I am guessing that I have mentioned before that I have an older mom – 93 now. She has been living in a very nice assisted living residence which is run by a non-profit organization of our faith. I mention the last part of that sentence as due to same it has been a very comfortable atmosphere for her – the rabbi's wife comes in late Fridays to light the Sabbath candles, the rabbi comes by for holiday services – they have a synagogue for same, the seats are fold up chairs so the space can be used as multipurpose room – including setting up tables and chairs for a New Year's party. Each floor has on the wall 2 Sedar plates (ceremonial plates used for Passover) framed and hanging on the wall – a comforting thing to see and helps one remember at which floor to get off the elevator. Familiar traditional foods for holidays and in general are served. While the residence is non-sectarian (I had a friend who was Roman Catholic who lived there for some time before she passed away and when I would talk to her – she would talk about how nice it was (and feeling uncomfortable due to her religion to go inside she would sit outside the synagogue to hear and see the services), it is very comforting to older Jewish people to have this atmosphere of their life as it had been around them.
Unfortunately it is also rather expensive and mom (being 93) has come to the point where she no longer can afford to live there, as well as reaching the point where she needs more care. The organization also has a rehabilitation and nursing home building on the site (and are currently building apartment buildings for those who are not in the need of either type of facility, but are looking to live with some help available to them). The nursing home does not have any vacancies – but the non-profit just took over another nursing home at a different location and it did have vacancies – so last Friday my sister and her family moved mom to this nursing home.
Two months ago I had made an appointment for mom to go yesterday (Tuesday) to a doctor (the one husband and I cannot stand their disorganization). I may have mentioned that husband and I are the “mom shleppers” we take mom to her doctor appointments (except during most of the pandemic as we are limited in going out due to same, but we had to start doing so again to help out my sister). Over the past two months mom has gone for tests at this doctor's office but now she was finally going to see the doctor himself. I checked with my sister when she told me that mom was being moved as to mom continuing to see her doctors and my sister told me that it was not a problem – “you just go and pick her up – same as before”. Well, yesterday we found out – not so much.
My sister told me over the weekend that we had to be “certified” to take mom out in our car. She has spoken with mom's caseworker and it would not a be a problem – she would do it when we came to pick up mom. (Implies that she knows we are taking mom out and when?)
I called the nursing home on Monday (first business day after mom moved in) to talk to mom's caseworker – voicemail that she would call back the next day, left a message. I called again and spoke with the front desk and was put through – another caseworker, then nursing director, then nursing supervisor – all went to voicemail with same message. Then I was put through to the physical therapy department (as they would do the certification) and spoke with a woman there – who said that they, not the caseworker do the certifications. I was concerned as we had been told it was a 15 minute process – and we would be on a very tight schedule. Mom is now living a half an hour further away from us – and from this doctor, along with allowing for getting mom into the car we were leaving at 2:30 for her 4pm appointment – we added another half hour for certification instead of 15 minutes – just in case.
Sounds organized – right?
Quite literally as we pulled off our driveway into the street my cell phone rang. It was the caseworker telling me that I could not take mom out as no arrangements had been made in advance to take her out and who was this doctor anyway – they know nothing about him – arrangements have to made 72 hours (3 days) in advance! I explained to her that this appointment had been 2 months ago, “yesterday” (Monday) was the first business day since mom had moved there, etc. I gave her the doctor's name and where he was located for her to talk to and we continued on our trip.
We were using GPS to find the location of the nursing home. Our timing was about to right to get there – but husband got confused about the GPS directions when we got off the main road (despite my figuring out where it would be located and explaining same in advance – so we had to make 2 U-turns (went wrong way, then passed turn on way back) and he hates to make U-turns. The location is on the service road of the main road – limited access highway – on the Island. As we drove we passed a senior residence from another company – just before it the GPS told us to stay right and then turn right – the road ahead of us split to the right and to the left was the entry back onto the highway in the direction we had come from, so we stayed right – boy, oh boy was that an error! It took us another 15 minutes to get back to the expressway service road. Go figure, below the sign for the other senior residence was a sign for mom's. There at last!
When we went in the entrance and I said mom's name the woman at the desk said “Oh, yes!”. She knew why we were there and who to call. Someone showed up in a couple minutes with mom (the caseworker I found out) and two people showed up to certify us to take mom out. (This did impress me a lot.)
I was given papers to sign and papers to keep and a large envelope to give to the doctor's staff for info from them about mom's visit. The certifying us to take her in car was just watching us help her get in the car – and mostly they did so. And we were off!
The doctor's visit was annoying as always – and I will skip the details other one of the two us had to leave when the doctor came (room too small, my fanny we have been both together with her in that room before) and I left husband as he better understands what doctors are saying (from years running a medical facility he speaks “doctor”).
We then brought mom back to her new home. It was rush hour and we were traveling in the direction that most of the rush hour travels so it took awhile. When we arrived back at her nursing home we wheeled her in – very impressed with them again – my error, I left mom's “pass” out in the car and ran out and got it for them. I explained that mom had not had dinner as when I made the appointment and she was at the old location her dinner was 6:15 and I had timed it out for her to be home for same, now that her dinner is 5 pm, I will try to make future appointments to take same into account. In normal times we would have taken her out for dinner (would solve our dinner problem also), but due to Covid we did not want to do so. No problem, they would make sure she had something to eat.
We then started our trek home in rush hour.
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK – Always find out in advance about what needs to be done when going somewhere for the first time. Per the paperwork from the certification they need to know 72 hours in advance if mom will be going out to okay it with her doctor and they have to know at least that far in advance about any medical appointments.
I made the mistake of relying on my sister and not calling when she first said that mom would be moving here to find out about taking mom out and so on.
An aside – I did finish the paperwork for the real estate tax exemption over this past weekend and we drove today to the County building and I delivered it to the County Assessor's office and received a receipt for it. This office is normally jammed out the door, especially this time of year. There was one person in there talking to an employee, when they left, I was next and when I was leaving one other person walked in. When I commented on this to the employee who helped me he said “You should have been here an hour ago – the line was huge.” I guess going places late in the day has an advantage.
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