looking bad, bad, bad.

And, I have lost the impulse to eat: It seems to make no sense to stop for breakfast or lunch, and then I'll suddenly realize it's time to make dinner. Because the boys need to be fed, I'll throw something together and sit there with them, but putting the food into my mouth feels as foreign and unthinkable as jamming it into my ear. I have shed twelve pounds in two weeks, which, I've decided, is not actually such a bad thing.

So, my old neighbor is Secretary of Aging for Pennsylvania. Wow, who knew? She sure looks like she's important. One night after not eating dinner, I call her at home, apologizing for taking advantage of our mutual schools and addresses to ask a favor. Not at all, Andrea says, this is her job. The pots and pans clattering in the background sound sort of normal and reassuring. Andrea tells me Noni is at Mount Holyoke now—hope her cell phone reception is better than their intercom was.

Next morning:

Ring. Ring.

—Jack Wasserman.

—Jack Wasserman? You answer your own phone?

—Yes?

—Wow, I mean, I'm sorry. This is Susan Morse. Andrea—

—Oh yes, Susan, Andrea's told me you'd be calling.

—You know who I am?

—Yes, I hear you're having some trouble. Tell me all about it.

Words cannot express my relief. For those of you out there in Pennsylvania who need a Jack Wasserman in your life, I'm sorry to say he has recently moved on to head a new department educating Pennsylvanians on Long-Term Care preparation. This is good, he'll do a great job and we clearly need educating. So here's what you do instead of talking to him: Just Google the number for the Apprise office in Harrisburg. All Jack's people are still there and they will help you (he says they're like pit bulls, and he is right). They'll answer the phone and everything. Not only that, they seem to know exactly what to do—it's their job and they are there for you no matter who your neighbors are, God bless them.

So if you end up in anything like our situation, hang in there and hip-hip-hooray for government funding. Medicaid can carry you through the lapse between the HMO's plug-pulling tendencies and your mother's hopefully full recovery. She can get out of her HMO and set up that Arp Medigap if you have the funds. Keep up the appeals, because chances are you will win.

Then, when a few of the ADLs are up and running, if she's lucky your mother (or mine) can go back off Medicaid, wave good-bye to the Arnack, pack up her stash of OxyIR and return to her Nork or her Alf. And you can start shopping for your own Long-Term Care policy.

B
EN HAS TO GO
to the dentist.

It's the day after Jack Wasserman rode in to the rescue. The monkey still hasn't eaten much. It's gasping limply in a corner of the cage, waiting for the next anvil to drop.

Ben wants to drive himself to the appointment. He needs a parent to sign a form testifying he has logged fifty hours behind the wheel in order to take his driving test, and it has been slow-going. Whenever Ben drives, we make him meticulously count his time down to the exact second; we seem to be the only parents
on earth
who don't fudge the driving log. Ben is highly motivated for the license—he has a girlfriend. But the unlucky boy turned sixteen and got his permit right after David's New York play started, and his father is the only really capable driving teacher.

I once tried going along in the backseat on one of David's scary night driving lessons with Eliza, but they kicked me out of the car because I was about to lose the contents of my stomach. So it does not come as a huge surprise to Ben that I won't let him drive today, claiming stress, and he's nice about it. I leave him at the dentist and head to the market for a few minutes.

This next part is a bit of a blur. Something about going up and down the aisles of the market (hiking up pants that have begun to fall off my shrunken fanny) and feeling a little—different. My hands are sweating and it's getting hard to breathe; my heart has sort of turned into a cement block in my chest.

At the checkout line, people begin to stare. I sit on a windowsill across the aisle from the register and put my head between my knees. The cashier offers to come over and take my money. When they ask their routine question about carryout service to the car, for the first time in my life I say
Gosh yes
.

Ben's dentist is a three-minute drive from the grocery store. I think I can make it if I rest a little.

I take it slow. The cement block sensation can't be good. I won't let David quit the play. What's going to happen to Ma? I pull over outside the dentist and call Ben on his cell phone, tell him sorry I can't walk inside and, he's going to have to come to the car, and, oh, by the way,
you're going to have to drive. I'm way too stressed.

We have an interesting drive home in which I alternately remind him to put on his blinkers and watch out for traffic lights while sort of panting and squirming around in the seat trying to figure out how not to pass out, and groaning that if anything serious happens to me he has
to tell Papa to sue ESD; it's all their fault. ESD, don't forget.
Ben seems unusually quiet. Poor boy's finally got what he wants, and it's ruined because probably all he can think of is whether or not to pull over and try out some cockeyed
South Park
version of CPR on his freaked-out mother.

At home, I leave a message with Doctor Maxwell's weekend service and stretch out on the sofa to wait. I catch David on his cell.

—Hello?

—Hi, it's me. Where are you?

—Susan! On the way to the matinee. Hi!

—I just thought you should know—

—I don't know, there are a lot of them.

—What?

—I'm sorry; I'm talking to my wife.

(David has a Bluetooth. If I call him when he's walking through Times Square, all the people hoping to spot an actor see no reason to give him his space because it's hard to figure out that he's on the phone. David is tediously conscientious, torn between not wanting to ruin anyone's big moment of celebrity-spotting excitement and his awareness that I am trying unsuccessfully not to fume on the other end of the line.)

—Are you there, David?

—Uh, maybe
The Green Mile
?

(They usually have to ask him what his name is and the name of a few of his movies—it's a handy reminder that he may be recognizable, but he's not THAT famous, so don't get a swelled head or anything.)

—I may be having a heart attack, but I think I'll be okay.

(Clank clank. The Bluetooth on New York streets makes him sound like he's rummaging around in a Dumpster full of empty paint cans. There's a siren, and a woman is squealing in delight.)

—
What?!
I'm sorry I'm talking to my wife.
What,
Susan?!

—I'm all sweaty and Ben had to drive me home and the left side of my chest hurts, but I think it's probably anxiety. Maxwell's about to call back.

—My wife is on the phone, excuse me. Susan—how about I tell them to get the understudy, and come home?

—NO! Let's just wait and see. I'll probably be okay.

—Are you sure? God. Hi. I'm in
The Seafarer
. It was
16 Blocks
. With Bruce Willis. Sorry, Susan.

(I know what he's doing: He's freaking out trying to find somewhere to converse in private. Ducking into doorways on Seventh Avenue and Forty-fifth Street with people peeking around the corner at him and waving their camera phones.)

—Tell her it's not really a good time because your wife is about to die and this is your last chance to talk to her, so could she please just take a picture and move the heck on.

—Uh . . .

—David, I love you. I'll call you when I figure it out. Sorry I had to do this to you before the show.

—That's okay. I'll call you after the matinee. I'm David Morse.

(
David MORSE! IT'S DAVID MORSE! Omygod you were in that SHOW, what was it CALLED? OH MY GOD!
)

—Bye. Call Ben's cell if I don't answer.

—I love you, Susan. Not
ER
.

—No, I hope not but I will go in if I have to. I'll see what Maxwell says—

—It was
St. Elsewhere
, not
ER
. Thank you very much.

Something about just resting here a few minutes seems to have a good effect. I haven't spent much time lying down lately. I'm even a little bit hungry, which is a novelty. I quickly find some cheese and crackers.

A few hours go by during which I enjoy myself immensely on the phone, scaring the crap out of everyone I can think of and getting them all dancing around wringing their hands. (Felix and I locked horns recently in an email exchange, and we had planned a phone date today to air our differences. I am not too disoriented to relish taking the wind out of his sails by being at death's door.) The food, the rest, and the transfer of anxiety to the family acts like a shot in the arm, and I'm beginning to feel more like myself when Maxwell finally calls.

—Hello?

—Susan.

—Doctor Maxwell!

—Describe your symptoms, Susan.

—I feel a lot better now, but I was sweating and Ben drove me home and blah blah my chest, but now I'm eating again and I think it's okay, right?