Medical Bureaucracy
I spent too much time yesterday morning battling medical bureaucrats. That’s not fair; I spent much of the morning battling medical bureaucracy. The facility from which my wife was discharged on Friday goofed and returned to the pharmacy (instead of giving to me) a medication to treat an infection. The facility claimed it could not correct the error. The pharmacy originally said it could, then said it could not, provide the medication. I argued, was put on hold, then handed over to someone else who claimed the law prohibited them from providing me with the prescription. I argued that the rules, whether law or not, were costing my wife’s treatment and that, if they insisted on following the rules rather than finding a solution, their claims that their first priority is the patient are patently false. She promptly hung up on me. I called back and explained the situation to someone else. He said he would have to call the facility, but if the facility had returned the pills by mistake, he would fix the problem. Thanks to his efforts to find a solution, rather than an excuse, before 3:30 I had administered the medication to my wife.
A Good Day, a Hard Night
My wife spend quite a bit of the day yesterday watching a holiday special of a British baking show on TV. She had a nice breakfast, courtesy of her sister, and during the course of the day engaged in conversation quite a bit. It was a good day, all in all, despite my run-ins with the rehab facility and the pharmacy.
Unlike the night before, last night the caregiver support person showed up as promised by 8:30. She seems to be a very competent, very nice person. She changed the bedding, washed and folded sheets, got my wife situated for the night, and otherwise did all I expected and more. When I went to bed, I was confident she would take good care of anything my wife might need during the night. And I was right; she is extremely capable and very pleasant.
All was going well until sometime before 2 a.m., when the woman woke me to tell me my wife was agitated and calling for me. The agitation lasted for quite some time and involved other odd behavioral issues. This morning, though she is better, my wife is out of sorts. I believe the behavioral evidence suggests a UTI. A nurse will be here around mid-day today to establish a home healthcare regimen; I will ask her for advice.
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If I were able to give one bit of advice to the developers of Zoom, it would be this: when someone attempts to join a Zoom meeting, the host should be alerted with an audible tone or an intrusive visual alert. The existing system does adequately alert that new participants are awaiting admission, leaving them waiting to be admitted by a host who does not even know there are people waiting to join the event.
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Prepackaged frozen one-portion or two-portion one-dish meals—breakfast, lunch, and dinner—are growing more and more appealing to me. Meal preparation can be extremely distracting when one is trying to do four things at once. Quick-prep meals that include everything in a single dish make life a little easier at such times. I believe there is an enormous market for such frozen foods. If I had the money, I would invest in such enterprises.
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I finally checked the air in the Subaru’s tires. Two tires (the rear) have 28 pounds, one (front right) has 27 pounds, and one (front left) has 17.5 pounds. The latter tire is the culprit, I am sure, that caused the “low tire pressure” light to display on the instrument panel. All of the tires are low, though. The recommended pressures are 35 in front and 33 in back. Some day, I will drive the car to a station with an easily-accessible compressed air hose; I hope that days comes soon. Maybe today, but not likely.
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I mentioned yesterday to my sister-in-law, who is in the throes of an incredibly healthy lifestyle, that I miss chicken-fried steak. Ever since making the mistake of making that offhand comment, I have had an intense hankering for a chicken-fried steak from Mary’s Café in Strawn, Texas. Strawn is about three miles west-northwest of Mingus, which is about two miles north of Thurber. I don’t know whether Mary’s is open these days. Even if it is, it’s roughly six hours and change from my house, so the chances of me going anything soon are slim to none. Having mentioned frozen foods a few paragraphs back, though, I wonder whether I could have Mary’s (if it is open) FedEx a few large frozen (cooked) chicken-fried steaks to me? It’s worth exploring. Maybe. I doubt my wife would want to try to eat a chicken-fried stead, though. So that’s probably not really worth exploring, after all.
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Some days, my writing seems to emanate from a cheerful extrovert. Those are the days that cause me to believe in demonic possession. I have never been an extrovert. I have rarely been cheerful. So when I read words that could mistakenly be assume to come from the fingers of a cheerful extrovert, I cringe and seek out a protective crucifix. Not really, of course. But even when I feel somewhat depressed, my writing can conceal my emotional state. Perhaps that represents an attempt to shield myself from sympathy, pity, and compassion (if I were to consult a thesaurus, I could come up with even more near-synonyms).
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Birds tend to be more visible in the dead of winter because of the absence of leaves to conceal them. Yet maybe the birds I see in the dead of winter are not resident in this part of the world during summer and spring, so they would be invisible during those seasons, anyway. If I had enough interest in knowing the answer to that implied question, I would explore it further. But my interest is not sufficiently strong to warrant the effort. That’s true of so many things, though. Weak curiosity rarely leads to education or to knowledge. Weak curiosity is evidence of a lazy mind. I wonder whether there’s a term for weak curiosity? I don’t have enough interest in the answer to look it up. That reminds me of a joke I retold a few days ago:
Job interviewer: What do you think is your most significant weakness?
Job applicant: I think my honesty is my most significant weakness.
Job interviewer: I don’t think honest is a weakness.
Job applicant: I don’t care what you think.
But when I told the joke, I used vulgarity. It’s funnier that way.
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I had two eggs for breakfast. Nothing more. I have thus far been unable to convince my wife to eat anything at all. Isn’t life peachy?
