The 98-year-old wanted to go on vacation.
A few months ago, she broke her ribs, lost her memory and abandoned her hearing aid, which probably ended up in a restaurant napkin, all $4000 of it.
She says her phone is defective--that's why she can't hear conversations. She forgets to use her walker and cane and "I don't really need them anymore!" Hence the broken ribs. Four of them, causing intense pain. Opioid level pain.
She's got a pal, thirty years younger, who loves to travel with her, and considers Mom the greatest thing since sliced bread. You would think that's wonderful. Except:
(1) The 98-year-old is paying her companion's expenses. Room, board, transportation.
(2) The adoring acolyte wants to be the only one in her life. What do we need a nurse for? I can take care of her! I sleep 6.5 hours per night! I have Red Cross training!
(3) Everybody else in the old gal's life, including the director of her assisted living residency, thinks a nurse should be on hand.
(4) The B&B owner says the nurse can't sit anywhere but the 98-year-old's bedroom, or the bedroom of her companion. Can't use any toilet but theirs.
(5) When you offer to Yelp the place, the companion says, "Oh, dear God, no." These "wonderful people" shouldn't have their business ruined. She asks me to pay them to tolerate the nurse as a "day guest."
(6) When the nurse appears, discreetly, and the elderly mother tantrums, the companion says, "But your daughter hired the nurse! She paid for the nurse. You and me, we're friends. I'll protect you from your daughter."
(7) Three murderous letters later, the ancient mom's spidery handwriting indicates her displeasure: "I am already being taken care of by my friend!"
Why am I surprised when my mother's best friend thinks the way my mother thinks? Because the adoring acolyte is reasonably well-educated, Phi Beta Kappa, a professional? But education is no match for delusion. The adoring acolyte wants to proceed "without deception" when the 98-year-old doesn't want a nurse, never wanted a nurse, never agreed to a nurse--although she did, and has already paid for said nurse. The acolyte declines to introduce the nurse as "my good friend!" But it's okay to say, "your daughter hired her." When I didn't.
I can suggest finessing. First, there's calling Mom's sane friends and apprising them of the situation.
Then there's the conversation with Mom herself:
"You are every bit as sane as you ever were, every bit as lucid, and as you say, Mom, you are just as compos mentis as you always were. It's just that there's been some memory loss."
Astoundingly, she agrees. She is indeed every bit as sane as she ever was, every bit as lucid, every bit as compos mentis as she ever was. Compounding the problem are the frailties of age, the memory loss, and the companion who's every bit as compos mentis as Mom. But who is currently her health care proxy.
Suggestions, gentle reader, suggestions?
Thursday, August 29, 2019
Saturday, August 17, 2019
The Vacationing 98-year-old, the CNA, and the Well-Meaning Friend
The Certified Nursing Assistant arrived punctually at the comfy bed-and breakfast where the 98-year old mother has been taken--against the advice of her assisted living home, her other friends, and her daughter, me, that is--for a vacation. Of course we're just the Greek chorus here: if I were 98, I'd ignore the chorus too, and insist on doing any fool thing I wanted to do. The four broken ribs of last winter, the broken hip, the tendency to insist she can walk on her own without a cane or walker . . . those are the things that get to the Greek chorus. Hence the need for the CNA. Who has been hired to be near her at all times.
The comfy bed-and-breakfast has been patronized by the 98-year-old since long before she was a 98-year-old. Long before the island was a place where Main street shops had no price tags--if you need to know the price of anything, you don't belong there. Once upon a time in the 1960s, real estate was cheap, beaches were uncrowded, Portuguese bread was inexpensive and delicious, the island movie screen was too small to show The Sound of Music, and people had laundry spinners in their back yards. There was a homemade donuts place and you could buy hot dogs, postcards. Even a "Dexter's Shell Shoppe" selling tinted tropical shells out of somebody's garage.
That was then. Tommy Hilfiger bought and decorated a mansion there, which, last I heard, his ex-wife was trying to sell for 27 million. Then 19.5 million. He wasn't the only Richie Rich. The billionaires crawl around everywhere. The A&P disappeared. Lyme disease got worse.
People changed. Would it have been possible, in the sixties, for the owner of a bed-and-breakfast patronized for years by an elderly person to tell the elderly person's friend she was "not comfortable with the CNA out in the reception area or patio, or using the hall bathroom, since the CNA was not a guest here?"
The owner of the B&B is very comfortable telling the CNA to sit in the airless bedroom of the mom's companion, and only use her personal bathroom. The mom's companion thinks she should put up with the owner telling her this. She says she has "smoothed things over." The owner is a nice lady, she thinks, who has been nice in other summers, so that complaining about the treatment of the CNA would be mean. She thinks I should pay the owner something to tolerate the nurse.
I think the owner should act like a decent human being.
My attempts, via email, to get the 98-year-old mother's pal to tell the owner of the B&B to let the CNA use the reception area, the patio, the hall bathroom--by Yelping the place if necessary--have been rebuffed.
The hired help come to the back. They look different. They talk different. Maybe they are people of color. Maybe they weigh more. Maybe they have another accent. Maybe they have a uniform? Maybe the wrong brand of jeans? Maybe anything that gives away they're not Tommy's crowd.
Don't places like this charming little vacationing spot have chambers of commerce that set policy for oldsters and their entourage? You'd think they would.
The comfy bed-and-breakfast has been patronized by the 98-year-old since long before she was a 98-year-old. Long before the island was a place where Main street shops had no price tags--if you need to know the price of anything, you don't belong there. Once upon a time in the 1960s, real estate was cheap, beaches were uncrowded, Portuguese bread was inexpensive and delicious, the island movie screen was too small to show The Sound of Music, and people had laundry spinners in their back yards. There was a homemade donuts place and you could buy hot dogs, postcards. Even a "Dexter's Shell Shoppe" selling tinted tropical shells out of somebody's garage.
That was then. Tommy Hilfiger bought and decorated a mansion there, which, last I heard, his ex-wife was trying to sell for 27 million. Then 19.5 million. He wasn't the only Richie Rich. The billionaires crawl around everywhere. The A&P disappeared. Lyme disease got worse.
People changed. Would it have been possible, in the sixties, for the owner of a bed-and-breakfast patronized for years by an elderly person to tell the elderly person's friend she was "not comfortable with the CNA out in the reception area or patio, or using the hall bathroom, since the CNA was not a guest here?"
The owner of the B&B is very comfortable telling the CNA to sit in the airless bedroom of the mom's companion, and only use her personal bathroom. The mom's companion thinks she should put up with the owner telling her this. She says she has "smoothed things over." The owner is a nice lady, she thinks, who has been nice in other summers, so that complaining about the treatment of the CNA would be mean. She thinks I should pay the owner something to tolerate the nurse.
I think the owner should act like a decent human being.
My attempts, via email, to get the 98-year-old mother's pal to tell the owner of the B&B to let the CNA use the reception area, the patio, the hall bathroom--by Yelping the place if necessary--have been rebuffed.
The hired help come to the back. They look different. They talk different. Maybe they are people of color. Maybe they weigh more. Maybe they have another accent. Maybe they have a uniform? Maybe the wrong brand of jeans? Maybe anything that gives away they're not Tommy's crowd.
Don't places like this charming little vacationing spot have chambers of commerce that set policy for oldsters and their entourage? You'd think they would.
Wednesday, August 7, 2019
After El Paso And Dayton
That such a slave as this should wear a sword,
Who wears no honesty. Such smiling rogues as these
Like rats oft bite the holy cords atwain . . .
King Lear, 2.2.70-73
"Hate has no place in America,” the president said. “Hatred warps the mind, ravages the heart and devours the soul.”
Watching his face, I thought of those criminal nurses who get a kick out of putting someone in a coma and then reviving them. Being thought of as a hero. Anything for admiration.
Trump's words said one thing. His eyes, his face, said the reverse. Like a child forced to apologize and who sneers out a savage "Sorry!" Trump insulted America again, refusing to dethrone the NRA and partying at home. No one really expected him to support universal background checks or to enforce red flag laws. Or to sing hymns or hold hands with the families of victims. His role is to make deals, not to govern, not to help, not to pray, not to sympathize. Not to heal.
He is still trying to sell himself to Americans who didn't vote for him, while apologizing to some of the white supremacists who did. "You know I have to say this stuff," his eyes telegraphed, "and you know I don't mean it."
We know Trump doesn't mean that what "warps the mind" and "ravages the heart . . . devours the soul" is a problem--as long as he can make money or gain power.
The day after the election, when everyone I knew was swimming in sorrow, and when I said, "it's a sad day when Trump is elected," a stranger said, "I voted for him!"
I couldn't turn on my heel and walk out of the room--we were both receiving chemotherapy and had to sit opposite one another. But I was curious. As the medicine dripped into our veins, I asked her why.
"He's going to fix health care," she said. "He's a businessman." She didn't particularly like him, but she had faith in his competence.
So many believed, still believe, that he cares. Or, like the woman who believed he could fix health care, and who had ovarian cancer, were desperate. The odds of her being alive are slim, but if she is, I hope she's changed her mind.
Who wears no honesty. Such smiling rogues as these
Like rats oft bite the holy cords atwain . . .
King Lear, 2.2.70-73
"Hate has no place in America,” the president said. “Hatred warps the mind, ravages the heart and devours the soul.”
Watching his face, I thought of those criminal nurses who get a kick out of putting someone in a coma and then reviving them. Being thought of as a hero. Anything for admiration.
Trump's words said one thing. His eyes, his face, said the reverse. Like a child forced to apologize and who sneers out a savage "Sorry!" Trump insulted America again, refusing to dethrone the NRA and partying at home. No one really expected him to support universal background checks or to enforce red flag laws. Or to sing hymns or hold hands with the families of victims. His role is to make deals, not to govern, not to help, not to pray, not to sympathize. Not to heal.
He is still trying to sell himself to Americans who didn't vote for him, while apologizing to some of the white supremacists who did. "You know I have to say this stuff," his eyes telegraphed, "and you know I don't mean it."
We know Trump doesn't mean that what "warps the mind" and "ravages the heart . . . devours the soul" is a problem--as long as he can make money or gain power.
The day after the election, when everyone I knew was swimming in sorrow, and when I said, "it's a sad day when Trump is elected," a stranger said, "I voted for him!"
I couldn't turn on my heel and walk out of the room--we were both receiving chemotherapy and had to sit opposite one another. But I was curious. As the medicine dripped into our veins, I asked her why.
"He's going to fix health care," she said. "He's a businessman." She didn't particularly like him, but she had faith in his competence.
So many believed, still believe, that he cares. Or, like the woman who believed he could fix health care, and who had ovarian cancer, were desperate. The odds of her being alive are slim, but if she is, I hope she's changed her mind.
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