Today was my day to go to my mother’s to get her monthly blood test done, so I just did my usual rounds this morning. My daughter was a sweetheart and took care of watering everything before it got too hot. Tomorrow is supposed to be even hotter, but we might also get thunderstorms, depending on which app I check, so we’ll see if we have to water twice again or not. I’m starting this past 9:30pm, and we’re still under heat warnings!
I spotted a couple of the new kittens while doing my rounds this morning. Just the two of them.
I also spotted a garden friend.
What a unique looking frog!
Once the rounds were done, I was soon off to my mother’s.
Going to my mother’s did not go as expected. Which is saying something, since visiting her rarely goes as expected.
The plan was to wait until home care came for the morning med assist, then I would take my mother for her blood work. She’s got a new 2 week schedule, and her morning visits are now at 9:30-9:40am. They seem to switch from 9am to 9:30 fairly often. She gets 10 minutes scheduled in the morning, rather than the usual 5, because they’re supposed to be doing things like emptying her commode and offering assistance in getting dressed. I don’t think they’re doing that. They just give her her meds and leave.
When I got there, I went into the lock box to get the paperwork for this month’s lab tests; it’s a place to store them where they won’t get “lost”. My mother told me to give her her pills, but I said no. We’ll wait for the home care aid to arrive.
Which is when she told me they didn’t come for the two evening visits on Monday…. no… Sunday…
That’s when she showed me the new schedule (the old one was still taped to the wall), where she’d written “no one” around those two time slots. She still kept trying to tell me it was Sunday, but it couldn’t have been.
Since they didn’t show up, she took them herself.
She would have had only Monday left in the lock box, and would have gotten the Monday morning meds from there. The pharmacy tried to deliver her refills later in the day, but she though I’d already paid for them, so she told them she didn’t have enough cash, and tried to say I paid for them. They left her with 1 week’s refills (for free) until it could be straightened out. That got worked out and my mother was supposed to get the refills delivered today. I thought she wanted me to take her to the pharmacy herself after her bloodwork, when I talked to her on the phone last night, but when I got there this morning, she said she was prepared to “pay again”. She’s still convinced she’s being double charged and cheated. Meanwhile, they’re bending over backwards to help her!
Anyhow, this left my mother with a week of pills and no one with the code to put them in the lock box. She’s already had her Monday morning pills, so when no one showed in the evening, she took them from the new package, since the other one was in the lock box. It was pure chance that she took the right day’s pills, since she ignores that completely and gets furious that they can’t give her pills from missed days.
It took me a while to get things straight, and I had to check and recheck things because it just didn’t make sense. When I went into her lock box on Friday, she had a bubble pack that would be finished on Sunday, and a bubble pack with just Monday on it, plus one set of morning pills from a day (a Thursday) that got missed.
The person who saw her Tuesday morning put the new bubble pack into the lock box. The lab requisitions sheets were on the bottom, of course, so I had to take everything out to get them.
The thing is…
Tuesday’s pills are still there. All of them.
The older bubble pack should have hat the two Monday evening bubbles still full.
They were empty.
So what did my mother get, yesterday? She mentioned that an empty bubble pack got thrown out yesterday, but that would have been the one that was finished on Sunday. Did that one also have a full Tuesday’s pills in it? I hadn’t thought so. I had no reason to look too closely at that one.
Meanwhile, time went by and the home care aid didn’t arrive when she was scheduled. My mother started saying, oh, she doesn’t feel like coming today… She is convinced that when days are missed, it’s because the home care aids just don’t feel like doing her pills. Just her, though. She doesn’t believe that the rest of the people on their schedule list aren’t getting done, either.
Finally, I decided to call the number for the scheduler at about 9:45 (this is relevant) and left a message explaining that the aid had not arrived yet, and that I had to take my mother for blood work, so I would do her meds myself.
When I got home, I found a message on the answering machine. It was the scheduler, telling me they didn’t have anyone for my mother’s morning med assist.
The time stamp on the message was 10:01.
*facepalm*
Meanwhile, as we were going to the lab, my mother asked me to make sure I stayed to watch while her blood was being drawn. I asked why, as I’m always there, and she basically said, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you. It took a few hours to drag out why she was asking, but the last time we went (In May, because the June one got missed when she got verbally abusive and I walked out), she said I had left to do my own thing – she was very accusatory about it – which I couldn’t remember at the time. While I was not there, she basically thinks the guy faked drawing her blood. She wanted me to be there today to watch and make sure he really did take her blood. Except it was a different person drawing the blood this time.
I brought up the telephone doctor’s appointment after the lab work was done, and she said there wasn’t one. So I brought up my calendar for May. There was my appointment to take her to the lab, then a week later, her follow up telephone appointment with the doctor. Which I remember, because there was nothing of concern with the results, so her assistant called and talked to us, instead. After the call was done, my mother’s comment was, so… the doctor didn’t want to talk to me…
My mother doesn’t remember that call.
I was flummoxed by my mother saying I had left her, but I did finally remember, after I got home. There was a time I’d taken her in, and I had my own requisitions for blood work and an EKG to be done. I wasn’t able to do the blook work, as it needed to be fasting, but I did get the EKG done. So that’s when she would have had her blood drawn while I wasn’t there. I was in another room, getting wired up.
So my mother believes the home care aids are not showing up to do her meds on purpose (she says they want her to die), and she thinks the tech that took her blood last time, faked taking her blood.
It was a very strange day with her, this time!
I had expected to do her grocery shopping after this was done, but she told me she didn’t need one. I asked more specifically about things and ended up getting her a few little things she was running out of. When I got back with the groceries, she had an envelope ready for me to make that had a prepaid envelop. She asked me to mail it for me, and insisted I take it in person, not just drop it in the mail box. The mail box apparently got stolen or vandalized once, some 10 years ago, so she refuses to use it.
By the time I left my mother’s it was just past 11.
It felt like it should have been much later!
She had her Meals on Wheels coming soon, so I left her to that.
Once home, the heat was really kicking in, and I had lots to do when it cooled down, so I did try to take a nap, after updating my siblings about the visit with my mother. I called the home care coordinator and left a message about some of the stuff, but she didn’t call back today. My daughter reminded me that I’ve been wanting to book an appointment with my doctor for this month, instead of next month, and requested a tandem appointment. She now has her own follow up to do, regarding her referral for a reduction mammoplasty. So we are now both booked in the middle of the month.
I have a field of vision test right after that, but I think I’ll have to reschedule. My daughter would have to drive me home, since they’ll have to dilate my eyes. That’ll be less than two weeks from her ganglion eviction, and she might not quite be up to driving quite yet.
Meanwhile, my husband has his first physio appointment at the new pain clinic tomorrow.
July is working out to be a very busy month for medical stuff!
Anyhow.
I am happy to day I did succeed in getting a nap in – I ended up sleeping almost 4 hours! The heat is really draining the energy out of me.
I did, however, get lots done in the garden this evening, once things started cooling down!
That will get it’s own post – or more, though 😊
The Re-Farmer
The Re-Farmer 