Yesterday was a real doctor day.
Dh and I took Nathan to see a new doctor, first thing in the morning. Her specialty is child behavior. She was very very nice, and worked well with Nathan. Dh and I both had a good feeling about her. Unfortunately, since we were there together, I kept feeling like we were talking over each other, each trying to express their concerns, and really creating more confusion than helping. Oh well. Believe it or not, that was the first time we've been to a doctor, regarding Nathan's autism, together. Usually it's me alone. Rarely, it's dh alone. I felt like I couldn't get a single thought expressed completely without it getting verbally stepped on, interrupted, and sidetracked. It was frustrating. But I'm sure he felt the same way, too, and it's about time he got a chance to give his opinions as well. And in that spirit, I was very pleased that he was there. On the other hand, I do think it will be more productive if we get a chance to go singularly to the doctor. Maybe me one time, him another. The poor doctor, lol! But I'm sure she could see how we are both very involved, and both very concerned about all the school frustrations, and we'd really like to all work together to find a better way.
Right when we left the doctor, we were going to head over to dh's new workplace. His company was purchased a couple years ago, and they are now moving everybody into one building. Sadly, it is quite a bit further for dh to drive to work. I hadn't seen the new building yet, so we were going to take a little side trip past the new place. During the doctor appointment, my cell phone had gone off, and I just reached down and pressed the button to send the call to voicemail, without looking at the caller. I wish I had looked. As we left the doctor's place, I checked my phone to see that it was my MIL. She rarely calls my cell. I was instantly concerned. I called her back and found out that my FIL is quite ill, and they wanted us to take them to the immergency care clinic. Hooboy. This is not good. You have to be pretty much knocking on death's door for the to aggree to go to a doctor. We immediately turned around and headed back to town.
The immergency care clinic was unbelievably slow. Poor FIL looked awful, and seemed to be staggering at times. He has diabetes, and I worried about the high blood sugar levels he was getting, let alone this flu that had hit him particularly hard, and was not going away. I was pretty sure we would be soon heading for the hospital. Because of that possibility, dh instructed me and Nathan to follow in my car, as we all headed for the clinic.
Thank God we went. FIL has pneumonia. With some strong meds, he should be okay, and they felt that the hospital wouldn't be necessary. Though we were given strict instructions to keep an eye on that blood sugar, and if it didn't go down and stay down, we were to get him back to the doctor pronto.
We spent the next couple HOURS trying to get his script filled. MIL asked us to go to Walmart, since that is where they usually go, and their history is with them. What horrible service!! They were closed for lunch when we arrived, so we had to wait over 20 minutes to even turn in the script. That 20 minutes turned into another 15 minutes. Then they said it would be 25 minutes before it would be ready. That 20 minutes turned into another 15 minutes, which turned into another 15 minutes. Finally they had the script, but the had run out of the medicine! So they could only give us HALF the script. (You mean we have to go through this AGAIN???) At least they gave it to us at no charge, but still, it was not the money that was the issue here. It was the horrible service. And when we described what happened to MIL, she gave us the impression that this is not at all unusual. Oh for crying out loud! They live a half a block from a 24 hour Walgreens! With a Drive-Thru no less! We finally persuaded them to switch to that pharmacy after this. Hell, I'll gladly pay if it's more expensive. I can't believe they would deal with that crap every time they need meds. And the sad thing is that Walmart was surely not lacking in customers. They must be a lot cheaper, or why would anyone deal with that? That's just awful. Most of those customers were seniors, too. Very senior. Waiting around with no place to sit, some with walkers. They had one little bench, that could hold maybe three small adults, but the line was all the way through the department. It's not right to treat seniors that way.
So that took up most of our day. We were exhausted after that. We never did get to the errands we wanted to run. Oh well. At least FIL got to a doc. That always scares us, when he won't go. We tried to get him to go last week, and he refused. He's in his mid 80's, so you don't want to mess around, taking chances with health issues.
I'm hoping we don't have more doctor visits in the near future.
No comments:
Post a Comment