The Damn Pills

The saga of my mother's pills continues.  And it truly is becoming a saga ("A long detailed account," according to Webster).

But the day started on an up beat.  It was the day we were going to meet with Scott, from Springfield and, I hoped, get the ball rolling.  I was also going to tell my mother that her doctor says she should be driving, which I was dreading.

I got there about an hour before Scott and it seemed to be a relatively good day, memory-wise.  We actually chatted about the move to Springfield.   She was so "with it" and so accepting of the changes in her life that I just blurted out that I knew she wasn't going to like it, but the doctor says she must stop driving.  I reminded her how we all felt about my uncle Bill, who continued to drive (with DMV blessing, apparently, since they renewed his license!) though he had macular degeneration.  He said it was safe because he "only drove around Folsom" and because he took my aunt, with her Alzheimers, with him to let him know if stop signs were coming up.  We were all so worried that he would kill someone but nobody close to him (I was not close to him) had the nerve to take his car keys away. Thank goodness he died before he could do any harm.  

To my surprise, she agreed.  She said that when she moved, she would give up the car and that Jeri should come and get it, since she has said all along that when she gives up her car, she would give it to Jeri.  Thud.  well, that was easy!  (Until later when she forgot she'd said that and gritted her teeth and told me she was not going to stop driving...but then reversed it when I reminded her she had already agreed to it).

Anyway, things were going well, except that her pills still hadn't arrived.  Scott showed up with lunch for the three of us and we had such a good time.   He's a delightful person and seems to truly care about the people he is helping.  And my mother flirted shamelessly over lunch.  I could see that he would make her transition to Springfield a pleasant one.

After lunch, he showed us pictures of what would be her apartment and pulled out a floor plan and a measuring tape and began showing her how she could set up her apartment, suggesting which pieces of furniture to bring, etc.  It's the perfect apartment with big windows (she hates dark rooms) and a door out to her own patio.  I could see she was liking it.  He explained that there is a bit of a crunch time for signing the contract, since they are filling up and if we don't nail things down by the end of the month, she might lose that partcular apartment, but would be on the waiting list for the next time one opened up.

There is still paper work to be finished and I'm hoping to get all that taken care of by the end of this week.  Then there will be an interview by the person who decides if she's right for the place.  A couple of hurdles still to jump, but I hope all can be worked out.

I was sorry that her step-son Ed hadn't been able to be there because I feel like I'm doing all this on my own and am hoping I'm helping my mother make the right decisions.   When Walt's mother was in this situation, Walt had his siblings and they made decisions together.  I had hoped Walt would come with me, since Ed was out of town and I felt that there should be someone else there to ask questions that I may have been forgetting, but he had work to do and was unable to come along.  

After Scott left, I called the Kaiser pharmacy to check on her pills. Each call involves voice message hell, but I got the recording where you can check on the status of an order and it says there are NO pills ordered for my mother.  So I called to get a real person.  Nice guy named Randy.  He checked and said that there is nothing in her file about why she needed the prescription refilled early.  I went through, for the billionth time, about how she had lost or misplaced the refills she got in February and I was refilling the bottles from October, that her doctor had called the pharmacy twice, and that I had called twice in the last week and had been assured by someone on Wednesday that the pills would be sent.  He said that they usually record those calls in the computer, but there was nothing there.  He did, however, put in the refill order and I said that I could pick them up at the pharmacy when I took my mother to have her TB test.

At 5, we went to the pharmacy and were told that since the prescription had just been ordered today, it would take two days to get them.   I went over for the billionth-and-one time about the history of this order, that my mother had been without her medication for three weeks now and that we were willing to sit and wait until the prescription was filled.  The clerk was a bit snippy, but put the order in.  In the meantime, we went across the hall for 10 minutes to get my mother's TB test done.

There is a board on which they put the names of the prescriptions that are ready and we sat there 45 minutes waiting for her name to come up.  I was convinced the snippy clerk had put a slow-down on it, just because I had been such a bitch.  Finally we went up to ask how much longer it was going to be.  "I called your name," she said.  Apparently in the 10 minutes that it took to get the TB test done, the prescription had been filled and she called us, but never put the name on the big board.

So OK.  That was fine.  What's 45 minutes wait time.   At least she was finally getting her pills. She began ringing it up on the computer and then stopped.  "It says you are getting these pills too early," she said.  I nearly screamed.  I again, for the billionth-and-two times went over the saga of the pills.  She was dubious and said she couldn't give my mother the medication because it ws too early. I finally mouthed the word "dementia" to her and she gave a smile of recognition and mouthed "thank you" back and became very pleasant.  She did a lot of typing in the computer, but ultimately sold her the pills and we went on our way. Finally the problem was solved.  

We stopped on the way home at a restaurant for dinner.  As she was getting out of the car, my mother said "I guess I'll leave these here (the pill bag).  I won't need them in the restaurant."  We laughed about that.  

We had a wonderful dinner and then I took her home and packed up my things to leave.

It was a "scary sleepy" ride home.  I stopped three times to take a brief rest because I was so tired and all I wanted to do when I got home was to go directly to sleep.  Do not pass GO, do not collect e-mail.  The last few miles I was aware I was weaving.  I had the air conditioner on to high, I was yelling bad 4-letter words and trying to get my brain to work.  I knew all I was going to do when I walked through the door was head for the couch and would fill Walt in on the day in the morning.

Walt greeted me at the door and said "Your mother wants you to call her back.  She can't find her pills." I nearly screamed.

I called her and she insists she has checked everywhere in her house and can't find them anywhere.  I can't understand how they have disappeared from the driveway to the house.  But I can't do anything about it until tomorrow when I have to take her back to have her TB test read.  I don't know what I'm going to do if I can't find the pills either.  I dread starting this whole thing all over again.

I didn't go into the computer, but went straight to the couch, lay down and cried.