My brain is feeling fried, so not much to say this time.
While heading to my mother’s for the meeting with home care, I noticed the trip meter on the truck was already at almost 450km. It’s only March 4, and I reset it when I filled the tank at Costco on Feb. 28. Just over 100km of that was the trip home. The rest was the first three days of March.
If I keep getting so many calls to cover med assists like in the past couple of weeks, this is going to be a very expensive month on gas!
I got to my mother’s early, in case she needed help with getting dressed or anything like that. She was already dressed and ready. She and I are alike in one thing: if we have some sort of appointment, we can’t sleep the night before.
Yeah, I’m didn’t get much sleep last night, either.
We got to talking and my mother quickly launched into an attack on my brother. She started accusing him of keeping secrets from her again, and said a few strange things. One was how he “brags” about his technology (he doesn’t brag. Even the slightest attempt to talk about his work is so far beyond her ability to understand, he avoids talking about his job at all). Then she said, she doesn’t want his technology, but his kindness.
No one has been kinder to my mother than him. No one has done more for her than him. He has covered her butt for decades. But because he doesn’t tell her all his personal stuff, and doesn’t always agree with her, doesn’t allow her to treat him like her personal slave, that means he’s not kind to her – then she suddenly started saying that it’s his wife that controls everything. !!!!
There was one thing she said that actually confirmed something we’ve suspected for some time now. A matter of phrasing, really.
She is getting my brother mixed up with my dad.
He looks more and more like my dad as he gets older. My mother and my dad were always butting heads. A very dysfunctional relationship. We’ve noted that she’s treating my brother like she used to treat my dad. Today, she actually started talking about him as if he was my dad.
Then there was a knock at the door, and the case coordinator arrived.
We talked for while about all sorts of things. They’ve not been able to find exactly what happened with the morning no-shows. The best they could come up with is that there was confusion and lack of communication because a previous shift scheduler has been away for the past month, and there is come chaos with the people filling in for her.
I tested my mother’s BP so she could see how my mother has to move around when just shifting from chair to chair, so I could access her left arm. My mother and I had already decided that, at the end of the meeting, I would take her to do her blood work, so the case coordinator could observe how my mother gets into the truck, and moves around in general.
In the end, it looks like my mother will start getting some meal assists – all they can do is things like make her a sandwich, or reheat leftovers. My mother was indeed already scheduled for longer time in the mornings, for assistance in dressing and emptying her commode, but it hasn’t been happening, so that will be looked into. I don’t think my mother is in “bad” enough condition for her to actually get considered more urgently to get her into supportive living or long term care. Which is so very frustrating.
After the meeting was done, I got my mother to the lab in the local hospital with no doctors, just a few blocks from my mother’s place, for her blood work. Only one vial was needed, and no one else was there to get done, so it was really fast. Just that outing wore her out, though, and she was glad to be home. It was just coming up on lunch time, so I got some food together for her before I left.
And that was pretty much it. I had actually intended to go for a nap, I’m so tired, but after I had my own lunch, it just didn’t make sense to try and nap, or I’d screw up my own night. So I’m basically just dragging my butt through the day until it’s a reasonable hour to go to bed.
I need sleeeeeeepppp.
Thankfully, I don’t have any appointments tomorrow, so I should be able to have a recovery day. Unless I get another call from home care to cover my mother’s meds again! Then I have the appointment at the garage for the truck to do a whole bunch of relatively small things before they become big things, along with replacing the oil sensor. Which means a few hours in town, while it’s being worked on. I should have several parcels to pick up by then. Two are already in and waiting. One is something I finally broke down and ordered; a clear acrylic guard for my keyboard, to keep the cats from walking on it and digging under it! Ghosty in particular is truly dedicated to waiting until I’m in bed, then digging under my keyboard. She’s even knocked it right off my computer table at times! That and many is the time I’ve gone back to my computer and discovered all sorts of strange things have been opened, some of which I have no idea which keys got stepped on to find!
Anyhow.
Time to move on to things that don’t require much thought processing. Like laundry!
Well, I’m back from going to my mom’s for her med assist. I’m glad I went, in one sense, and wishing I hadn’t had to in another.
It wasn’t just my mother.
After I’d called my mom to let her know I’d be coming over to do her evening med assist, I had time to get a few things done. It was absolutely gorgeous out today, with temperatures just above freezing. I fed the outside cats early and took the time to check on the flexible hose on the emergency septic diverter. The black plastic had warmed up enough that I was able to get quite a bit of the thawing ice chunks out. It wasn’t in any danger of getting blocked by ice, but I still wanted to get as much out as I could.
While I was outside, my mother called back and left a message, asking if I could pick up some milk and croissants along the way. Since my sister introduced her to croissants, not that long ago, it has become her favorite thing to have with tea!
Which just meant leaving a little bit earlier.
The first problem was actually at home. We’re all pretty unhappy about how often homecare hasn’t been able to do my mother’s med assist, just in the short time since she got out of the hospital. My siblings have expressed their dissatisfaction, but they have also expressed their gratitude that I’ve been able to take care of it. It would be a lot more difficult for them to do it! My husband, however… well, along with his physical disability, he also has military related PTSD. With him, it was more anger, and he started taking his frustrations out on me. Which I don’t put up with.
We are not a couple that has arguments, as others do. We don’t raise our voices at each other, or anything like that. But when we disagree on things, and my husband recognizes that he is starting to get a PTSD rage response, he has medications and coping techniques to deal with them, which is what he resorted to.
I’ll just leave it at that.
When I headed out, my first stop was at the grocery store to get the stuff for my mother and, since I was there, to pick up more of the deli meats for ourselves that this store has at better prices than anywhere else I’ve seen. Then I went to the gas station to top up the truck and pick up my mother’s favorite fried chicken and wedges. I wasn’t sure if my mother would have had her supper yet, but I wanted to make sure she had something available so she wasn’t taking her meds on an empty stomach.
I’m glad I did. It looks like she was just going to heat up a can of cream of mushroom soup for her supper, and was out of milk to make it with.
After putting away her things, we sat down for our supper.
My mother was just looking for things to rage at today.
The first was about my having to drive soooooo far, just to give her her pills. The doctor wouldn’t want that! I told her, the doctor doesn’t care. He just cares that she gets her medications. Then she raged that she should can take her medications herself. I side tracked that. She started saying that home care should just come once a day, and leave her medications for the rest of the day ready for her. I told her, they can’t do that. They have very strict regulations they have to follow these days. They can’t even take pills out of the bottles, but only out of bubble packs.
Oh, you’re always taking their side, she says.
Then it came up about my brother visiting her yesterday, after having gone to the farm, first. I mentioned I had been out and missed them entirely, and that he’d just gone to tend to their truck, as a way of saying he was at the farm for a very short time.
Which my mother latched onto. She’d forgotten that they’d sold their property and everything was at the farm now. We weren’t talking about it, because if she remembered, she would end up telling our vandal about it, and that’s the last thing we need.
Well, I won’t get into how it went with that, but she went into another rage against my brother and started to literally invent scenarios in her head about how he was “keeping secrets” from her, among other far less pleasant things. It took some doing to calm her down and distract her.
All before we even finished eating our meal.
Once we were done eating and got her table clear, I got her supper meds out for her to take, while I made notes for the next home care person to see, then prepared her before bed medications and puffer, before putting everything else back into the lock box. Then I got her blood pressure machine, which she had hidden away in a closet, and tested her.
After that, I started changing her garbage and doing some clean up, when she asked me to do her water bottles. She fills various bottles of water she uses for drinking and cooking from a tap in the laundry room that has softened water, and they were all empty. So I took care of that, then washed her dishes, before getting ready to head home.
As I was getting my jacket on, I reminded her again to take her last meds between 8 and 9pm, when she told me she’d already taken her puffer.
…
What? When???
It turns out that, while I was filling her water bottles, she decided to take her inhaler dose.
This is not the first time she tried to do this with me. During one of the past evenings I’d gotten her evening meds ready, she suddenly decided she should take her puffer dose right way. I stopped her and said to take it with her before-bed medications. This is supposed to help her with her breathing at night (I don’t think it’s actually making a difference, but it’s a trial). It’s not going to help her much if she takes it too early.
When I found out she’d taken it, I told her all the same things again. She seemed surprised by it. I have no idea why she gets it in her head to take it so early. She takes a puff twice a day. With her morning meds then, about 12 hours later, with her before bed meds.
Thankfully, doing this won’t harm her, but if she can’t be relied on to wait 3 hours before taking her before bed medication, I may have to stop getting them ready for her on nights like tonight, when home care is short staffed for both evening med assists. I will have to go home, then come back 3 or 4 hours later.
She’s already losing it over the fact that I’m coming at all. If I start having to come in twice in one evening, I don’t know how she would handle it. She certainly would think that her own actions have anything to do with it, but it does add another layer of concern.
Thankfully, we’ve got a meeting with the home care case coordinator in a couple of days. I should give her a call tomorrow, just to let her know about my mother’s behaviour, as it’s not something I could tell her about, with my mother there. As concerning as it is, perhaps this is one more thing that will get my mother into long term care, as she has been wanting for months now.
I didn’t stay too much longer after that. Thankfully, the days are longer now, so it was still light out during the drive home, and I could actually see the deer, well in advance!
Once home, my priority was to update my siblings – and apologize to my brother and his wife. My simple comment about him coming out to the farm and why set her off, and now she’s going to be even worse towards him because of it. My mother keeps saying how she loves all us siblings equally, but her actions belie her words. The twisted hatred she has developed towards my brother has been getting so much worse. It bothered me less when it was directed at me, the first couple of years we were living here, than it does now that it’s directed at my brother. No one has done more to help her and take care of things for her than he has, for so many years. He deserves so much better than this!
*sigh*
So, on the one hand, I’m really glad I ended up going to my mother’s, today, as she ended up needing help with other things as well.
On the other hand…
*sigh*
It is what it is, and there is little we can do about it but, my goodness, it shouldn’t be this way!
Today was supposed to be a home day. And it mostly was.
Then I got a phone call.
From home care.
They don’t have anyone do to my mother’s med assist for her two evening visits.
Which means I am going to soon be on my way to take care of that.
My mother came home from the hospital on Feb. 10. Today will be the 20th day since she’s been home and her meds set up with the lock box. In those 20 days, this evening will be the 4th time I’ve had to do a med assist due to short staffing. Technically, 7 times, since she has two evening visits, and I’ve had to prepare her before-bed pills, too. Plus, she has had two morning no-shows, where someone was scheduled to show up, didn’t, and they don’t know why.
It’s a good thing we’ve got a meeting already set up in a couple of days. I had no problem being the one for them to call if they are short staffed, but that was supposed to be a fairly rare occasion.
Today, I took my daughter to the town north of us for a medical scan appointment she had. After that, we went to the livestock supply store to pick up four 40 pound bags of kibble for the outside cats. My daughter hadn’t been to this store before, so she got to spend some time looking around before we headed out.
I had just started the truck to head out when my cell phone rang. Talk about perfect timing!
It was the home care coordinator, following up on the messages I’d left. The last one I left, I told her I was going to be out, and to call my cell phone.
The first thing to talk about was the med assist visit that didn’t happen, two mornings ago. Under normal circumstances, if a home care worker didn’t fulfill a med assist, a note would have been sent electronically to the case coordinator, letting her know why.
She never received any such notice. They only thing they have is a record saying the visit was not fulfilled. My mother was home, awake and waiting for the home care worker, so it’s not like someone knocked at the door and there was no answer. In fact, if that did happen, they would have contacted me about it so that a wellness check could be done.
They are still investigating, to find out what happened. This is the second time this has happened since my mother got out of the hospital, so in only a couple of weeks!
The other thing to talk about was my mother’s extra bubble packs being on her fridge. I know that, when my brother got the larger lock box, all the bubble packs were put into it. He’d even commented on how well they fit. So why were the unopened packs taken out, with only the active pack inside the box? None of us know.
I told her about my own evening med assist visits after being called because they were short staffed. I explained I’d made notes of what I’d done to include in the lock box for their records. She asked if the bubble packs were all in the lock box again and I explained that I was going to do that, but my mother started to get very angry and demanded the inactive pack be put on the fridge, so I did, but made sure it was pushed back far enough that my mother couldn’t reach it herself. I talked to her about my mother saying these would be her “emergency” pills, if no one showed up again, and about what I found when I got her old packs to take to the pharmacy, and brought the loose pills in an organizer I’d found. I explained to her about how my mother had through the pharmacy had changed her prescription in one medication because it looked different, when the only thing that changed was the supplier for that medication.
We also talked about my mother now having a folding, indoor walker on loan from the Senior’s Centre, to use instead of her cane, because of her fears of falling. We talked about her increased memory issues, some of which my mother recognizes, some she doesn’t, and my mother’s own concerns about her finding it harder to communicate.
I did remember to mention that my mother needs an assist for her feet to trim her toe nails. That is something that home care should be able to arrange though the system. If not, my SIL found the name of someone local that does foot care, assessments, nail trims, etc. that we could call.
The coordinator was quite concerned about my mother’s memory issues, as that has gotten noticeably worse, and there is the increase concern for her safety due to reduced mobility. She wanted to talk to my mother directly. So we booked a time for next week at my mother’s, and I will be there.
Then, as my daughter and I were driving home, my phone rang again. Not a number we recognized, but I figured it was probably home care about being short staffed again. My daughter answered and put it on speaker phone.
It was the home care scheduler, letting me know that they did not have someone to do my mother’s med assist tomorrow morning.
🫤
So I will have to do that. She was scheduled for 8:55am, so I will make sure to show up around that time. I’m doing the Costco run tomorrow anyhow, so I can just leave earlier and stop at my mom’s along the way.
Once we got home, I phoned my mother to fill her in. When I told her about the appointment next week, which will be at 10:30am, the first thing she said was, why isn’t it in the afternoon?
*sigh*
I told her, because that’s the time the case coordinator had available!
While we will be talking about the missed visit, which is still being investigated, I told my mother the coordinator will be asking all sorts of things, so this is the time to talk about her worst days. None of this “oh, I’ll be fine, I can manage” stuff! She wants to be in a nursing home, so she can’t be making light of the issues she’s having!
Then I told her about tomorrow morning, and how I am going to the city anyhow, so it’s not problem for me to stop along the way.
Her response?
Can’t you tell them how far way you are?
I told her, they know where live. I am the closest. This is how it works. If they are short staffed, they call me.
Can’t I just do my own medicines?
No.
I didn’t even try to explain about doctor’s orders again.
Then she started to say, when she missed her medications, she felt fine, so it wasn’t a problem. Basically, implying that if they can’t come in for the med assist, she can just skip her medications and it’s fine.
I reminded her, most of her medications are preventative. They’re there to keep her from having a problem, so she isn’t going to notice anything if she missed them once here, and once there. But if it happens too often, then it can cause problems. One of her medications, for example, is for stroke prevention. If she doesn’t take that medication, she isn’t going to feel a difference – until she has a stroke!
To which my mother started saying, do you remember that oval yellow pill? The one for stroke? Do you remember that pill?
I told her, I don’t remember exactly which is which, but I do remember the yellow oval pill.
My mother then started saying, the pill is different now. It’s smaller.
I reminded her of the last time she had issues with this, when the pharmacy changed suppliers and the colour was slightly different.
Oh, the colour is the same now…
I told her, that wasn’t the point. The point is that not all suppliers have exactly the same appearance, but the medication would be the same. So it would be just as strong? she asked. Yes, it would be the same prescription. That has not changed.
I’ve been looking through her bubble packs in the last couple of evenings. Aside from one new pill and one changed dosage, neither of which are oval yellow pills, her pills look exactly the same as always.
When I once again confirmed that I would stop at her place on my way to the city, she started going on about how I go to the city sooo often.
I reminder her, I go to the city twice to stock up, at the end of the month, when pay comes in. That’s it.
We’ve had this exact conversation several times now. To her, it just seems like I go to the city all the time, because she isn’t noticing that an entire month has gone by since the last time we talked and I mentioned I was going into the city.
We got some more snow that started while my daughter was getting her scan done, and we’re supposed to get more, off and on, through the night. It should be done during the wee hours of the morning. Not heavy snow, but I’ll definitely have to be careful about slippery highways tomorrow. Our expected high of the day is supposed to happen around 7am, and then it’s supposed to keep dropping for the next 22-24 hours, when we’re supposed to reach an overnight low of -25C/-13F on Saturday morning. We’re supposed to go from that to a high of -10C/14F on Saturday, and keep warming up to a high of 1C/34F on Sunday! Monday is supposed to be 3C/37F! After that, the highs are supposed to drop to below freezing again, but not by much.
Just a few more weeks, and it’ll officially be spring. We might even have most of the snow melted away by then!
We’ve got another gorgeous day today. Our high ended up being 3C/37F, and things were melting all over the place. Even when I went out to do my morning rounds, when it was just below freezing still, it was just grand! I’m even finding a lot of extra trail cam files when I check them, triggered by cats going back and forth through the gate during the night. That camera is set to take 1 still shot, then a 10 second video, and the activity makes for some entertaining clips!
Also, those reflective collars work really well, glowing just like their eyes do in the infrared light. What I found interesting is that I can identify the feral tuxedo that had the injured eye so long ago. Only half of that eye reflects in the infrared light.
Yesterday, my bank app notified me of a pharmacy purchase, which I expected would have been a standard refill for my husband, to be delivered on Thursday. Since I was going to be in town anyhow, I decided to leave early enough to go to the pharmacy when it opened and pick up the meds before dropping off the truck. My husband asked me to pick up something else from a store across the street from the pharmacy, so I left a bit earlier to do that, too.
I left too early. 😄
The pharmacy turned out to be a very quick stop. There was no medication to pick up. They had forgotten to charge for my husband’s last refills. Since his medications are covered by both his private insurance and our provinces public insurance, sometimes he gets covered 90%, sometimes 100%, depending on the medication.
So that was a very quick stop, and picking things up across the street was also very quick. I ended up dropping the truck off at the garage more than 30 minutes early. Which is fine. I was expecting to just leave the keys with them and do other things. My appointment was at 10, but I viewed that more as a drop off time, depending on how busy they get.
They turned out to have an open bay already!
The owner/mechanic I usually talk to wasn’t there, though. He was sick, and there was another mechanic covering for him that I’d never met before.
So I went over with him, what was to be done besides just an oil change, and why. We got to talking about that check engine light being on and not being able to tell if it was the same sensor problem, or a new problem, without having to do an OBDII scan every time. He told me that he was constantly having to deal with sensor problems like that with GM vehicle. He’s got two, himself, and he has a hard time keeping up with them, lighting up his dash like a Christmas tree!
I hope the newer modals have fixed this issue!
After talking to him about the moisture in the system that has been causing issues, and that our mechanic is quite familiar with it, he said he would call our mechanic at home, just in case, to get any details he might need. I asked how long before I should come back, since I would be walking around town and might not hear a call or text. He said to come back around 11. I did make sure to mention that the needle on the oil gauge was at 0. He said that would be because of the sensor.
As I was leaving, I messaged the family and realized it was still only 9:30! Too early to go to the nearest places for breakfast.
In the end, I decided to stop at a grocery store I don’t usually go to. 1) because it’s in the middle of town, with tighter parking and 2) their prices tend to be a lot higher.
They did have a few things on good sale prices, though. I couldn’t get anything that needed to be refrigerated, though, so no taking advantage of the meat sales this time. Then, because all my bags where in the truck, I went ahead and bought another hard sided bag to carry it in. We can never have too many of those! They only had insulated ones with lids in the hard sided bags. More expensive, but worth it.
I used up enough time that I figured I could go to the DQ for “breakfast”, but…
They weren’t open?
The windows are tinted, so it’s hard to see if the lights are on inside, but the “open” sign wasn’t lit up. Eventually, I could make out someone inside wearing a high viz vest, but I couldn’t see anyone behind the counter.
Hmmm.
So I headed back to the garage, thinking I could stop at the hotel next to the garage and see if the Chinese food restaurant was open. The hotel’s doors are locked until 10am. I knew the restaurant was closed for their own holidays, but I couldn’t remember if they had reopened yet.
They reopen on March 21.
Okay.
I didn’t want to be carrying the bag around with me, since I can only carry heavier bags with my right arm, due to nerve damage in my left elbow, and that gets old fast. I thought I might be able to put it in the truck, but when I got there, it was up on the lift. They were okay with me leaving it in the office, though.
As I was leaving the office, the owner came in – and headed straight for my truck! He was sick and couldn’t work, but he still came in.
From there, I decided to try the DQ again. This time, I could see more people inside, including staff behind the counter. Their sign was still off, though. I went in and, sure enough, they were open. After placing my order, I told them about the sign. They had forgotten to flick the switch! 😄
With all the walking around, it was coming up to 10:30 by then, so I didn’t have to linger too long with my food before walking back to the garage. It was early, but I knew I could stay in their office waiting area if they weren’t done yet.
They were done.
When I sat at the desk to pay, I saw my keys with a note paper under it.
Hmmm…
As for the work done, they did not replace the sensor, but instead gave it another cleaning. That started off working, last time, and took almost $200 (including taxes and labour) off the final bill. Which was nice!
Then I asked about the list on the note paper.
The guy that worked on the truck noticed a few things that will need to be addressed. Things like the tires wearing more on the inside, so we’ll need a wheel alignment, a small tear in something I can’t remember the name of that might let grit in where it shouldn’t (we had that happen with our old van, too). Most importantly, it seems he found the source of an oil leak. The last time I was at the garage, he topped up the oil with half a litre. There is a plate on our vehicle where other, newer vehicles have a warmer, and the seal on that plate is leaking every so slowly. Which would explain why we never see any sign of a leak under the truck! There were a couple of other things he noticed, too. Nothing to stop us from using the vehicle normally, though. Our mechanic promised to message me a detailed estimate, including which things would be more of a priority. Fixing that oil leak would be really cheap, as it just needs a new gasket.
The final bill was $257.72 after taxes. I was expecting closer to $400. Most of the bill was the oil change and labour. The oil system cleaner was only $20, and the new filter was less than $7.
That done, I was ready to head home, started the truck and…
The check engine light was back on, and the oil gauge was at zero.
???
So I went back in and told the owner/mechanic.
He was very surprised when I told him this, and went to see for himself, and I gave him the keys to start it up (he walks faster than me! 😄). He was very apologetic and said he’s hope the cleaning would have been enough, but obviously, the sensor will need to be replaced completely. They will have to order it in.
So, I will be back for that. We’ll figure out when, once he orders the part and gives me the estimates for the other work.
*sigh*
The truck is purring like a kitten, though.
Since I did my errands earlier, I didn’t have to make any other stops and was able to head straight home. Which was good, because I had time to try and nap, having had a very sleepless night.
Now I’m extra glad I got that nap.
As I was writing the above, I got a phone call from my mother. While we were talking, my cell phone started ringing.
I saw an unfamiliar number and had a feeling I needed to answer it.
I was right. It was home care.
The scheduler was letting me know they did not have anyone to do my mothers supper and evening med assist for tonight AND tomorrow.
I had my cell on speakerphone, so my mother could her this, and said that no one showed up this morning.
!!!!!
I relayed that and she checked. Sure enough, her sheet said my mother’s morning visit was unfulfilled – but there was no reason given.
I asked her to see if she could find out and let me know, while confirming I would go my mother’s med assists for tonight and tomorrow.
My mother is really ticked off, because she feels she can, and should, be going her meds herself. She doesn’t want me to have to drive all that way to do her meds. I told her, I get to visit her this way. So she changed track and said, who is going to pay for the gas (she gives me gas money and has been very generous with that, so it’s not an issue right now). I told her, there is a program available where they cover the cost of fuel; I just have to find out how to apply for it. That seemed to satisfy her a bit. She was still staying, she can take her own medications, and she should be doing it herself. I told her, DON’T (the extra bubble packs are stored on her fridge for some reason). This is doctor’s orders, for her safety.
I then told her I wanted to call the case coordinator about this, because this is a real problem. Not that they’re calling me to do a med assist, but because this is not the first time since my mother has had the lock box – which is just a couple of weeks – that someone simply didn’t show up, and I never got a call about it. Unfortunately, I didn’t get off the phone fast enough; the office had just closed. So I left a message.
Then called back and left another message with my cell phone number, letting her know to call that number, because I’m going to be in the city tomorrow.
My daughter will be coming with me to assist, as needed.
As for me, I am going to be heading to my mother’s soon. I want to get there before she starts trying to get those bubble packs off her fridge and decides to take them early. I got the times her visits were scheduled, so I can work about that.
We’re looking at a gorgeous day today. Bright and sunny, with an expected high of -5C/23F. Which we are as I write this, shortly past 2pm, with a “feels like” of -1C/30F
My one outing planned for the day was a trip to the dump, which is open long hours on Saturdays. I was up at my usual time, which is when all the cats seem to want to use all the litter boxes at the same time, and start getting antsy for the kibble. I topped up their bowls and closed up my door so Butterscotch could use the litter without being harassed by other cats, then tried to get a bit more sleep before heading outside to feed the yard cats, then load the truck.
Butterscotch, however, decided she really liked having the room to herself (Freya was there, but she just chills on my bed after she’s dong eating) and was racing all over, before finally settling down on the cat shelf by the ceiling.
She may have settled, but quite did not happen. Instead, I got a phone call.
It was home care, letting me know there wasn’t anyone available to do my mother’s med assist this morning.
So I quickly got up, updated the family, then called my mother to let her know there was no one available this morning, and that I would be there within the hour.
My mother is convinced that no one is showing up because they want to “fix her” – meaning, keep her from getting care and med assists, so that she would die. I told her, they are short staffed. They’re always shorted staffed. There could be many reasons no one was available.
She refuses to believe that. 🫤
After reassuring her that I would be there to give her her pills, I took care of the outside cats then headed out.
The outside cats were loving the relatively mild morning! Rolando Moon (in the second photo) was just rolling in the snow.
I noticed something about the kids in the isolation shelter, though.
One was missing!
No Grink!
I eventually found him, eating in the kibble house. It’s the first time I’ve seen him out of the isolation shelter in weeks!
Anyhow…
I had reached my mother’s town and was about to turn down her street when my phone started ringing. I don’t have hands free, so I left it to ring, but I immediately thought that it was home care again. As I got to her building and parked in my usual spot, there was one other vehicle there. Again, I felt sure this was home care, and that they’d found someone to do my mother’s meds.
After I parked, I checked my phone but did not recognize the number. I was about to listen to the voice mail message when a woman with a clip board came out from the car.
Yup. She was from home care, and she had just called me, hoping to catch me before I left, to say my mother’s med assist was done. We have never met in person before, but she said that when she saw my truck turn onto the road, she just knew it was me!
She updated me on how things went with my mother. The person who was scheduled to visit my mother this morning had called in sick. The person I was talking to was the weekend schedule coordinator, and she had tried to find another home care worker to visit my mom. Unfortunately, none of them would have had the combination for the lock box in their sheets, so she did it herself! She said she would be back to see my mother again, for her other med assists.
Since I was there anyhow, I went in to see how my mother was doing.
She was complaining, so she was doing well. 😄
She was making a big deal over my having to drive all that way, and how it was such a bother, etc. etc. I told her, this is my job, and I’m happy to do it! Moving out here was not just about taking care of the property, but to be close enough to help her when she needed it, since my other siblings live so much further, and have jobs. Mostly, though, she was demanding my brother come out at the drop of a hat, even though he lived the furthest. Especially after the title of the property was turned over to him, so that it would no longer be in the will, due to the antics of our vandal. If it were my brother who had driven all this way out, she wouldn’t have had any such feelings. If anything, she would complain that he didn’t do enough. Which is how she behaved before we moved out here, and he did come out more often.
While I was talking to her, I noticed her pulse oximeter was still on her table. I’m actually surprised she hadn’t hidden it away. So I got her to sit back and relax while I set it up.
Her heart rate and O2 levels are better than mine!
Then I asked her if there was anything I could help her with, such as getting dressed for the day or empty her commode. She said no, but that’s when I found out her morning visits have not been going this. They were supposed to be scheduled extra time for this, and it sounds like this hasn’t happened.
I’m going to have to call the case coordinator back and bring that up. I’m also going to have to bring up another issue…
As my mother was griping about home care not making it in (no sympathy at all that someone had called in sick, nor appreciation that someone else went out of her way to get to my mother and give her her med assist) and it’s such a bother for me to drive aaaaalllll that way (which is about half the distance my sister would have had to drive, and a quarter of the distance my brother would have had to drive, though neither of them were available)…
It came down to her meds being in a lock box, but if there is an “emergency” like this, she could just take her pills herself…
…
… as she indicated to the top of her fridge, where there is a pharmacy bag with her unopened bubble packs.
The only bubble pack in the lock box is the one that home care aids are actively using, along with their duotang of forms they initial every time they do her meds, and her inhaler.
I suppose it would be a tight fit, but doctor’s orders are, my mother does not have access to her meds, because she messes with them.
I didn’t do anything about it at the time, as it would have brought about a rage reaction, but I did tell her this was not a good thing – and that her continuing to rail about how her medications shouldn’t be in a box, and to leave them on the fridge, and don’t tell anyone they’re up there – we all examples of why she needs to have her medications in a lock box to begin with!
I’ve already updated my brother on that, but will also be talking to the case coordinator about it. It might be having all 4 weeks of bubble packs in the lock box made things a bit tight, but when my brother and his wife brought the new, bigger lock box, everything fit in there just fine. They should never have been taken out. The home care workers had been putting them on the fridge, out of my mother’s reach, before we got the lock box, but apparently, my mother can reach them. If nothing else, she could use her cane to simply knock the bag down.
So… that was a thing.
I asked my mother if there was anything else I could do, and she remembered a couple of things we forgot to put on her shopping list yesterday. So I went to the grocery store to get those for her, as well as a sandwich and a drink for myself. I hadn’t had breakfast yet and was starting to feel ill and dizzy.
That done, and once I was sure nothing else was needed, I headed to the gas station to top up the tank again. Before heading home, I updated the family, adding that I would back the truck up to the house so we could load it for the dump run.
It’s been a while since we’ve done a dump run – there was no way I was going to do it while we were being hit with the worst of the last polar vortex – so there was quite a bit. She moved the bags into the sun room for me, then I took them to the truck. She can only use one arm for this, since her ganglion is still really painful. Once the regular garbage and recycling was loaded, we had the very careful job of loading the bags from the honeypot. It’s been warm enough, only one of them was partially frozen. Even with using the stove pellets to absorb liquid, some of them definitely got extra care in loading! With four adults, with always at least one person having digestive issues, it seems, we’ve had to change the bags out quite a bit!
Double bagged, of course.
Once loaded, it was a quick run to the dump and then home. Before I left, though, I had a quick talk with my daughter.
Last night, my husband brought up the idea of going to town to a restaurant, just to have somewhere to use a real toilet again, instead of the honeypot. He would have done right then and there, if it hadn’t already been too late in the day for such a trip. I did, however, go through the budget and crunched some numbers, and found that we could manage it.
So I asked her to bring up with my husband and her sister (who was in bed after her night’s work) about this being an option.
When I got back, we were talking about my taking my husband and younger daughter out for a lunch, then taking my older daughter out for supper, after she’d had her full day’s sleep. My husband, however, had a really bad pain night and was simply not up to it an outing, and asked us to bring something home for him, instead.
So my daughter and I headed out and chose to go to a newer restaurant in town, that is associated with a brewing company. The city we lived in before we moved out here had a HUGE craft brewing community, and my daughters enjoy good beer, so we used to go to these whenever we could. I don’t like beer, myself, but I was willing to taste test theirs. 😄 This is the first time we’ve got to a restaurant/craft brewer since moving out here, so… more than 7 years.
We ended up both getting bison burgers (both skipping the jalapeno and I skipped the tomato). My daughter upgraded to a poutine with hers, while I got the coleslaw instead of regular fried. The burger was really good – and very messy! My daughter really liked her poutine, too. My coleslaw was surprisingly bland, though. It wasn’t bad, by any means. Just not what I expected. Both our meals also came with a couple of spears of pickles, with the cucumbers pickled in their own signature beer brine. My daughter also got a pint of one of their signature brews, which she quite enjoyed.
Once we were done there, we stopped at the DQ to pick up a meal for my husband, then headed home.
For now, I’ve got a bit of a break. I’ll be heading outside again to do the evening kibble and warm water soon. It’s so night out, I might not even bother putting on a jacket! I certainly didn’t wear my down filled parka today.
Then, I intend to wrangle my older daughter out of the house for supper. Knowing her, she will try to refuse. She has barely left the house – even to just go outside in the yard – in years. A down side to living in the boonies. Her work is all digital, so she doesn’t have to go anywhere, and since she works nights and sleeps days, she’s not around to go on trips into town or whatever.
What I really want to do right now, though, is go to bed! I got very little sleep last night, my attempt at sleeping in failed, and instead of just one outing today, I have had three, with one more in the works.
I guess it’s a perk that, with all this extra running around, I get to use public washrooms and eat food other people cooked but, to be honest, I would be just fine staying home. I do want the rest of the family to be able to get out, though. I really wanted to get my husband out. It’s been a rare thing for him to have an outing that doesn’t involve medical appointments!
I really, really hope my brother can get that pump working again, tomorrow. This is the longest we’ve had to use the honeypot, do sponge bathing, etc. yet, and we’ve had all sorts of plumbing problems since moving out here. At least we do have access to hot and cold running water. We just can’t let it go down the drain to the septic tank in any usual amounts.
The main thing on my schedule for today was to go to my mother’s and help with her grocery shopping, but of course, there was plenty of things that had to be worked around the time I would be gone.
Part of my morning routine is to top of the dry kibble for the inside cats, luring (or chasing) them out of my office/bedroom and closing the door, leaving only Butterscotch and our elderly Freya in the room. Freya doesn’t bother Butterscotch, ever, so that works out. Once the other cats are out, I keep them out long enough that she can use the litter box without getting harassed by some of the younger cats, eat and drink, and just de-stress for a while.
She seems to be getting use to the routine, and has started to go around more and more of the room, like she used to when she first was brought in from outside. Which means that every now and then, I’d come back into the room and I can’t find her in any of her usual spots.
She hasn’t gone up there in ages! It used to be one of her favourite spots to take naps, but it’s a favourite spot for a lot of the cats. I didn’t dare move too close and startle her away, but I did manage to zoom in for a photo.
Clearly, she was not trusting me, even though I didn’t come any closer!
Once the inside cats were done, it was time to do the outside cats. While we still have lots of donated wet cat food, since it’s too cold to give any to the outside cats, we were getting low on dry kibble in the bin. I reached a level where it was a mix of regular store kibble and a particular brand of feed store kibble. It’s been a while since they had that kibble, so I thought they might be willing to eat it again, after changing things up, but nope. I can see by the trays that they are actually picking out the other brand of kibble, and leaving the feed store kibble behind!
Getting more kibble from the feed store got added to my to-do list – just not that brand!
Once the outside stuff was done, I had time to look up some things and found we had at least on package ready to pick up at the post office, so I would leave a bit earlier to do that first.
I also decided on a style of camp commode honeypot to use in place of the bucket we’re using as a honeypot right now. I ended up choosing this one (not an affiliate link). It was the tallest of the ones I was looking at, has the elongated opening, can handle a lot of weight and still be stable (at least, that’s one of the selling features), has a padded seat, and can be folded up to take less storage space.
Plus, it was on sale. Bonus!
It has already been shipped, and should get here in about a week. Our septic pump should be working again well before then – I hope!!! – so this will be for the next time we have septic or plumbing problems!
With the way things have gone since we’ve moved here, I’m resigned to having some sort of septic or plumbing problems pretty much every year.
Another thing on my to-do list was to call the home care case coordinator. After talking to my mother on the phone on Monday, and finding out that no one showed up for two of her med assists on Saturday, I had left a message with the case coordinator. Today is Friday, and I hadn’t heard back yet, so it was time to call.
The case coordinator was in her office, so I got to talk to her right away, rather than leave another message. When I told her why I was calling, she was right on top of it, and had been looking into it.
According to my mother, when the person who was supposed to show up on those two med assist visits on Saturday showed up for the Sunday med assists, she told my mother she didn’t go to her place because she thought my mother was still in the hospital.
The case coordinator had confirmed she had visited my mother on the Thursday previously, so clearly, she knew my mother was home. There was nothing on the files to say that she did not visit my mother on the Saturday, either.
If my mother had been in the hospital still, she would never have been on their list to visit at all, but she was. There is no reason for the home care aid to have not shown up at my mother’s on that day.
The incident has gone up to someone higher up on the authority chain, and we should be hearing from her soon.
Since I had her on the phone, we covered a few other things. I let her know about the monthly bloodwork requisition forms I got yesterday, and that these would be stored in the lock box, so the care aids will know there will be something extra in there that they don’t have to deal with, other than leave them there.
I also asked if there was any progress in getting my mother into supportive housing or long term care. When it comes to the paperwork part of things, the case coordinator I’d started this with, who now works in the town the hospital my mother was in, had done as much as could be done at their end. Her file is just working its way through the system. It’s just really hard to get someone into long term care from the community, rather than from a hospital.
She did, however, talk to me more about the things to look out for that could help the process out. Basically, anything that makes it unsafe for my mother to be at home, both physical and cognitive. Physically, my mother is very concerned about falling, because that wrecked knee of hers now sometimes gives out. Frustratingly, the fact that she hasn’t fallen, and has managed to catch herself, means that they consider her okay to be on her own. With cognitive issues, my mother isn’t one to wander off and not know where she was going. Even if she did tend to wander, she physically can’t go very far, so that’s almost a moot point. There is her memory failures, though. Something my mother is noticing herself and quite alarmed by. So far, though, they have not been the sort of memory failures that would endanger her. She couldn’t remember until I questioned her, what day the home care aid didn’t show up, for example. She wrote it down, which is good, but then she couldn’t remember where the paper she wrote it down on was. None of this is endangering. Forgetting the stove on would be an example of endangerment – but my mother is aware enough of her own increased forgetfulness that she is super careful about that and constantly checks to make sure the stove is off (she does not use the oven at all).
Still, she gave us more things to keep an eye on that could help get my mother into the long term care she wants to be in.
The call done, it wasn’t much longer before I had to start heading out. By the time I got to the post office, a second parcel had been processed, which was nice. If it hadn’t been, it would have had to wait until Monday.
From there, it was to my mother’s town, early enough to go to the feed store and get a 40 pound bag of kibble, in the brand that cats will eat. While there, I asked about my order for 4 pounds of lysine (they come in 2 pound containers). I’d ordered some a while ago – before we had run out – but it still wasn’t in, the last time I was there. I had asked for it to be ordered again. This would have been at least a couple of weeks ago.
I’ve been there often enough that the guy is starting to remember me, but he couldn’t remember anything about lysine. He looked my file up but couldn’t find any order made. He was going to order it for me again when I happened to see something tucked into the shelf on the other side of the reception area that looked about right.
Sure enough, there were two 2 pound containers of lysine there! They don’t carry it normally, he knew nothing about it, and never noticed tucked into the shelf until I spotted it.
I bought the lysine, and he cancelled the order he had started, since this will last us a few months. I’m glad I spotted it. We’ve been out for a while, and I’m starting to see more coughing among both the inside and outside cats.
That done, it was off to the gas station to top up a bit, and pick up my own lunch of fried chicken and wedges, as my mother was getting her Meals on Wheels today. From there, I could finally go to my mother’s – and was even earlier than I told he to expect me!
Which gave us a chance to chat and visit while we waited for her meal to arrive. I was able to go over the bloodwork requisition forms with her, and she was happy with the idea of putting them in the lock box for safekeeping. I also updated her on my conversation with the case coordinator.
When it came to keeping an eye on things with her, I made a point of saying (again, though I doubt she remembers) that if someone like a doctor or nurse asks how she is feeling, this is the time to tell them the worst of how she if feeling! Not to brush things off by saying, “I’m doing all right”. My entire family is horrible for this. We could be sitting there with blood gushing out of a wound, and if someone asked how we’re feeling, we’ll say we’re doing just fine! It has taken me so many years of effort to get out of that habit, and I still fight it at times, so I totally understand what my mother is doing, and why. My mother’s response was, nobody wants to hear the bad stuff. I told her, when it comes to the doctors, they NEED to hear the bad stuff!
I honestly don’t think she got it, but at least I tried!
Meanwhile…
As I was getting some things from the cupboard for her, I took a look to see how stocked her fridge was, and noticed a container of what looked like soup, that looked out of place. I had immediate suspicions.
As we were sitting and chatting some more, my mother suddenly started telling me that our vandal has not been doing well, that he’d had to go to the hospital for a second time after his surgery, and that he was scheduled for more chemo today. She knew so much, I asked if my sister had been telling her this, since my sister is sometimes still in contact with our vandal (we all used to be very close to him). My mother immediately started to look sheepish.
No, they (he and his wife) visited.
Yesterday.
*sigh*
There is just no use in telling my mother she needs to cut ties with him. You’d think all those years of horribly abusive messages he left on her machine would be enough, or all the things he “borrowed” from this property when it was empty, and never returned, to the point she asked us to move here, but nope. Apparently not.
They had left her the mystery container of soup I saw in her fridge. My suspicions were correct.
I didn’t bother saying anything, though. There was no point.
Then her meal arrived, and we had our lunches together. I had suggested we go through her shopping list before hand, but it turns out she hadn’t made one! That is a first. She had gotten into sorting through her papers yesterday – she has a terrible habit of keeping way too many things that should be thrown out – until 1am, and never got to doing her shopping list!
So after we finished eating, we worked on her list, and even had a recent flyer to check out some sale prices.
That done, I was soon at the store, and even took advantage of some of their sales to get stuff for ourselves. We are still avoiding dirtying dishes as much as possible until we can use our plumbing again, so I wanted to pick up more sandwich meats at the deli. There are a few cuts that they have at the best prices I’ve seen anywhere. When I got there, I saw that most of this group had actually gone up in price – but they were still well below even the sale prices I’ve seen elsewhere. One type didn’t go up in price at all. So I could basically get twice as much meat as what I got at the other store – at sale prices – and still paid less. There were a few other things at sale prices I was able to take advantage of, though this being close to the end of the month, the budget is pretty low.
The good thing is, our temperatures have warmed up enough that I could leave the bags of my own purchases in the box of the truck without using insulated bags, and not worry about things freezing for quite some time! In fact, as I write this, it’s past 7pm, and we are still at a lovely -13C/8F right now! Granted, the wind chill is -21C/-6F, but after getting hit with the polar vortexes, that isn’t too bad at all!
Which meant that I didn’t have to hurry off after putting away my mother’s groceries. I was able to do some light housekeeping for her before heading out.
Before leaving, I messaged home to ask one of my daughters to meet me at the garage to help carry things in, so I wouldn’t have to pull into the yard or make two trips. Since I was the one carrying the 40 pound bag of cat food, I went ahead and did their evening feeding and warm water top up, while my daughter put away the groceries.
I am absolutely convinced The Grink has not left the isolation shelter even once, since the ramp door was opened!
Then, since we have lysine again, I broke out the Bullet. The lysine powder is pretty granular, so I grind it to a fine powder that will stick to the kibble. The first couple of batches were ground with raw pumpkin seeds until I ran out of seeds. That jar went for the outside cats, as the pumpkin will help them combat worms, and I’m sure the smallest cats are small because they have worms. Putting something in their food is pretty much the only way we can treat them, since most of them are too feral to catch, even if we could afford to take them to a vet.
The inside cats got cat soup with lysine in it.
Of course, there were dishes to be done. Since the septic tank is full and can’t be drained until the pump is fixed, we can’t drain water down the sink. That means doing dishes in one basin, rinsing in another, then tossing the dirty water outside. We keep pots and bowls in all our sinks right now, so we can still run water before we fill a kettle, wash an item or two, wash our hands, brush our teeth or sponge bathe, then take the containers outside to dump out the dirty water.
Inconvenient, but not as inconvenient as not being able to use the toilet!
Hopefully, this will only be until Sunday, when my brother comes out. I’m really, really hoping the pump can just be fixed, and we won’t have to find somewhere to buy a new one. There’s only one place that I know of that carries the one brand that still makes these pumps, and I have never seen them in stock. The city locations don’t seem to ever have them in stock, which makes sense. City people aren’t on septic systems.
Well, it is what it is. We deal with the hand we’ve got!
What else can we do?
Today, at least, I’ve managed to get quite a few things done while also being able to help my mother out, which saves on multiple trips! Tomorrow, if all goes well, we’ll load up the truck and I’ll finally make a trip to the dump. We’re supposed to reach a high of -4C/25F tomorrow!
My daughter and I planned to head out early for our appointments and errands. Before that happened, I’m happy to say the electric company showed up to replace the bulb in our yard light. It hasn’t been working right for quite a while. I’d submitted a repair request through their website, but the only way to do it was as a “report street light outage”. I never got a response, so I sent out another repair request about a week ago. This time, I included both versions of our physical address, neither of which exist on online maps, so I also included our section number. Which is what our electric bills use as our address already. Last time, the section number was the only address I’d given. I guess it worked, because today, they showed up!
The repair guys were just leaving when I headed out to warm up the truck, so I had a chance to talk to them. We now have an LED light, which should last longer, and should also be brighter. My daughter and I got home late enough today that it was actually on, confirming that it’s working again.
Yeah. It took that long before we got home!
We were on the road pretty early, which worked out well. Our first stop was at the clinic to get my medical files printed out so I could transfer them, but before that, I made sure to get the bloodwork requisition for my mother.
I spoke to the receptionist about my mother needing these every month, and that the doctor I’d talked to on the phone had said they could mail it.
Her eyes got a bit wide on that.
The frustrating thing is that they’re now allowed to fax the forms to the labs. I’d thought it was just some labs, but nope. None of the labs in our province are allowed to accept faxed forms.
It’s a government thing, it turns out. It basically comes down to them assuming everyone is able bodied and mobile, has access to transportation, and lives close to clinics and labs. If you’re someone like my mother, but don’t have family or friends who can help out, you’re SOL.
After confirming that my mother will be getting tested for the same thing every month, she came up with the idea of simply printing me more copies. I got 7 of them. My mother’s doctor likes to see her patients in person at least once every 6 months, and my mother hasn’t been in since last summer, so after my mother gets her first lab results in, I’ll see about getting her in to talk to the doctor about the results, follow up on various other things, and get her physical. Until then, the forms can stay in the lock box with her medications.
I was very happy that she could do that!
Then I got my own medical files printed out and paid for. After that, my daughter and headed out and parked near our new doctor’s clinic, where we could also walk over to a Subway for lunch. The plan was to have lunch, have our appointments, and hit the grocery store, without ever having to move the truck!
Which would have been very convenient. 😄
The first thing I noticed was a sign on the clinic doors stating that they were not taking any walk ins today. I hoped that would mean we would be seen on time.
We were not.
I dropped off my medical files while my daughter and I both checked in, roughly half an hour early for my daughter’s appointment, then we waited.
And waited.
Happily, my daughter through to bring her knitting along. She got quite a bit of progress on the cuff of the sock she’s working on!
By the time she was called in to an examination room, it was more than 40 minutes past her appointment time. Mine was supposed to be 15 minutes after hers, but I didn’t get called in for another 45 minutes – and my daughter wasn’t done her appointment yet!
While I was waiting, though, I remembered to ask about my medical files. I’d brought printouts, which would have been scanned into they system. What was going to happen to the paper copies?
It turns out they get put into a secure box for shredding.
I asked if I could get them back when they were done with them (I did just pay $35 for them!), only to find out they already were. The receptionist got the keys so she could get them our of the shredder bin for me! So I now have a physical copy of my files. It should be interesting to go through it all!
Once I got those, I kept waiting. Even after being called in, I was waiting long enough to get a message from my daughter telling me when she’d made her next appointment, in April.
My own appointment was pretty straightforward. I was following up on the new prescription pain killers. With the dose she gave me, I was to take one or two capsules, once a day. I told her, I’ve been taking 2 before bed, which have been helping get more pain free sleep, but it doesn’t help me any during the day. After confirming details on the medication, she updated my prescription. The dose per capsule has been doubled, so I can just take one instead of two, but I can also take them twice a day, if I feel the need.
That done, we talked about her now having my medical files, so my next appointment should be for a physical. Once we worked that out, when I left, I booked my next appointment on the same day as my daughter, so we can just make one trip again.
My daughter had gone ahead to the truck and sent me a message while I was updating my calendar. My husband had let her know that the pharmacy had called about her prescription, and wanted to know if she needed it filled right away. I told her to say yes, and that we could go straight there once I was done.
When I got to the truck, my daughter was talking to our pharmacy, so I quietly let her know I needed to talk to them, too. Once she was done arranging for her prescription to be done, she let them know I needed to talk to them, too.
I explained that my prescription had been modified, but they had not yet received the fax. I told them where we were driving in from to get my daughter’s prescription, which gave them an idea of how long we would be, and she said she would keep an eye out for the fax for my prescription.
Our plan to go the the grocery store we were parked next to went out the window, as we needed to get to the town our pharmacy is in before they closed. Part way there, my husband messaged my daughter to let us know the pharmacy had called him again, saying that my new prescription was received and being filled.
We got to the pharmacy in good time. We even had enough time for my daughter to pick up the melatonin the doctor recommended she start taking, and she reminded me to pick up some antihistamines. I don’t know what I’m allergic to, but I’ve been reacting to something almost every morning of late.
From there, we popped to a store across the street that had something my husband requested, and then we went to the grocery store for the stuff we intended to get after the doctor’s appointment. Mostly, food we could use to make meals with as little cooking and as few dirty dishes as possible, since Sunday will be the earliest my brother can come out to fix the septic pump – hopefully!
We’re going to be eating sandwiches a lot, over the next while!
From there, it was one last stop to get more gas in the tank, and we could finally head home, several hours later than we expected! As soon as we got home and the bags were brought in, I immediately left my daughter to put things away while I got a jug of warm water, then headed outside to feed the yard cats and top up their food bowls. It’s the latest they’ve been fed for quite a while. I usually make sure to feed them before it starts getting dark, as it gives them a chance to eat before and skunks or other critters show up.
From the smell of the sun room this morning, we did have a skunk visit last night!
While it made or a longer day than planned, I’m glad we were able to get everything done today, before things started to close. Tomorrow, I’m out again to help my mother with her shopping, and bring over those bloodwork requisition forms. If all goes well, on Saturday, we’ll be making a trip to the dump. Then, starting on Tuesday, things really start to get busy for us, first with taking the truck back to the garage to get some work done. Then we will have our stock up shopping and another medical appointment for my daughter.
Oh, she got another referral today. She remembered to bring up her ganglion. It has gotten so painful, she can hardly use her left hand. So she has been referred to a plastic surgeon to start the process for surgery. She was hoping to avoid it, but it’s gotten really bad. Hopefully, it won’t take very long to hear back. She’s been referred to an endocrinologist, at her last appointment. They are part of our medicare system, so I don’t expect to hear from them for a year or two. Plastic surgeons are private practices that also do medicare cases, so I would expect to hear from them much more quickly. It was certainly that way when I had my medically necessary reduction mammoplasty with a plastic surgeon.
We shall see how it works out.
All in all, though, I’d say it was a rather productive day! We don’t get a lot of those, this time of year. 😄
I checked the temperatures during the night, shortly after 2am, where we were at -29C/-20F, with a wind chill of -43C/-45F
I checked again shortly after 7am – when I would normally be getting ready to go outside to feed the cats and do my rounds.
It was -31C/-24F, with a wind chill of -42C/-44F
I checked again about half our later, and the temperature was the same, but the wind chill was back to -43C/-45F
Okay. I’ll just wait for things to warm up a bit before I feed the outside cats. They wouldn’t want to be running around in these temperatures, anyhow.
More than an hour later, and the temperatures hadn’t changed.
So I went and gave the outside cats their not-frozen kibble and warm water, and basically skipped my usual rounds entirely.
The thermometer in the sun room, at least, was reading around -15C/5F at the time. Still cold enough that the heated water bowl has frost around the top of the water level, with a layer of ice around one side, and cats had frost on their face fur. I don’t bother to put kibble in most of the trays anymore – the ones I can see they aren’t eating from. Instead, I scatter it in spots on the platform and shelves, under the heat bulb and the couple of trays they do eat from. Even outside, where their kibble trays are over full with frozen kibble, I leave very little fresh kibble, but have instead scooping some of it back into the bowl I used to carry their food. The bowl in the catio gets extra kibble, since it does warm up in there, but it looks like the birds are the ones eating the kibble under the shrine. The isolation shelter, however, gets the rest of the kibble in the bowl, including what I’ve scooped out from the frozen trays. The cats finish that bowl off completely!
Today was our day to do the litters which, with using the stove pellets, gets dumped into a separate compost pile behind the outhouse. This is one of those jobs where the girls do the inside part, and I do the outside part. We waited until past 3 to do it, though! By then, it was -23C/-9F, with a wind chill of -34C/-29F, but it was bright and sunny, which meant the sun room and the isolation shelter where much warmer – and filled with cats!
I got the above photos earlier in the afternoon, though. I was able to get a few shots from the bathroom window, which got their attention, but they didn’t run away. In the first photo, we have Fluffy, who is doing well enough to be on the very top shelf of the shelf against the old kitchen well. Most of the others were crowded in the opposite shelf, against the window, enjoying sun spots.
Instagram cropped the next photo for some reason, even though I set it to “full size”, so you’re not getting the full effect of having those three cats starting at me! It’s the little one in the middle that has me laughing, though. Those eyes!!!
The last photo of the thermometer shows it reading about -5C/23F. That thermometer is on a cold wall mounted about two west facing windows, so it would actually be reading colder than the ambient temperature – and certainly colder than the temperature in the sun spots filled with cats!
Slight interruption while writing this.
Well… not “slight”.
My mother called. As we were talking, it came out that she apparently did not get her second and third med assist visit from home care. It took a bit of questioning to find out this apparently happened on Saturday (today is Monday). According to my mother, then the home care aid that was supposed to show up on Saturday showed up on Sunday, she told my mother she didn’t know my mother was home from the hospital, so that’s why she didn’t show up. Which makes no sense.
There was also a very confusing thing my mother started taking about the medications she was taking in the hospital. After much questioning to figure out what she was talking about (it sounded like she had brought hospital medications home with her), it turns out she “remembers” me packing her medications from home, that she’s brought with her to the initial appointment that had her going to the ER, the day we brought her home. She said, don’t you remember, you put them in the bag, because they didn’t fit in my purse. W
Which did not happen. I’d already taken her partial bubble pack she had in the hospital, then took all her old bubble packs and pills from her place, to the pharmacy the day before she came home. Then, before we came to get her, we were able to pick up her new bubble packs from the pharmacy, with the updated prescriptions.
My mother has no memory of this. She thought her partial bubble pack was in the lock box, to be used so they wouldn’t “go to waste”.
I’ve already called and left a message with home care, explaining what my mother told me about the missed med assist visits. I should get a call back, tomorrow.
My mother, meanwhile, is upset that she can’t get at her own medications to take them herself, if home care doesn’t show up. Yet she clearly doesn’t know what is happening with her medications anymore, if she thinks she still has her old prescription bubble pack being used right now.
I made sure to message all this to my brother. One of his responses was, and they say Mom doesn’t need full time care?
*sigh*
There is a reason we have to have home care visiting my mother for her med assists. Many reasons, really, as well as reasons her medications are now in a lock box.
I lost track of things and forgot that today was Valentine’s Day!
This morning, I had a 8am telephone appointment with my mother’s doctor. Normally, I would be outside, giving the cats their food and warm water. We were still under an ongoing extreme cold warning (which is now finally over), so I would have basically just taken care of the cats and skipped most of my morning rounds!
With the phone appointment, however, I messaged my daughters, asking if they could take care of the outside cats. I was pretty sure my older daughter had gone to bed after a night’s work, but I wasn’t sure if my younger daughter was available.
She was, and she took care of the outside cats for me, while I waited for the call.
Which was about half an hour late, of course. My daughter was back inside, updating me, when the phone rang. With the cats’ food trays and bowls so full of frozen kibble, we’re figuring out ways to make it so they can actually eat it. With the isolation shelter open again, I’m thinking of taking some of kibble from the kibble shelter and putting it in the isolation shelter. When there was just two cats, there was excess kibble, but once the other cats started going in there again, the bowl was empty, and even the kibble scattered about was eaten up!
As for the phone call, it wasn’t my mother’s doctor that called, but another doctor working with her. I explained about my mother having been in the hospital for a couple of weeks, and how we were told she needs to see a doctor every month to monitor her kidney function, now that she’s back on the water pills. They didn’t actually have everything in my mother’s file yet, and the doctor had to ask me when she had been discharged!
They did have the results of her last bloodwork done while she was in the hospital, though, and he could tell me her kidneys are doing just fine.
The problem, of course, is making a 93 yr old who struggles to walk, climb into the truck and drive to the clinic, over and over, because there are no local doctors available.
The hospital in her town does have a lab, though.
My mother won’t need to physically go to the clinic every month.
They will mail bloodwork requisition forms to my mother every month. The local hospital will not accept these forms being faxed to them. It would have been better if I could physically pick it up, to eliminate any risk of the form being lost in the mail, but that’s just not an option.
I will, however, be in that town next week, and will be stopping at the clinic to get my own medical files to take to my new doctor, before my daughter and I have our appointments. So he got a form printed out and it will be waiting for me when I get there. As my mother had bloodwork done this month, already, she won’t need to get it done again until next month.
Aside from that, she can have telephone appointments to go over the results, though they do that only if there is a problem. She won’t need to physically come in for an appointment unless there is a need. We will have to continue to monitor her for swelling and breathing issues, which the doctor at the hospital already explained to us, and my mother is to go to the ER right away, if problems start up again.
That done, I updated my siblings in our group chat, as much to make sure I wrote down the details while it was still fresh in my mind as to share it with family. Then I phoned my mother to update her.
As I started talking to her about the monthly appointments the hospital doctor said she needed, and that I called the clinic about them, my mother got somewhat agitated. It took a bit to figure it out, but she was under the impression she had a physical appointment with her doctor. I had told her I had made a phone appointment to talk about her case, but since then, she got it in her mind that this was an appointment with her, not about her. I clarified and told her, I’d made a phone appointment with me, that I had just gotten off the phone, and I was calling to let her know how it went.
She stayed very quiet as I went through the call which, in itself, is unusual. Normally, she interrupts and starts taking the conversation in other directions. I’m not completely sure how much she understood, but when I got to the part about going to the local hospital for monthly blood work, she said that we would have to keep track of that for her.
Which, of course, was already the plan!
She then started talking about her medications and the lock box. To make is short, my mother was very angry about having the lock box, the home care aids cant get into it, she doesn’t need this big box and can manage her own medications.
I was alarmed when she said the home care aids can’t get into it. She said she didn’t get her medications this morning. At first, she made it sound like it was because the aide couldn’t open it, but if that were true, I would have gotten a phone call. Or my brother would have. This happened only once, with one person, though. My mother had 2 other visits the day before, after the new lock box was brought over, and got her medications. Now she was saying the aids can’t get into the box at all?
I asked if she got her morning medications, and she said no.
No one showed up.
????
Again, if they were short staffed, I would have got a phone call, because I would have had to drive to my mother’s to give her her medications.
Then I noticed the time.
It wasn’t even 9am yet.
They are supposed to give her her medications before 7 an 9am.
I mentioned the time and said, they probably just haven’t made it yet.
Well, my mother was still quite angry. She can manage her own medications. They don’t always come at the same time. She doesn’t need this big box.
We talked for awhile and I reminded her, this was doctor’s orders. It was for her own safety.
Oh, so my children don’t trust me?
I brought up that she herself has noticed she is not remembering things. Then I brought up the pill boxes full of loose pills I’d found when I got her old bubble packs to take the the pharmacy, and that the pharmacist had to dispose of them. She has a history of messing with her medications, and things like that were why she needed a lock box and med assist from home care. This is for her safety.
I didn’t bring it up with my mother, but in the group chat with my siblings later, I mentioned that all these pills she had in there were pills she did not take when she should have. Plus, she ignored the days and times on the bubble packs, just staring from the top, and taking them whenever she had her breakfast, because she is supposed to take them with food (except I don’t think any of them actually specify to take with food). And by “with food”, she means with a couple of crackers or cookies or a piece of toast and, before we got the home care med assist, she would take them at 5am and 5pm and before bed, instead of the times on the bubble pack. As a result, she often had a couple of active bubble packs going at once, and really made things harder for the home care aids.
But all of that would have been too much to talk to her about. We basically just have to bring it down to “doctor’s orders” and “it’s for your safety.”
Our call got interrupted, though, by a knock at the door.
The home care aid had arrived to give her her morning medications.
My mother has no understanding of how much she is messing herself up.
After I got off the phone with my mother, I updated my siblings again. My mother’s behavior is a strong demonstration of just why having that lock box, and home care visits for her med assist, is so important. We were able to chat for a bit, wondering about how my mother will handle having a Life Line, once that gets set up.
It can be really hard to help my mother when she keeps trying to sabotage our efforts. These group chats and updates are extra important, because my mother will say one thing to me, then something different to each of my siblings, then tries to play us against each other. This is something she has done for pretty much as long as I can remember though, of course, as a child, I had no understanding of what she was doing.
Aside from the group chat, I got a Valentine’s Day message from my SIL, which is when I was reminded that that’s what today it.
Which got me to thinking about the whole theme of Valentine’s Day being about love, and about what it means to love someone. Years ago, I read a point someone very wise said.
Love is a verb.
Most of us think of love as a feeling. Something you “fall into”. An emotion.
Which all can be part of love but, in the end, love is not how we feel, but what we do.
The English language rather fails when it comes to the word love. There are too many definitions for one word. The Ancient Greeks had different words for love that I think we could not go wrong, bringing back. They also viewed their words for love on a sort of scale. There are nine modern and ancient words for love. Here are four ancient ones.
The first type of love – the basest form – is eros. Eros is physical love, and the root of our word, erotica. Eros is about sex, really. In English, it would probably be better translated as “lust”. Eros was considered the lowest form of love.
The next type of love is philia. This is platonic love. Yes, there is a physical aspect to it – hugs and kisses between friends that have zero sexual connotations – but philia is brotherly love. The love of deep friendship. Philia is used in many ways in our language. Philadelphia is known as the “city of brotherly love” based on the Greek definition. It is also found in the suffix -phile. One example being bibliophile, a lover of books.
The next type of love, higher on the scale, is storgê. This is what might be called, family love. It is particularly used to described married couples raising their children together.
The highest form of love, however is ágape. This is unconditional love. Sacrificial love. Agape is independent of any external factors. It is given wholly, and expects nothing in return. Agape is the foundation of Christianity; that Jesus set aside His godhood to live fully human; a sinless life we could not hope to achieve, take on the punishment for our sins we all deserve – all of us, throughout humanity, throughout time. An execution so horrific, a new word was invented to describe the pain. Excruciating. Ex crucio. From the cross. To die in our place, so that He could conquer death, that we may live. All we have to do is fully accept this gift of His, yet we have no obligation to do so. That is the height of agape love.
So what is love, in our daily lives?
Love is what we do.
Love is to be friends with someone, be apart for years, yet when reunited, it’s as if those years apart never happened.
Love is seeing each other at our best and at our worst, and still being there for each other.
Love is a couple growing old together, facing the world together, long after the tingles have faded.
Love is a parent denying a child something they want, in favour of something they need, even when the child has a blowout and says they hate us for it.
In one of my recent devotions, these verses from Luke 11 were included.
5Then Jesus said to them, “Suppose you have a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; 6a friend of mine on a journey has come to me, and I have no food to offer him.’ 7And suppose the one inside answers, ‘Don’t bother me. The door is already locked, and my children and I are in bed. I can’t get up and give you anything.’ 8I tell you, even though he will not get up and give you the bread because of friendship, yet because of your shameless audacity e he will surely get up and give you as much as you need.
While the devotion was about persistence in prayer, as both a parent and someone with a lifelong interest in how people lived in the past, this line stands out to me.
‘Don’t bother me. The door is already locked, and my children and I are in bed. I can’t get up and give you anything.’
In context for the time period, most likely the family was sleeping together on a mat woven of reeds or grasses. Even overnight visitors would join the pile. Can you just picture it? Husband and wife, lying on the floor, their kids snuggled up around or even on them. Dad there with a toddler on his chest and another child on each side, while Mom lies next to them with a babe at her breast… and then there’s a knock at the door! No wonder the response is “don’t bother me… I can’t get up…” !!
For most of human history, that’s how we slept. That’s how we lived. We had almost constant physical contact with each other. It wasn’t until the Victorian era that houses started to have rooms set aside just for sleeping, and that children got separate rooms to sleep in. Even now, in many places around the world, separate bedrooms (and sometimes just having beds) are a luxury, and the idea of children sleeping apart from their parents would be unheard of.
Sadly, we live in a world hungry for love. Real love.
We even hunger for the platonic physical aspects of love that used to be just part of our everything living, before cradles and cribs and separate beds and bedrooms became the norm, among other changes. Our culture has become so hungry for philia and storge, many turn to eros to fill the emptiness. We have reached a point when many cannot view any sort of physical affection as being anything but eros. A parent can’t even kiss their own child on the lips, or a mother breastfeed her baby, without people viewing it as something sexual in nature.
Our current culture, at least in our Western nations, has redefined love in other ways. To far too many, love means to always go along with what a person wants. To validate and enable anything they do, even if they are self harming in the process. It means to agree with anything they say, no matter how wrong they are. If you do not do this, you get accused of hate – another word that has been redefined dramatically!
Which brings me back to today.
Today, my mother was very angry about her medications being in a lock box. When told the reason why, she tried to turn it around and accuse us of not trusting her.
For some people, the “loving” thing would be to do what she wants. To make her “happy” by giving in. Take away the lock box, and let her take her meds whenever she thinks she should, or only the ones she thinks she should, even though she can’t remember what all of them are anymore, and certainly doesn’t know what the new ones are.
That would, of course, be wrong and even harmful. So the loving thing to do is NOT what she wants, but what is good for her, even if she can’t understand it and has hairy fits about it.
When it comes to my mother, I don’t “feel” love for her. I don’t know if I ever have. Years of confusing and abusive behaviour made that impossible. But she is my mother, and I still “do” love for her. She can get mad at me and yell at me and say cruel things to me, but I will still “do” love. Or she can flip like a switch and suddenly become oddly generous or kind, and I don’t know if it’s real, or if she’s trying to mess with me. It doesn’t matter. I will still “do” love. That doesn’t mean I’ll put up with the behavior, and I will call her out on it – which is also a way to “do” love.
I can make similar parallels to our home life, where my husband has to sleep in a hospital bed in another room. We may not be able to share a bed, but we can still “do” love.
Or where our daughters gave up so much to move out with us, turned the poorly insulated upstairs into their own apartment, and put up with freezing winters and boiling summers up there.
Or my younger daughter crawling out of a warm bed this morning, to go outside in freezing temperatures, to feed and water the cats while I wait for a phone call.
There are so many ways to “do” love.
This Valentine’s Day, I wish you much philia. I wish you storge and agape and even, if appropriate, a little bit of eros!
The Re-Farmer 