Hot Coco

When I head to New York this weekend, I will be spending much of my time going through my mother's medical bills and home health care bills and dealing with Medicare and the seventeen other insurance companies that all seem to have collected premiums from somebody involved in the car accident but somehow deny any responsibility for payment.

It will be a nice change, I suppose, from dealing with matrimonial attorneys who seem to be very adept at bargaining away my life while my youngest daughter's college tuition money somehow lands in their pockets. But I'm sure, like the insurance companies, they know what they're doing. Cha ching, cha ching.

I admit to having made some irrational demands in my divorce case. After all, a narcissistic bitch who singlehandedly caused the break down of what was otherwise a perfect marriage should hardly expect to spend the rest of her life living above the poverty level. I get it. My mother, on the other hand, was just minding her own business on that fateful day in May when some reckless driving caused her to break in several places. Somebody needs to pay.

And it's not just about medical care and room and board in fancy hospital rooms with spectacular river views. The biggest arguments will revolve around the high tech equipment, the various special pieces of rehabilitative apparatus without which my mother could not possibly have regained the strength in her battered skeleton. The wheel chairs that sit in her apartment taking up space; the cleverly designed walkers that so skew the delicate balance in an injured octogenarian's body that she inevitably needs a new walker to cure the collateral damage; the canes, the slings, the long stemmed shoe horns and "grabbers" (which, unfortunately, don't work on microscopic bits of lint).

Just wait until they see the claim I make for the Chanel "wallet purse" I had to purchase for my mother yesterday after receiving an emergency request via email. When she ventures out, she can't really carry the five hundred pound designer satchels she favors without further exacerbating her injuries, so she desperately needs a lightweight version that she can wear across her body. And, of course, it has to be Chanel.

"My friend had the same problem a few years ago, and she still walks around with a little Sportsac bag that she can sling over her shoulder," she told me when I called to be sure I had located the correct item. I didn't bother asking why she didn't get herself a Sportsac, but she told me anyway. "I'd rather die than be seen walking around with something so disgusting." Understandable. I can only imagine how all the old Russian ladies strolling on Ocean Parkway in their torn housecoats would talk.

I know the insurance companies are going to require proof of medical necessity, so when I take my mother to her fancy Park Avenue orthopedist on Monday I will ask him to write up a scrip for a sixteen hundred dollar Chanel "wallet purse." It will be good practice for my divorce case; I won't feel at all sheepish asking for a few extra pennies for a high end double wide.