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Why I don’t want to move into an old-folkerie

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So this guy is trying to get me to move into an old-folks’ home called The Beatitudes.

Right?  I do NOT want to live in any such place: hated living in the college dorms, and do not want to end my life on that note.

What does he do? He emails my son with “Do you have availability on Thursday October 8th at 10:30?”  Nary a word to me. The assumption being that as a doddering old bat, of course I have NOTHING else to do next Thursday.

And right there: that presumptiveness. THAT is why I do not want to live in one of those places.

Hired Help Humor

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This morning I discovered that someone stole a pair of shoes that I use every day.

I wouldn’t have put them “away” someplace where I couldn’t find them, because they have a standard “away” place in the closet. I would have put them in that place. If I carelessly left them out, they’d be sitting by the bed.

So presumably one of the hired help snabbed them.

Experience suggests that these “care givers” pull little stunts like this — stealing your shoes, spiking a dish of leftovers with ultra-hot chili — because they think it’s funny. Or maybe they think they’re getting back at you for some senile offense they imagine you did on purpose.

… … …

It’s bad enough to contemplate having to move into an institution for the last phase of your life. But dear God!  If this is how those folks behave in order to keep their wards under control, it will turn the last few months — or, God forfend, years — of one’s life into a living Hell.

If you can call that living.

I’m thinking it may be time to end things before they reach that point.

Swampy-Dampy Day!

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Ruby just dragged her human back into the house, after a circumnavigation of the ‘Hood. Gosh!  What an icky morning!

Be glad — be very glad — that you don’t have to work outside in Arizona’s heat and humidity. It is just sticky out there right now.

Ohh well. Ruby and I successfully traipsed around the neighborhood, with little ill effect. Wunderground says we’re enjoying 56% humidity…egad! Does that REALLY mean more than half the air out there is water?

😀  Hope not. But sorta suspect that’s the case. We have 81 degrees with rain showers predicted for this morning.

What, dear Gawd, is on the calendar for today? (Gets up and traipses back to the office…)

Nothing! Hallelujah, brothers and sisters!

Hmmm…it’s Sunday. Thank goodness I no longer have to get up, throw on some decent clothes, and fly down to the church to sing half the morning.

No kidding: I do miss the choir. A lot. But on a day like this, I’m mighty glad not to have to go out into the traffic and the weather.

….ohhh goodie! Just to make the morning, my son sends an email reminding me that we’re traipsing out to the Mayo Clinic (again!!!!!!) tomorrow morning. 

Boyoboy, could I do without those junkets! No doubt he feels even more strongly about that: the Mayo is a good 40-minute drive from here, meaning a trip out there and an hour wasted talking to doctor about essentially nothing consumes half his working day. And since he’s contrived to get my driver’s license negated, he ends up having to drive me out there.

To me, it feels like such a waste of time. (Imagine how it feels for him!!) Their doctors never have anything to say that makes the slightest bit of difference for my condition….whatever that condition may be. They seem to have no clue. Basically, they’re charging me for getting old.

Makes Christian Science look better and better….

Mayo Junket

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Another endless drive this morning: to and from the Mayo Clinic, on the northeast side of town. This, conducted by my excellent son, who kindly drove me out there and back.

He admires that place no end. And truth to tell: there isn’t any better here in the Phoenix area. Quite possibly, not in the Southwest.

But….

But y’know…sometimes you don’t need The Best for a minor ailment. What you need is someone who will treat you as though your IQ registers in the triple digits. And by & large, that ain’t the case, out there on the tony far side of north Scottsdale. In my experience, if you’re female and middle-aged, they treat you like a moron.

Ohhh well. 

By the time we got out there (it’s almost an hour’s drive from our part of town), the crazy-making peripheral neuropathy was beginning to fade. Same could be said, eventually, for the even more crazy-making ear whistling.

No treatment was prescribed, and now that I’m home and the weeeeeee is subsiding, I’m feeling about 70% better.

So…alas…  That translates to a wasted trip for my son, who took half a day off his highly demanding job to drag me across the Valley. Now I feel really bad for getting him to haul me out there — though it was his idea. He would hear nothing of my trekking as far across the west side to visit my beloved Young Dr. Kildare.

And he’s probably right. YDK has moved his practice to Sun City. Eeep!

Gotta tellya: during the time my parents lived in that place, we came to understand that a Sun City doctor defined incompetence and lack of caring. Things may have changed out there — I surely hope they have! But our gawdawful experience with the Sun City medical establishment permanently deflects me from seeing any doctor who practices out there!

So. I suppose sooner or later I’ll have to find another doctor here in town, unless I want to keep making that horrendous trek across the city to visit the Scottsdale Mayo’s docs.

Make that “later than sooner.” Can’t cope with it just now.

Soggy Doggy Day

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Wow! Is it ever WET out there!!!

Nope: no rain. Just air so soggy it feels like rain could coalesce around you as you’re walking up the sidewalk.

Ahh…but, the Young People out for their exercise walks are no more discouraged by this stuff than Ruby and I are.

Me, I  absolutely must get in a mile or more of stalking around. Otherwise the hip freezes up like it was made of steel. Very painful steel.

The young people, on the other hand, appear to fall more into the category of true health nuts. Plus some of them, like the Human, are just out walking their dogs in the park.  In any event, you can’t help but love ’em.

The pleasant architecture, the central location, the relative safety, and most of all the adorable young professionals are what make this neighborhood a delight.

How, I found myself wondering, can I engineer a way to stay in my home until the last cat is hanged?  I do NOT want to be hauled off to one of those horrible old-folkeries, like the (rather nice) one where my father spent his last years. Please, please, PLEASE, Dear God: let me drop dead first!

One strategy, I figure, will be to hire a live-in keeper.

Turns out Wonder-Cleaning Lady used to do that. Apparently you can hire them from some of the old-folks’ holding pens around here: the Beatitudes, the Terraces, and the like.

How you’d vet such a person’s qualifications escapes me. Plus…we have my prickly personality: ever since I was a little kid, I’ve infinitely preferred my onliness to the company of other humans. And evidence suggests the feeling has been mutual…

In the Doggy Day category: Ruby is choking every time she laps up a sip of water. She’s GOT to go to a vet, but I can’t get her to one without the car that my son purloined.

What exactly I’m gonna do about that remains to be seen. My son is already in trouble with his employers for the time he’s had to take to transport me back and forth to the Mayo Clinic. Yes: that’s even though it’s against the law to zap your employees for taking time off to haul a relative to the doctor.

Hmmm….  Might be able to talk Wonder Cleaning-Lady into schlepping us to a vet…but that would require coordinating an appointment with her visit. And that will be trickier than it sounds. She does three houses in a day, and so she can’t just trot over here whenever some vet decides they’ll see Ruby.

Ohhh well. Nothing I can do about it at this hour. Sooo…breakfast-time!

Escaped from the Mayo

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Okay..well…I guess I’m not quite ready to shuffle off this mortal coil. That notwithstanding, a visit to the Mayo Hospital does little to persuade me of that. LORDIE, how I hate hospitals, and how I hate that one in particular!

By the time we left that sylvan realm, my angry son and I were speaking to each other more or less politely. Sorta. So there’s some hope that we’ll get back to normal in a day or three.

Miserable experience, though.

***

How much longer do I have in this sylvan vale, really? 

Well…that’s no easier to tell for me than it is to tell for anyone else. My guess is, if I don’t get any sicker than I am (which isn’t very), we’re looking at five to ten years. But if I follow in the family Tradition of Extreme Longevity, it could be another twenty to twenty-five years.

Twenty-five: no, I would not expect. But twenty: that wouldn’t be very surprising. Women in my family have lived to advanced old age…and without medical care, because they were Christian Scientists.

Sometimes I think that the very reason they lived into their dotage was that they stayed away from doctors and hospitals.

Today’s experience at the Mayo was enough to cause you to hear the sylvan call of the Other World, that’s for damn sure. All afternoon with a needle stuck in my arm, miserable hurting scared annoyed pissed in the dark as to what was really happening… How CAN i count the ways….?

Well, I never want to go back there, that’s for sure. But since the Mayo is the best medical facility in the Valley — very possibly in the whole state — this surely was not my last adventure in those parts.

Ugh. Maybe I should convert to Christian Science…

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