CALLED HOME AGAIN

COASTAL GLORY

I had of course, during this time been talking to mum each day on the phone. No sooner had we left home than the lump that had appeared on the side of her nose just before Christmas, (the one that was deemed to be an ant bite), reappeared. Not only did it re-appear, but it rapidly become quite large. Mum once again tried antihistamines, this time to no avail. Her general health too, seemed to be suffering.

It almost seemed she had just hung in there until after the marriage ceremony. The following day she seemed worse than usual on the phone and decided to go and see her GPs. Now, I’d better tell you right now that the next episode in our lives, revolving around mum, will take quite a bit of telling. I know I am never brief, but this will be more wordy than usual so I apologise in advance, but I cannot in all conscience, with respect to mum or anyone else going thru’ similar events, short cut at this time.

A Storm Approaches!

During the past 12 months I have become more and more horrified at the way some of the medical fraternity and their staff, treat our oldies. I guess the fact that we are becoming older ourselves help to fuel that uncomfortable realisation.

River Mouth

Mum was attending the local Dental Hospital to have a fair amount of dental work done and to have a small partial plate made. As I usually took her to these trysts I had a pretty good idea of how they dealt with her. On one noteworthy occasion, they kept mum in that chair way past the time when she told them quite clearly she was no longer able to handle the treatment. She was at the time, 86 years old, and quite frail. When she told them she could not continue that day, they should have ceased. It was not a procedure that had to be continued, from memory, I think it was a cleaning procedure, following a fitting for the dentures. I also heard the way she was treated at the front desk, both at the dental surgery and the doctors’ surgery. The staff, for whatever reason, seem to think that if you are elderly you must be both simple and deaf. The only way I can describe the general treatment is as a form of bullying. Listening I would cringe on mum’s behalf – she was certainly neither of those things and in her heyday would have given any of these self righteous excuses for human beings a run for their money.

Honeymoon Suite

This general type of treatment was exemplified when she called the surgery to make a double appointment to see a GP. Sadly for mum, there were a couple of circumstances which had lead up to her being a bit of an orphan as far as GPs were concerned. Her long term GP, the one who not only had she been seeing for some 20 or so years, but who had also been her mother’s Dr, retired; there was another older Dr at the practice who mum had also been seeing on and off for around the same period of time. This particular Dr, an Asian lady was super thorough, but painfully slow, largely because she refused point blank to use a computer at all. Every time mum went to see her, there was a wait of at least, at least, 2 hours. That is a long time for an elderly woman (and her not so young daughter) to be sitting in a germ ridden, busy, noisy, often cold waiting room. The only upside to these prolonged waits was that mum invariably saw someone she knew and had some quite nice chats while waiting.

Two of the colourful locals

By the time mum tried to make her next appointment the Asian lady Dr was on leave, this was probably not necessarily a bad thing, as due (we think) to her own poor and deteriorating health, she had given mum an incorrect prescription – when she was supposed to give a prescription for a higher dose of blood pressure medication, she had in fact written out a script for a lighter dose – considering how high mum’s blood pressure was at the time, an error which could have proved fatal!

On this particular occasion, mum called and asked for a double appointment. Not for the first time, she was bluntly asked “Why” by the woman on the phone. Honestly, I just don’t get this! What bloody business is it of a telephonist why you need to see a Dr for a longer period of time? The appointment, double or single is being paid for after all. What medical experience would these people have that would enable them to make a decision as to whether or not the request was valid? Why should any of us have to explain our private medical affairs with a telephonist? Anyway, thanks to the surly tone etc of the person on the other end of the phone, mum ended up with just a normal length appointment. She had wanted to talk to the Dr about getting Taxi Vouchers verified and of course, about the lump on her face. This lump by now had grown so rapidly, it was pushing her glasses up above their usual position.

A single appointment was made with the Dr who generally fielded all the’ drop in’ patients, you know the type of Dr I am talking about here. They generally are super quick and not particularly interested – many surgeries employ these quick operators in order to get thru’ the patient list quickly. Mum had been compelled to see this particular GP before and had found him to reasonably OK. Anyway, she was pretty desperate by this time.

I can only relate this now, as told to me by mum. This wonderful chap, DID NOT AT ANY TIME look at my mother’s face. According to mum, he didn’t even look up from his desk/computer. She asked him about Taxi Vouchers and was told in very abrupt tones that “You are not technically Blind”, “You do not use a Walker”, “You can catch a bus!” – you know, by now Mum was unable to walk more than a couple of yards without stopping for a break, she had very little stamina, and whilst she was not legally blind, I had to hold her hand all the time to stop her from stumbling, as her eyesight simply couldn’t adjust from shade to bright at all. She had, while we were away the previous year for a week or so, fallen in the middle of the road outside the optometrists, in busy traffic I might add. I am not a vindictive person, but part of me wishes this particular GP some tough times when he gets to mum’s venerable age. Oddly, despite his little rant, he did sign the relative paper work for her however. Mum was bundled out of the surgery without having him attend to the really important issue of the lump on her face.

All of this had happened in the two weeks since we left home for Denmark. The lump had been nowhere to be seen when we went, but had re-surfaced aggressively in that short time. Yet another locum was called, this time, mum was told to have biopsy performed on the lump. Now she was scared!! The next day she took herself out to the Emergency Department of Swan Districts Hospital where they took very good care of her indeed. She was there for the whole day and they took a whole series of tests and made an appointment for her to go into the Ear Nose and Throat department of Royal Perth Hospital (RPH) the following day. They took her everywhere in a wheel chair and provided her with Taxi vouchers to use for going to RPH. Mum did all of this in our absence and it must have been hard indeed!

By now, this was one week after we had tied the knot. On Tuesday, mum took herself into RPH as arranged and they performed yet more tests and an appointment was made for her to attend on the following Monday in order to get the results. She really had been thru’ the wringer by now and we immediately decided to call short our stay in Denmark and head on home. I promised mum we would be there to take her to the RPH appointment the following Monday.

We packed up the following day and headed directly home, not stopping half way as we could have normally done. We arrived home on the Thursday and headed down to visit mum on the Friday. The rapid deterioration in her health was notable as was the huge lump now clearly visible alongside her nose.

Remember now, we still had not shared our Big News with the family. Only mum knew we were married. In order to remedy this we called around to arrange a ‘bun-fight’ at the old farm on the second Sunday we arrived home, still not telling anyone anything.



Goodbye to Beautiful Denmark