Friday was a wash. I feel guilty that my family stuff took up so much of the day when I wished I were working. Admittedly, I started the day with my first session with a new therapist. I really liked her.
Then a few hours of work.
Then a lunch with my mom in her community's dining room. My sister is here to celebrate mom's birthday. Mom is now 96. Fucker. She wouldn't make eye contact with me. No speaking. Just my sister telling me that she is seeing behaviors in mom that she hasn't in the past. She wants to talk about it in advance of my upcoming appointment with my mom's doctor on Monday. I really don't care. I don't want to micromanage mom's wakefulness when what we all want is for her to be peacefully drowsy all day.
Back to work. I have spent time leading up to Friday's lunch worrying about bringing dessert and candles and taking time off during the work day, and before that -- SO much time negotiating with my sister about when she's coming to visit, etc. The dining room staff dims the lights because they are closing the dining room. That pisses mom off because she is more wakeful now and doesn't like to be rushed. I realize that dessert will have to be consumed in mom's apartment so I am off like a shot, resisting the lure of more time with mom. My sister says she's sorry for mom's behavior. This is why I no longer do things for her. I can't get that time back, and my mom is awful. I try not to let it get to me but it does.
I get in the car and my phone is ringing -- the doctor's office reminding me of our remote appointment on Monday.
I get home and there is another message saying that the company that does admin for the doctor doesn't have the doctor listed as my mom's primary in their database. To be clear, none of these entities seem to be connected:
1. Doctor
2. Admin group
3. Medical network
4. Medicare provider
1 knows about 2-4
3 and 4 know about 1
According to the front desk at 1, 2 routinely botches things on January 1st and "randomly reassigns" primary caregivers to patients for no reason. Without notifying 2 about 1 and back-dating the information in 2's database to prior to our Monday appointment, the appointment can't happen.
Mom has been seeing 1 since 2021 when, in the middle of the pandemic, mom's primary's secretary called to say that he was retiring in a month and was offering no referrals. Our current 1 is fantastic, and that whole situation was a complicated blessing in disguise.
OK! It is now 4:14pm on a Friday and the appointment is scheduled for Monday afternoon. I gotta holoholo. So I call 2, and continue working while I'm on hold. Then I give them mom's details and explain the situation and they tell me that I am not listed as POA for Healthcare in their system. Because of the tight deadline they will do me a favor and give me a HIPAA form by email and I need to send it to the Privacy Officer at 2.
We run around the house and look for the POA. I eventually find what I think it is, but it is for Legal and Financial. Luckily I am at home, because the digital docs I need are on my home computer but the email from 2 is on my work computer, and I can't turn the HIPAA form into a form I can fill in on the version of Acrobat I have on my home computer but can do that on my work computer. I spend time on that, and then I find the other POA. I'm trying to beat the clock here, and slightly after 5 I get the email sent to the lady at 2. I know that it said to send it to the Privacy Officer, but I'm hoping the lady will do me a solid and forward it on. There isn't a place on the form where I can say things like "I don't know what address you want because we don't send mail to mom's. She wants to see every piece of mail and is enraged if it is kept from her. And she keeps the caregivers so busy that they forget to tell us when important documents somehow arrive at mom's". So we used one of our addresses but none of my sisters know which one.
Because I know that this problem is not going to be solved prior to Monday's scheduled meeting, I call 1 and leave a message canceling the appointment.
The next day, yesterday, I spent an hour and a half on the phone with the Vortex Of Power (my sisters) to discuss my visiting sister's thoughts about what we should advocate for during the doctor visit (whenever it gets rescheduled). After long discussion we decide to make no changes and let it ride. Same with the caregiver situation.
Are you still reading? I'm so sorry. This is long and annoying, I'm certain.
During the VOP call, my middle sister reiterates that she spends a lot of time worrying about the effects of all of this (caregiving, etc.) on me, and how I somehow seem not to worry about stuff. While my inner self was saying "You stupid fuck -- the time for you to have worried about me is long before now, when you were shaming me for my approach to this situation and making decisions that worked for *you" my external self said "I appreciate that you are worrying for me, and that's very nice, but what good is it doing you? Because it doesn't help me." She stuttered, and I believe she was astonished. I mean really. If I worry about you but don't do anything to help, who's it for? This is the person who GUILTED me because I didn't want to buy a house for mom that she could live in with caregivers. Yes, sports fans, she wanted me to run an entire second domicile and thought I was mean for scoffing at the idea. So back to yesterday. Her response? "Thanks, that actually helps me." Whatever.
Oh my gosh. This is going to take many more words and I am sorry.
After the phone call I take a hard copy of the documents to FedEx (along with a cover letter to explains the discrepancies). It costs twenty dollars (highway robbery!) and the fax takes ten minutes to send. At work this would have been free and immediate, but I'm in a bind. And I guess I'm getting worked up as this is happening.
Back at home, a box of food arrives. It's the food box from some healthy food company I signed up for and then realized was awful. I couldn't cancel my subscription fully because I had until the next day at 7 to do it and today was Sunday and the next day was a holiday. So all of this bizarre food arrived in terrible packaging and just shouted MISTAKE! YOU MADE AN EFFING MISTAKE! all over it. Mrguy was in a bad state at the instant I was decanting this box of crap, and watching me but also (I did not know) that he was having a full-blown panic attack, and here I was trying to make the most of a bad situation, telling him that I made a mistake but starting to meal plan and natter on. He snapped at me and collapsed into a chair. After he sat down, I realized what was happening, but the effect of the reprimand couldn't be undone.
I also snapped (inside). He slithered off to take a nap, and I started slamming shit around and spiraling into self loathing. I took all of the stuff that had been in that box and stomped it, punched it, obliterated it, put it in the trash and, when I returned home from an errand an hour later, I scooped up that big pile of dog shit I've been meaning to get rid of, and I put that on top of the mess in the trash.
I will not even verbalize the dark place I was in, because it scares me. Was it guy snapping? Was it me telling the VOP earlier "Mom has stolen my life"? It's everything, and I am 100% ok until I'm not.
Please please please let me outlive my mom. By a very long stretch of quality time.
Oy. The end.
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