TromboneAl
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
- Joined
- Jun 30, 2006
- Messages
- 12,880
Thought I'd pass on this "day in the life" type story.
I'm here at my sister's in Tacoma helping to take care of my 90-year-old Mom.
Yesterday she had an appointment at 11 at "Group Health." It slipped my mind, possibly because I was trying to intersperse solving computer network problems with medications, etc, but mostly 'cause I just forgot.
Anyway, at 10:55 DW notices the appointment on the calendar, and it's off to the races (the place is 20 minutes away). Task one is to figure out how the portable oxygen machine works. It's not complicated, but there are no instructions on the machine (liability reasons??). Quick call to sister in New York, and I got that working.
Now, I had planned to get the address of Group Health ahead of time, and figure out how to get there (I'm not from around here). But there was no time for that, and Mom says "Oh, I've been there a thousand times, I know exactly how to go."
It wasn't until about 15 instructions ("Go left here," "Turn here") that I realized that we were going in a random walk pattern. In and out of the city, and definitely not making any progress, but she was always very sure of herself.
So I finally decided to ignore further instructions, and head for M street, which she had said it was on (not true, it turns out). I turned left even though she said right, went two blocks, and all of a sudden, like the parting of the clouds, there it was, Group Health.
We got there an hour and a quarter late, but were able to see the doctor anyway. Worse was that we missed the hospice housecleaner appointment.
But it wasn't real stressful, since the appointment wasn't that critical. We all had a laugh about it later.
So anyway, that's the news from eldercare land.
I'm here at my sister's in Tacoma helping to take care of my 90-year-old Mom.
Yesterday she had an appointment at 11 at "Group Health." It slipped my mind, possibly because I was trying to intersperse solving computer network problems with medications, etc, but mostly 'cause I just forgot.
Anyway, at 10:55 DW notices the appointment on the calendar, and it's off to the races (the place is 20 minutes away). Task one is to figure out how the portable oxygen machine works. It's not complicated, but there are no instructions on the machine (liability reasons??). Quick call to sister in New York, and I got that working.
Now, I had planned to get the address of Group Health ahead of time, and figure out how to get there (I'm not from around here). But there was no time for that, and Mom says "Oh, I've been there a thousand times, I know exactly how to go."
It wasn't until about 15 instructions ("Go left here," "Turn here") that I realized that we were going in a random walk pattern. In and out of the city, and definitely not making any progress, but she was always very sure of herself.
So I finally decided to ignore further instructions, and head for M street, which she had said it was on (not true, it turns out). I turned left even though she said right, went two blocks, and all of a sudden, like the parting of the clouds, there it was, Group Health.
We got there an hour and a quarter late, but were able to see the doctor anyway. Worse was that we missed the hospice housecleaner appointment.
But it wasn't real stressful, since the appointment wasn't that critical. We all had a laugh about it later.
So anyway, that's the news from eldercare land.