I was 30 minutes into a chat with a rep from Audible.com
when "Kimona" typed "I'm taking control of your mouse." Sounded like
something ominous. But it was a last gasp to fix what had gone wrong
with the download function of my Audible.com account. No point in
explaining the problem but s/he already had me try all sorts of stuff.
"Type this" and "type that" and "what does it say now?" (The interesting
thing about the process was that the encounter started out with those canned
phrases that they all do. "Hello, I'm Kimona and I will help you.
Can you tell me your problem?" and then "I hear you saying that....." But
the longer the suggested solutions proved unsuccessful the more personal our
conversation became
S/he asked if s/he could take control of
my machine. I was thrilled. Sure! But even that didn't
work. Everything I was told to do, which I did faithfully, did not
produce the expected result. Finally I was asked which browser I was
using and when I said Firefox, the suggestion was made to try it again with
Chrome.
Bingo. As soon as I booted up Chrome it wored
like a charm. That's when I lost control of my mouse, but as I watched
things zip here and zip there and things being typed and screens changing,
suddenly it was all back the way it was supposed to do.
"You've made my day!" I exclaimed to my new friend Kimona, and when the
feedback form, I happily gave Kimona a very positive review.
That was the part of the day that I did for "me."
I overslept
in the morning and saw it was 5 minutes to 9. I leaped up, poued
myself a cup of coffee (which Walt had prepared earlier) and was out on the
road by 9:15. There was a "mandatory meeting" at Sutter and I didn't
want to be late (also they were having stuff for breakfast snacks which I
didn't want to miss),
Given how close it was to the time of
the meeting, I was surprised that there were two empty spots set aside for
volunteers.
I rushed into the building and noted there was
nobody at the information desk, confirmation that there was a
meeting. I went to the meeting room and was surprised to find the
meeting already in progress since I was at least 10 minutes early.
Fortunately I looked in the window first. No snacks. No grey
haired ladies, all "suits" and a speaker I didn't recognize.
I went to the gift shop and asked the volunteer here about the meeting.
She said that meeting is not until October. I couldn't believe I'd made that
mistake. In fact, the original date had been changed so I not only
missed it the first tim,e but I missed it the second date as well.
The real date of the meeting is October 19. This means I had
the morning free! Yippee!
But in addition to all the stuff
with Audible, the morning was spent on my mother ... three calls from
Kaiser, two from her doctor's nurse and one from a woman, Lydia, who was
going to help me see about switching doctors.
By the time I finished all the phone calls, it was time to
pick my mother up and take her in for an x-ray and blood work. Poor
dear just follows along blindly. She didn't have a clue where we were
going or what we were going to do. She just sat when I told her to sit
and went into exam rooms when I told her.
I checked the
pharmacy and canceled her prescription, which her doctor's nurse had told me
was the wrong one for her.
But then it got good.
I went to the business office for 3 reasons. The first
was to get a hard copy of the power for me and her stepson. I know
there is a copy around here somewhere, but I don't have a clue where.
I've never needed it because it's in the Kaiser system, but I will need it
on Wednesday, when I meet with the nurse from her long term care insurance
company, who needs to see it.
No problem. The woman ran
off a copy of it for me right away.
Secondly, I had left a
list of medications for her doctor to sign, so that I can turn her
medication management over to Atria. They had not called from the
doctor's office, but I thought I'd take a chance and see if she had signed
it yet. Apparently she had not. I was disappointed, but not
really surprised.
The third thing was more complicated.
About 10 years ago, I started setting my mother up with her own email
account at Kaiser. At that time she had a doctor in an Rafael and I
wanted to be able to communicate with her long distance. Only I did
something wrong and I could not access the account. I tried
everything. I saw every person possible, up the line, all the way to
the God of the Internet and nobody could help. Once an account is
started it can't be changed or deleted. I finally gave up, which is
how my mother ended up with the same doctor I have...I can write to MY
doctor about her.
But when I was talking with Lydia, she told
me that a lot had changed in the last 10 or so years and she thought I would
have no trouble now.
The woman in the business office agreed with me, sent me to
the patient services office, which tped a couple ofthings and told me that I
now had access to my mothers account. I couldn't believe it.
I drove my mother home and dropped her off at Atra, still in pain and
confused about where she was, but experience has shown that once she gets in
the building, she can find her way to her apartment.
I came
home and fell asleep, to be awakened about half an hour later by a call from
her doctor, explaining the thing that made me angry with her over the
weekend in the first place (so I've decided not to switch doctors after
all). She also told me that the medicine for my mother was now at the
pharmacy. It was 5 p.m., they close at 6 and I got in the car
immediately.
Traffic was horrible, but I did get there in
time and picked up the medication.
I drove back to Atria and
was surprised to find the apartment empty. She had not been in the
dining room or in either of the places where she usually sits so I didn't
know where she was. As I was a cutting pill in half, she came in the
door and when I asked where she had been, she said she didn't know.
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