WHY MY POST WAS SO SHORT LAST WEEK - MOM AND ANOTHER DOCTOR

Sorry for last week. We ended up having to take mom to an oncologist on Wednesday – the day before Thanksgiving and the day that I normally would write my post and post it – and I had to cook for Thanksgiving that night.

I realize that taking mom to a doctor is more time consuming than you might think. Remember – mom is 90. We have to allow an hour and a half to get her out to the car, up, drive her to whichever doctor we are going to (all with 30 minutes of her assisted living residence, most within 20 minutes), and get her into the doctor's office.

Why does it take this long? Well, when we get to her residence we park in the lot. We walk to the building and walk in – have to stop and sign in. Mom's apartment is – literally – the furthest one in the place. She is on the top (third) floor and is in the last room on the furthest hall – if we are running late picking her up and have to run - getting to her apartment is a good cardio workout. We go the elevator, go to the third floor and start walking (unless as mentioned we have to run).

Mom will be sitting in her wheelchair waiting for us. She uses a walker around the building, but when go out it is quicker and easier to take her in wheelchair. But – first she has to stand up with the walker so that we can take the two large wheels off the chair. In case you did not know this – the large wheels on the sides of wheelchairs can be removed (on hers we push in the axle and then pull the wheel off) and there are 4 smaller wheels. The big wheels are there so the person in the wheelchair can reach the wheels and push them to get around. (Mom will “walk” the wheelchair – sitting, but walking her feet to make it go when she uses it alone.) If we leave the big wheels on it is too heavy for us to lift into the back of our car and does not fold as flat. Big wheels off the chair she sits down in it again – we check that she has her room key, her medical insurance card and her driver's license (to be changed this coming year to a non-driver's ID). Even when one has been to a doctor before they need the insurance cards and her ID again. (One doctor is in the local hospital and we all need to show ID to enter and have to allow time for same as there might be a line – we each get an ID tag good for a day with the photo and info from our licenses on them.). When she is back in her wheelchair we head out her door to the hall.

There is what is called a wellness office in the building which, luckily for us, is on the same floor as mom. It is set up like a small clinic – receptionist, nurse's office, 2 examining rooms, and a medication room. In this last there are file cabinets with loose leaf books with pages with plastic bubbles on them with the medications for a month for each resident – each time during the day that the resident needs to take a medication there is a separate page. One thing that impressed me is that there is a photo of the resident in front of her/his pill pages so they can be sure that the correct person gets the correct medications. If mom has not been at a doctor that month I call ahead and ask for them to give me a copy of her medications – easiest way to given them to the doctor. The first time the nurse added mom's height and weight and since she cannot stand without holding on to someone or something and one doctor's office insisted that they had to take her weight, I now ask for her height and weight to be listed. Sometimes it is waiting for us when I call ahead, often it is not – so we often need time to pickup the info pages or wait for it to be done. If mom will be away from the residence when she is to take a pill, they will give ME the pills (they cannot give them to her per them as the resident might forget them or take them at the wrong time). Lately I already have the meds from last time and she will not miss medications so we can avoid this stop.

We then go back downstairs in the elevator and head back to the front desk. If mom will miss a meal we have to stop and we are not able to take her out to eat that meal, when we stop at the front desk to sign her out – and sign that we are leaving - we order a tray for her to be delivered to her room – this can take awhile for her to decide. We go out to the car and help her get in the front passenger seat. Ahead of time we clear out the hatch area at the back of the car for her wheelchair – it takes both of us to load and unload it. I ride in the back seat. That is at least a half an hour gone.

We then start driving to whichever doctor we are going to. At this point we are taking her to 4 different doctors – on different days - and still need to set up appointments for her for hearing aids (so we don't have repeat everything the doctor says by yelling it to her) and for spot on her face that has to be removed. She also wants to go and “get the shots” in her knees so that they don't hurt or least not as much.

Depending on the doctor (well his/her location) parking may be easy or hard. Generally it is not too bad – except there is one doctor whose office is “heck” and seems to be the worst organized place we have ever been and sometimes husband has to drop us off and then go look for a parking space.

The doctor we went to last Wednesday is in a temporary office and the building is on a hill – with most of the parking in the rear – uphill. Husband dropped us off at the back (main) door and went to park so we would not have to deal with the hill. We went in on the second floor as a result. There was a very small hallway area – basically a large room and we went through all of it and could not find an elevator. Husband said to me “I told you always check that the office is wheelchair accessible. “ we decided that since the front of the building on the right side had a big sign for the group that the doctor is part of, maybe we had to go there. So we went back out and around the building – downhill trying not to let the wheelchair and mom get away from us. The front of the building had stairs! Husband went in and asked and they told him to use the rear door – where we had been = there was an elevator and they could not understand how we could have missed it (none of us saw it). We each took a handle to wheelchair and huffed and puffed our way back up the hill. We went in the building second door on the left was the elevator! (I would swear it was not there before). You know the expression - “if it was a snake it would have bitten us?”). Rest of the visit went well and we took mom out to lunch at Wendys – she insists on paying for us.

We allow the extra half hour for things like this – not being able to find the elevator or problems parking or whatever. Some doctors say that if one is there 15 minutes or in one case, half an hour, before your appointment it will be canceled – why the heck don't they just make your appointment for the earlier time, especially as they don't tell you this until you are at the office.

We also have to allow time to get to mom. It is a half an hour minimum to drive out there – if there is traffic, especially rush hour – morning or afternoon, or an accident we need to allow extra time. The time we were going to the doctor who is half hour from her, there was an accident on the road after we picked her up and were on our way – the extra half hour saved us from being late. Of course if it is early (for us) we have to get up and get dressed and sometimes eat lunch before we go.

After the appointment the entire process is done in reverse - including signing mom back into her residence – sometimes ordering a tray for her then, taking her back to her room and putting the wheels back on her wheelchair. We may also have stop in the Wellness office with instructions from the doctor or to let the nurse know to expect same to come. Sometimes we will walk around a bit if we have time before her dinner.

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -

When you do something over and over – even with slight variations – take note of how long each part takes and use that information for doing whatever it is again in the future. But – always allow a bit of wiggle room as one never knows when there will be a accident on the road to the doctor or they actually want you there earlier than you are suppose to be there.