It’s not even 8:30pm as I start this, but it feels so much later – and not just because the days are shorter and it’s full dark outside!
Today was my mother’s appointment with the eye specialist in the city, but there were things I needed to do before getting to her place.
Which meant, of course, I got almost zero sleep last night. It seems the more I need to actually get sleep before scheduled activities, the harder it is for me to actually fall asleep!
Meanwhile, my daughters took care of all my usual outdoor routines today, which was a huge help.
The first thing I had to do that had me leaving quite a bit earlier than I would have needed to get to my mother’s, was to stop at the home care office. They needed a couple of signatures from me related to the hospital bed they provide for my husband. I also had a copy of the Power of Attorney paperwork for my brother that they needed in order to process my mother’s file for long term care. This was the last thing they needed as far as the paperwork goes. I spoke to the coordinator for a while. He had already talked to the next coordinator about long term care placement. Physically, my mother would only qualify for supportive living, which would be great for her, but behaviorally, they would not be able to provide her the support she needs. Her racism certainly would make it more difficult, too – the home care aids have already reported some unfortunate things my mother has said. Since they were there for only a few minutes, to help her take her medications, there isn’t a lot of time for her to really get bad with any of them. They do have instructions, though, on how to deflect and, if necessary, simply get out of the situation if it’s particularly bad.
As for the care facilities, her paperwork will first go to the supportive living coordinator, where it will be rejected. Then it will go to the long term care coordinator, who is already aware of my mother’s circumstances, and a decision will be made. If she does qualify for long term care, though, this will get her on a waiting list, unless something happens that puts her under urgent placement. Like if she fell and broke a hip, she would go straight from the hospital into long term care.
Or if she got herself evicted, though that’s a grey area.
We spoke about the meal assist, too. We’ll be trying it out at every two weeks, first. They have only 2 hours to do the meal preparation. We would have to make sure they have all the ingredients, any recipes needed, and containers for the meals to go into the fridge or freezer.
After finishing at the office, I was going to pick up fried chicken and potato wedges at our favorite place – the gas station! 😄 It was too early for their chicken to be ready, though, so I stopped at the grocery store to get drinks. There weren’t any that my mother would be willing to drink, so I went to the gas station and just parked until I was sure their first batches of chicken would be ready. I actually found appropriate drinks there, too!
I also made sure to pick up a couple of 5 Hour Energy bottles, and drank one of them right away.
My mother was very happy when I arrived with the food! She keeps saying, she shouldn’t eat fried chicken, because she has made associations with it and various physical complaints, but she really loves their fried chicken was wedges!
We had enough time that we could have a nice, relaxed lunch, and I could tell her about how things went at the home care office. We talked about her bubble packs, and how she needs to not take anything except when the home care aides come in. She told me how, this morning, the aide took the prescriptions out of the blister and set them in front of her in a pile, but when my mother spread them out and counted them, one was missing! The aide, on hearing that, said that she would need to make a report, but my mom knew it had been in the blister. After looking around, they did find it. It may have just stuck to her hand or the packaging as she got it out for my mother.
I told my mother that when I take my supplements, etc. I have a small bowl I put them into first, then take them all at once from the bowl. She liked that idea, so I went digging around her cupboards and found the smallest bowl she had – an absolutely delightful vintage glass dessert bowl with three handles and a pattern of grape clusters and leaves. I’m totally in love with it!
It’s still pretty big for the job, though, so when I told her I collect tiny bowls and how handy they are, she asked if I could bring her one.
I now have a mini tagine wrapped up and in my purse to bring to her. I think she’ll find it adorable!
We talked about the meal assist, and she’s not happy with it, and says that she can do meals on wheels. They deliver 5 days a week. It’s certainly an option, if this doesn’t work out, but we’ll try meal assist first.
We started to talk about the exterminator coming to her place tomorrow, and that I would be there early to try and move as many things away from the walls as can be done. She started to get very angry about it again. She’s convinced they have singled her out for abuse, and that they just want to go through her stuff and steal things. Frankly, I no longer have patience for her behaviour on this. She is very much at risk of getting evicted, and she doesn’t take it seriously. This has all dragged on far longer than it should have, because she would not let them do their jobs. So many people are bending over backwards to try and help her, and she just refuses to accept that she might be the one that’s causing the problem, not everyone else.
I was able to redirect that conversation more than a few times today!
When we left, we had what turned out to be a very easy and uneventful drive. The location of this clinic may be on the opposite end of the city from us, but it is very easy to get to from my mother’s town. The only unfortunate thing about the drive was that I was feeling myself start to fall asleep. I’m glad I got two of those 5 Hour Energy things. My mother even helped open the bottle for me while I was driving!
Once there, I got her checked in and then we sat in the waiting room. We were early, so I told her I was going to close my eyes for a bit.
I think I actually fell asleep for a bit!
Whether I did nor didn’t, by the time my mother’s name was called, I felt so much better.
The first stage of her appointment was for an assistant to ask various questions, check her current medications list, and try to get an idea of just how long my mother has been having issues. It was not easy. My mother’s sense of time has gotten pretty bad, but for all her complaints about her vision, she insisted the problem was her glasses, and didn’t even realize that her right eye was going blind!
He did a quick eye test with her, with the left eye covered, then again with the right eye covered. Her left eye can still see pretty darn good. With her right eye, she couldn’t even see a single large letter C. All she could tell was that there was a roundish shape. She also had some issues when he held up different numbers of fingers at different distances. Sometimes she got it right, sometimes not. At one point, she couldn’t even see him waving his hand back and forth in front of her right eye.
Next, he took her to a machine to take photos and video of the inside of her eye.
It was not easy.
The typical instruction is “focus on the green X in the middle.” To which my mother would say, “there is no X.”
After that went back and forth a bit, I told her to just look straight ahead. He went with that for the rest of the testing on that eye.
The assistant was so very sweet and awesome. He treated her so nicely, with such a gentle mannerism. I found myself wanting to give him a great big hug! 😄
It took quite a while to get the images he needed. It’s hard enough to stare straight ahead and not blink for several seconds at the best of times. It’s even harder for my mother, who had nothing she could focus on.
That done, it was back to an examination room, and for the doctor to see her.
It turns out her eye is really bad, and he was pretty alarmed about it. She’s had blood pooling in her eye for quite some time, but we just can’t get a handle on when she started to have problems. The only thing I could confirm is that I took my mother for her regular eye exam in February, and there was nothing of concern at the time. I was there and saw the photos of my mother’s eye. This damage was not there.
The doctor spent quite a bit of time explaining things to her and making sure she understood what was going on, as best she could, and to ensure she was able to give informed consent for the treatment.
She had to get drops to dilate her pupils, antibacterial drops, a needle to freeze the eye, and finally the needle for her first treatment.
All of which my mother put up with extremely well. When he was telling her what had to be done and made sure to get her verbal and written consent, her response was simply, “do what you have to do.”
Personally, I think I’d rather go blind than have injections directly into my eyeball!
She was pretty amazing about it.
Along with all that, he took the time to give me information booklets, a grid test for her left eye that she’s supposed to do daily, and a bottle of artificial tears. He really stressed with my mother, how important it is to NOT rub her eyes, touch them in any way, or even touch her face near that right eye. If her eye starts to itch, she is to take an eye drop.
If she starts to feel severe pain, though, she is to immediately return to the clinic to see him or, if it’s the weekend, to a nearby hospital that has a specialty in eye care.
When we finished and I was getting her next appointment in 4 weeks, and helping her pay for some of the tests not covered by our system, my mother just sat on her walker seat with her eyes closed, because she couldn’t really see. Once everything was taken care of and she was in the truck, I gave her my husband’s driving glasses – sunglasses designed to fit over regular glasses.
She really, really loved how much that helped!
Also, she looked adorable in camo print driving glasses. 😄
By this time, I was getting really hungry, and I figured my mother would be, too. When she started talking about getting me to heat up a can of soup for her supper when we got to her place, I was not about to leave it that way! I wanted to get gas in the city, where it’s a lot cheaper right now, and the gas station I stopped at had a Burger King attached to it. I ended up getting chicken fry meals for both of us, as that was something easy to eat while driving.
My mother said that the food could wait until we got to her place but I told her, when I get hungry, I start to become dizzy and ill, so I needed to eat. I set my food out on the console, and hers stayed in the bag.
As we were driving, I saw in my peripheral vision, as she reached out to take a fry!
“Temptation!” she said. 😄😄
I told her she could help herself! She had only a few, though.
Once we got to her place, though, I brought the food out for her to have right away. The home care worker would have come and gone while we were out, so I made sure she had her supper time pills with food.
She was quite happy with this.
She still wanted me to open up a can of soup for her, though, for later.
I took the time to explain some of what we brought home from the clinic, but only briefly. I’ll be back tomorrow and I will stay with her for the 6 hours she has to stay out of her apartment, if that’s what it takes! That will give us plenty of time to sit down with the information and I can explain things to her in ways she could understand.
When we first got to my mother’s place, though, I did a quick check on my messages and found my daughter had sent me photos.
It was very windy today.
We lost a tree.
When I got home, I just had to check it out and get some photos of my own, too.
That is one of the big trees!
In the second photo of the slide show above, I just had to get a picture of how perfectly it fell in between to other trees, without getting caught on them!
The crab apple tree in the third photo was not so fortunate.
The spruce landed right in the middle, breaking off about a third of it.
Well, this is one of the sick trees we were needing to remove, anyhow!
We should be able to use the trunk of that spruce, though. This is one of trees too big to use as a raised garden bed. We should be able to take the bottom, widest, 10 ft and set it aside for the outdoor kitchen we will be building. Part of the trunk is cracked, though, so I’m not sure we we’ll get a full 10 feet that isn’t damaged, or what we can salvage from the rest of it.
We shall see. It’s way too windy to even consider breaking it down and cleaning it up.
Once again, it will be up to my daughters to take care of the outside stuff, as I will be with my mother tomorrow.
I’m not sure what we can do for such a long time. There aren’t places to just hang out in her town, and I don’t think she’d be up to any outings. Plus, we want to go over the information the doctor gave her. We could stay in the common room of her building, but it might not be easy to have a private conversation in such a public space.
Well, we’ll figure it out!
Until then, I need to get myself to bed and, hopefully, get a solid night’s sleep this time!
On that note…
Have a good night, my friends!
The Re-Farmer
The Re-Farmer 