Let’s get back to the buckeroo commode, shall we?

While my mother has been riding her bucking bronco of a commode, whereas a new one was requested and because of letters and emails and quirks and confusion and phone calls, and agencies and code numbers, it took months to arrive, we are, my friends, back where we began: On the same bucking bronco. HeeeYa!

The said new commode was delivered and needed to be installed over the toilet as her current rickety but heavy one is now. Mother wasn’t pleased with the lightweight frame and fragility; the driver claimed installation was “not his job,” and so OFF WITH HIS HEAD! The shunned commode and the accompanying driver were ousted on the spot.

Needless to say, the supply company rep was upset and I explained my mother needs a support in the bathroom not a free-standing bedside potty. I told him that the driver would not install, the company spokesman said he’d speak to his supervisor and the commode would make a return visit on Tuesday, (today) and all would be made right. At least that’s what they thought. Little did they know my mother had other plans.

She had told me to cancel the order but I felt that the most competent aide should step-in and at least look at it: A big mistake.

I alerted the “good” aide that this would be taking place today and she could see what was going on and report back and then we’d make a decision. My mother’s old steel bronco had been tamed but this new aluminum one (I assume this is how they are made now) had to be broken in for a smooth ride.

The plan backfired: The aide was out of the room during the delivery, (at the bathroom in her office upstairs–she is not allowed to use my mother’s bathroom) my mother opened the door and perused with her blind eyes that the same commode was returned and, you guessed it, both commode and driver #2 were banished. I received a call from the company while the driver was outside the door, from another rep who said the driver had called and the item was refused.

I realized we might have been having a semantic misinterpretation and that all mother needed was some kind of support, not a “commode, free standing unit.” But when the rep sent me a photo of this “toilet safety frame” I realized that was a pitiful piece of junk and I wrote back to her and said forget it. Forget it all!

Then a phone call from the aide in the bathroom with my mother screaming at her from afar to “mind her own business;” subsequently she texted me and said she was getting hell, all the blame.

Finally, I spoke to my mother who very curtly told me that she had conferred with her doctor yesterday and he is going to get her “a better one.” (whatever that means, whatever that entails).

“Let’s get this clear,” said my mother in her best business-like work voice from the 1970s, “I will take care of this.”

And you know what? I am glad it came to this. I am glad to be relieved of this duty, this ongoing ridiculous burden. My soon-to-be 102 year old mother, bless her, is welcome to do this, welcome to take on the system. To make the calls, to take the notes, to confer with this one and that one and the other one. To let me off the hook. So I can try to take a breath and deal with my own life.

The bucking bronco commode is not my first rodeo, and likely, for a while, it won’t be my last.

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