What does it take to feel relief? For one, there is a feeling that everything is OK. That issues are resolved or in the process of being so.

For months each year I have to badger support services to act on situations that are in THEIR purview, but I somehow end up the go-between, bouncing for hours between agencies, nicely getting the brush-off so that I don’t even realize that a lot of what I am being handed via being yessed to death is BULLSHIT.

There is the doctor’s office in my mother’s building, the care agency that handles everything, the gate-keeper of benefits, the social worker in the building, the retinal-specialists’ secretary, the trust management … on and on. When the machine isn’t purring, when the right papers don’t make it to the specified agency because another agency screws up, the person getting the shaft is a 100 year old blind senior.

The cast: J at the doctor’s office insists she sent the necessary paperwork. It was due in June. The prescriptions expired. Another J, at the company that manages care insisted she never got the email, fax, call. I fax, call the doctor’s office from June through February. In the meantime, the Ensure stops coming in December. I start buying it. Same for pull-ups.

Simultaneously, my mother’s handicapped parking tag is about to expire. I send in the info. Not good enough. They won’t accept a print-out of a letter signed by the doctor from the group practice indicating that my 100+ year old mother is blind. The signature has to be on the application renewal. Papers get sent back. I contact the person who does the paperwork at the Retinal Specialists. I mail papers to her and ask that she send them back to me.

They never arrive. I call. I am asked to send them again. This time I fax them to H.

They are never returned. I fax them again and am told they will be faxed back in 5 minutes, giving me enough time to make sure machines are set up properly, and that answering machine off. HOURS later H. allegedly tries to fax the papers back: she ends the fax after one ring. That was it. And, a month has gone by.

I decide it isn’t worth dealing with that organization, so I send the info with a fresh form to the building doctor’s, J. in hopes that J. can handle that request.

I speak to the case manager several more times. I write to the building social worker. She writes back that she will get involved and personally go next door and get the papers from the med office and fax them to the case manager.

This morning I got a call from a delivery stating the Ensure would be delivered.

After the fact, I got a call from the health management company stating that the request went through for Ensure.

What does it take to make me happy?   Not much. Just a case of Ensure and a few packs of pull-ups.

Just the basics.

This series starts here:
Part 1: And The Band Played On … a mother’s life, a daughter’s journey

The previous post is here

The next post is here