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Health care

YDK: Lost and Gone Forever?

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YDK —  the beloved Young Dr. Kildare — seems to have flown the coop.

Yes, it is possible that he and his partners have closed the office for a holiday break. But if that were the case, surely they’d a) have a sign on the door to that effect and b) have some sort of off-putting announcement on their phone answering machine. But….neither of those applies. The doors are locked. No sign is in evidence. And they’re not answering the telephones.

Soooo…. I’m awfully afraid he’s gone, as in lost-and-gone-forever.

Not good, because he’s a sweetie-pie and his partners are tangibly competent. So I don’t hate loathe and despise going to the doctor when I have to see him, as is the case when I go to visit most quacks. Plus his office is right up the road from here…the Mayo Clinic, where my heavier-weight docs practice, is waaaaayyyy over on the east side, halfway to Payson. Seriously, almost an hour’s drive through cut-throat traffic.

Called a friend who is also a YDK fan. She thinks he may have moved his practice to Sun City. That’s entirely possible: a bunch of docs are following the Baby Boomers out there.

But…well, if so, bully for him. But I ain’t drivin’ an hour each way, forgodsake, to see a doc in Sun City for 15 or 20 minutes. Plus I have some exceptionally unhappy memories of the incompetence we encountered while my mother was dying of cancer in Sun City. Sorry…but I’m NOT driving an hour each way to do business with a dimwitted hack who doesn’t give a damn about aging women patients, thankyouverymuch.

One of those bastards told me and my father, as my mother begged for care for her (fukkin’ obvious! agonizing!) cancer, that (these ARE exact his words!) “all middle-aged women are hypochondriacs.”

No kidding.

Actually, the term he used was crocks. That’s quack-talk for crocks of sh!t.

So…now I need to try to find another “doctor in the wild,” as the Mayo’s staff calls the local medicos who are not on their faculty, or resign myself to driving until the cows come home for every little sniffle.

Or…I suppose…I could move to Scottsdale.

***

But….dammit, I don’t want to move to Scottsdale!

Not that there’s anything wrong with Scottsdale, other than that it’s Snottsville.   But my son lives here in town. I could almost walk to his house from mine – it’s an eight-minute drive down through urban traffic to his house. Residential parts of Scottsdale – those I might afford – are a good 45 minutes from central Phoenix. That’s when it’s not rush hour! And therein lies the issue: I don’t wanna be 45 minutes or an hour away from my son!

***

Sooooo….what to do, what to do?

I reckon come the first Monday after the Christmas chivaree, I’ll try to call over to YDK’s place again.

Failing that, I’ll…

a) Try to get in to a friend’s doctor in central Phoenix, and/or
b) Ask on the neighborhood Facebook page for recommendations from the locals.

We shall see how that goes. Mercifully, there’s no emergency.

…for the nonce…

Sittin’ on the dock of the…uh…pool…

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Staggeringly gorgeous weather. This is one of the best times of the year in Phoenix…and most times of the year are exceptionally good. 😀

Thinking about…

* My father retiring.

He figured he had it made: their little house paid off plus enough in savings to carry him and my mother through the rest of their lives, even after they paid for my college education.

Heh…he didn’t understand about the vagaries of the stock market.

Poor man! He about had a coronary when the market crashed. As far as I could tell, he didn’t understand that if he just held steady, eventually the market would rally and all would be well. And yea verily, that did happen…but not until after he’d expended a great deal of adrenaline. And lost quite the pile of cash.

* The Mayo Clinic and how much I’m coming to distrust it.

They do a blood test on me; then come back to me (and the highly vulnerable son) squalling EEEK EEEK!! You have diabetes! EEEK!!!!!

No, I don’t. Been here, done this…let’s do it again…

Now I present myself to another doctor. “Will you please check me for diabetes? It’s in the family.”

JAB! STAB!! Test test test…

“No. You don’t have diabetes. You have prediabetes, which may possibly some day evolve into diabetes. Or not. This is why you should have annual physicals and they should indeed include testing for diabetes. But so far, you’re not very close to Death’s door.”

Uh huh. Same wind I’ve heard blow before.

* The beloved Young Dr. Kildare

Awww, poor babe. He’s fled the profession again. Come to find out, he’s no longer at the practice where I found him most recently, just up the road in suburban Sunnyslope. They ain’t a-tellin’ about where he’s gone.

My guess is, it’s far, far from the practice of medicine, and pretty damn far from Phoenix, too.

*****

Time passes a bit

****

It’s only 6:00 p.m., but my! What a beautiful — even glorious — evening.

A beautiful and gracious dusk elides into darkness, the room-temperature night air holding steady through the hours.

Arizona: what a place!

 

Oh…Emmm…Geeee!

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I can’t believe it!

Just heard from my “doctor in the wild” — i.e., an MD who is NOT associated with the Mayo Clinic.

Yeah: I keep a doc in the wild for two reasons. The main one: the Mayo is located halfway to Payson: damn near an hour’s drive from here. So that means every doctor visit entails almost two hours of driving through hectic traffic. I’ve taken to reserving the cross-country journey for ailments that I think are serious stuff.

The other reason: Doctors are only human. They make mistakes.

For that reason, I always get a second opinion. No matter what kind of Hell & High Water we’re looking at.

So, that being a fact supported by experience, when the Mayo suggested that diabetes or mebbe prediabetes (make up your minds, folks!) was hauling me toward Death’s Door, I decided to quietly get a “check-up” from Young Dr. Kildare’s crew.

His P.A. just called and reported that there’s NO SIGN OF DIABETES OR PREDIABETES OR ANY OTHER BLOOD SUGAR ISSUE in the elaborate set of tests they just performed.

Understand: it’s not the first time YDK’s team has beaten me about the head & shoulders with this annoying blood test. And…consistently, they say the results are well within the normal range.

So…

Umh….

So…???? What the HELL is the Mayo doing, delivering a diagnosis that directly contradicts other doctors’ conclusions?

Dare one ask if they’re fishing for long-term patients who will have to come back every few weeks from now until the sun burns out?

Naaaaahhhhhh…. Couldn’t be. Could it?

Lovely REMOTE Uptown Phoenix

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LOL! As I’m wont to call my North Central district of (un)lovely Phoenix, Lovely Uptown Phoenix may still have a few lovely enough neighborhoods, but no part of it is centrally located, as the “uptown” sobriquet implies. The Valley is now one long, gooey swath of sub-suburbs. You drive until you’re  blue in the face to get where you’re going, and then you drive some more. Reverse and repeat to get home.

I need to go to the dermatologist. Something weird is happening to my paws: the fingernails are lifting off the nail beds. No obvious reason for this to happen. All I know is that it hurts. And the stuff the defunct Young Dr. Kildare’s partner prescribed does exactly nothing to help.

So…that means more driving driving driving, more hassle hassle hassle, more dollars dumped at the pharmacy.

If I thought whatever this is would go away, I’d leave it alone and just wait. But…it’s NOT going away. To the contrary, it’s fast getting worse.

Gosh, I don’t feel like driving from pillar to post. On the other hand, this…Thing, whatever it is, seems to be getting worse. Fast.

Let’s try calling YDK’s ex-partner again…see if we can get in today. (Fat chance, eh?)

******

Yea, verily! SERIOUSLY fat chance!!  Got in this very afternoon!

Gosh….that’s kinda amazing!

Trouble is, it suggests they think it could be something serious. And that’s something I could do without.

Soooo…it’s likely to be even more amazing if they come up with a nostrum that works.

******

hmmmmm….  Y’know, there’s a Basha’s grocery store (local chain comparable to Safeway) in the shopping center right across the road from YDK’s office. Hmmm….

If I were getting YDK prescriptions filled there, all I’d have to do is go across the street. Wouldn’t have to circle back into the neighborhood and fight my way through 87 berjillion no-left-turn intersections to get to the Safeway.

It’s only 91 degrees out here on the shady front patio. Humidity: 14%. Doesn’t seem that bad…but gosh, it’s muggy! In Yarnell, near the long-lamented ranch, humidity is only 6%. How do I wish I were there? Lemme count the ways…

My dear friend Elaine used to shop in that Basha’s. She lived in the surrounding tract, known as Moon Valley. After her husband died, she went back east to be with her relatives. Nothing more has been heard from her, and indeed, I believe she herself is now “late.” As they say. They were some years older than I, back in the day when we spent much of our spare time hanging out together.

hmmmmm….yeah. It sez here, sez DuckDuckGo, that she died in 2024. Well…that’s not surprising — she was skateboarding toward the end when last seen, well into her 80s. But it’s too bad.

waitwaitwait! Here’s a photo of the Dear Departed, and eeek! That’s not OUR Elaine.

Hmmmm….

{sigh}

Well, she was quite a few years older than me, and I was no spring chicken when we met. Sooo…she’s surely moved on from this earthly plane by now.

{sigh x 10 to the 12th power….}

And while we’re sighing, let us move on to {MOAN!}  How do I not want to  blow away half the afternoon traipsing to a doctor’s office and a pharmacy? Let me count the ways…

According to the Grand Expert in the Sky (i.e., the Internet), nails lift off their bed for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is a fungal infection. That will entail gulping down an anti-fungal drug, which, as usual, is just about guaranteed to make me good & sick.

I can hardly wait…

******

ohhhkayyyy….so…i waited….

She didn’t have the faintest.

Holeee sh!t! Is there some REASON why we pay for insurance and in-person visits to see doctors?

Oh. Yeah. So they can afford to go out to dinner, right?

/eyeroll/

Aging in Place…by Damn!

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Why in heaven’s name did I never think of this?  It’s so obvious!

Hire someone to come to the house and provide the services you’d get in an old-folkerie.

  • What would be the advantages?
  • What would be the disadvantages?
  • What would be the effect on M’hito?
  • What be the effect on me?

Y’know, my father checked himself into one of the first and most prominent “life-care communities” in Arizona. (Don’tcha just LOVE that marketing euphemism?) The place was called Orangewood…and it was within walking distance of my house in North Central Phoenix.

My mother had refused to go, so he was stuck in their house in Sun City until she croaked over — which she did promptly enough, thanks to her suicidal tobacco habit.

You need to know that he had gone to sea all his adult life, living on naval vessels and commercial tankers. So he was deeply accustomed to living in an institutional environment.

  • He didn’t mind close quarters.
  • He didn’t mind having to behave like he was in jail.
  • He didn’t mind bad food.
  • He didn’t mind other people telling him what to do and when to do it.

Personally, I loathe that lifestyle. Hated living in the dormitory.  And I would — truly — take a flying leap off the North Rim of the Grand Canyon if I were forced to move into one of those nursing-home knock-offs.

Turns out that some alternatives do exist, even though they’re not obvious.

Bear in mind: moving into one of those awful “life-care communities” will take ALL of your life savings.

So…uhmmmm…. If you decline any such move, will you not then still have your sticky little hands on said life savings?

And if that’s the case, couldn’t YOU decide how said L.S.’s will be spent, on whom, and when?

  • Why could you not sic your financial representative on the agencies and organizations you’d need to hire? Have him ride herd on them, see that they’re paid, that they do the job, and they don’t cheat you.
  • Helle’s belles, hire a second financial rep — or a lawyer — to ride herd on the first one.
  • It would be complicated as Hell and you’d need to have honest, reliable representatives…but…it could be done. Couldn’t it?

See the gist of what I’m saying here? You could hire your own people to provide the services you get from a “life-care community.”

You’d need more than one person. Taking care of an ailing oldster is no easy task…and it is, as a practical matter, a 24-hour job. You’d probably need at least three people, to cover three eight-hour shifts.

Hiring three people to hang around and watch over you 24 hours a day would, indeed, cost an arm and a leg and then some. But remember: when you move into one of those life-care outfits, they take everything you have.

To move to Orangewood, my father had to fork over his entire life savings, including the funds he got from the sale of his paid-off house. And though he wasn’t John D. Rockefeller, as an inveterate cheapskate he had piled up quite a mound of cash to see him and my mother through their dotage.

Okay. So: what are we looking at, if instead we hire private staff to babysit us in our own dotage?

  • What would be the advantages?

* They would be my employees, not beholden to some company acting as a holding pen to store my body while we wait for me to die.

* Therefore, I could hire and fire at will. If I were dissatisfied, I could find someone else to come in.

  • What would be the disadvantages?

* I or my son would have to ride herd on them.

* This would mean we not only would have to be sure they were paid fairly and on time, but also that income-tax documents were filed and that the employees understood their responsibilities for paying their taxes.

* Any dishonesty or shiftiness on their part could have painful consequences for us.

* Any loss of marbles on my part could also have painful consequences, for everyone involved.

* And of course, having someone in your face every day would be, for a loner like me, quite the little adjustment…

  • What would be the effect on M’jito?

* It would foist an untoward responsibility on him, one that could be quite a burden.

* If tax reports were incorrectly filed through no fault of his or mine, the government could harass us.

* It would free up large amounts of time for him, during which he would not have to ride herd on me.

  • What would be the effect on me?

* No doubt I would be less than perfectly pleased to have someone underfoot all the time — at least 8 hours a day, and maybe more than that.

* On the other hand, if it would keep me out of an old-folkerie, no doubt I could somehow make myself adjust…

In some ways, it’s a toss-up, isn’t it….

Uh oh… Not to say GOOD GRIEF!

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Just experienced one of those blinding insights... You know, when you’re loafing around and all of a sudden something SOOO FUKKIN OBVIOUS dawns on you and you say to your idiot self what the HELL was the matter with me that I didn’t think of this????

Yeah. What HAS been the MATTER with me?

***

Welp…superficially the matter has been some kind of ailment that causes crazy-making peripheral neuropathy — tingling and stinging in the hands, feet, and lips — and just about constant ear-whistling. Either of these phenomena alone is enough to drive you off the edge of a cliff. Together, they pretty much guarantee suicidal ideation.

Nothing, but NOTHING that I’ve tried has helped. This has gone on for weeks, eliding into months.

Welp…it suddenly strikes me: nothing that I’ve tried addresses one major, very obvious potential cause.

Hey: what causes your ears to whistle and buzz when you’ve got the flu? When your allergies are flaring?

Yeah: sinus and ear congestion!

DUH!

My nose doesn’t feel stuffy (or rather, no more stuffy than usual: this IS Arizona, the land where you go to find out what your allergies are). But my ears do. They click when I open my mouth wide, like they do when you have a bad head cold.

In Arizona, you get sinus and ear congestion from the ambient allergens. And it develops that peripheral neuropathy can also result from allergies.

At the risk of repeating myself: DUH!

***

Ya don’t suppose…????

Holy sh!t…why didn’t I think of this before? It’s been going on for weeks, months…and never once have I thought “why are my ears ringing all the time? like when i have a bad cold??? sorta like when i have an allergic attack?”

***

Okay. I just dropped a Benadryl.

This should be entertaining: let’s see what happens. Give it an hour or two to kick in, if it’s gonna kick in.

Benadryl wires me to the teeth (which is why I don’t like to take it). But it doesn’t knock me into the middle of next week, the way other allergy meds do…so it shouldn’t be unsafe for me to drive the car or climb into the bathtub.

That’s the reason I don’t like to take the usual allergy meds: they put me into a damn coma. I need to be able to drive, and I need to be able to function around the house.

Hmmm…it’s 1 p.m. now. I’d guess it’ll take an hour or two for the thing to kick in, if it’s going to. Minimum. Actually, it’s been going on for so long, it may take a day or two for the allergy med to make a difference. Hmmm….

This will be innaresting.

I hope.