It Snowed Today

Yesterday they did the tracheostomy on Ben. Tomorrow they are going to put the collar thing on him and see if he handles that ok. Today they put the feeding tube in his stomach. He'll be able to get more nutrients and medications directly now. My mom got some medical records from the first hospital (they aren't complete because they have no actual lab results and such). First thing we see...the jail states that hes currently on no medications (kind of messes up their claims now they were giving him his meds and the few times we've heard of them saying that he was refusing his meds). Ben does not refuse his meds..Ever. They've gotten some records from some unknown place saying that he was in an emergency department in Johnson City a year ago...which of course is not true? Hes never gone to a doctor in Johnson City? The jails records are obviously wrong..or made up. Either way.

Because of the medical furlow, the jail is trying to get out of the bills. Ben's current medicare doesn't cover this...the social worker working with everything was supposed to set us up a phone interview with a medicaid person today but we never got a call. We've been told we need to start looking at nursing homes of some kind. Possibly rehibilitation centers...but you have to be at a certain level to do that. We're going to have to pay for the transportation whenever he needs to be moved. $300 to get the ambulance plus so much per mile...considering hes 5 hours away...thats a lot of miles. The social worker is severely upset with the jail (not so much as we are). She asked today why they took him to Richmond and of course we don't know why they chose Richmond...we have several good/big hospital facilities closer. It just doesn't make sense. I'm glad he is where he is though--they're taking care of him.

It snowed today. I wasn't lucky enough to have school canceled (even though so many people didn't come to my 9:15 class that we didn't have it..just got our quizes from monday back). My car doors were frozen shut and it took me 20 minutes of fighting the door to get it open. I'm not bitter though. I love snow.

We had an australian singer in chapel today--Nathan Tasker. I loved him. Even though it was just the school chapel thing, its the first time I've gone to any kind of church since all this has started. I felt like I was on the verge of breaking down through most of it. Especially when he started to sing his version of "All is Well." That was hard.

There was a shooting near school today. They shut all the gates at King except the main one 'just in case.' A guy killed 4 people then later they found him dead either at his house or near his house. He'd shot himself. I just really don't understand. How could you do that?