After 13 [verrrrrry long] months, it was a bit of a surprise to see this thread get a bump today, but I thank you for your input reno340.
...
and after sitting here for nearly ten minutes trying to frame some decent response or bring everybody up to speed on the situation, I'm shaking (too much coffee??? no), my heart rate is up a few points, and I'm discovering that I can't put together a workable summary of the last year if I had to. But I'm going to try anyway. This post may be long so let me apologize in advance -- sorry.
Her "doctor" that she used to see 2, 3 or 4 times a WEEK turned out to be merely a Physicians' Assistant. He has the whole small town of Sharon, Tennessee convinced that he's a doctor. He's not -- the guy is just a prescription pad on two legs who apparently has no interest in doing anything other than keeping her medicated and keeping him up to date on his Cadillac payments.
We haven't taken her back since February and never will. That day, she walked out of his office with him and he told me, "She's the picture of health!" as he handed me three new prescriptions. While they chatted for a minute, I looked at them; one was for diabetic testing supplies, one for lancets, and the third was for a brand new blood glucose meter.
I asked him straight up then why she has new prescriptions for all that stuff when there was a stack of unopened diabetic supplies from Arriva Medical no less than
four feet high in her living room.
While cleaning out their house, I had been organizing everything into piles and bags (yeah, their place was a cross between
American Pickers and
Hoarders) ... they had five glucose meters that all looked brand new. There was enough medication bottles scattered throughout the house to completely fill TWO 13-gallon trash bags! Some of those had no labels so God only knows what was in them or which one of his parents they were prescribed for.
I asked the "doctor" right then how long it had been since her last prescription for a blood glucose meter was written. He opened and closed his mouth about twenty times like a trout out of water and started thumbing through her 2-inch-thick file -- the last one he could find was from June of 2012. So he's writing her new ones when the stuff she had wasn't even eight months old?!?
What is most telling is that Billy's mother is not diabetic. She never was diabetic. Her husband was "borderline" diabetic. The names on the boxes are in both of their names.
I turned him in for medicare fraud and never took her back again.
In the meantime, his daughter -- the only REAL doctor in the office (who saw Billy's mom once in 7 years and didn't prescribe her anything) got sued for $15 million dollars for removing a trach tube prematurely and causing a young man to endure brain damage. [
http://www.kinnardclaytonandbeveridge.com/Verdicts-Settlements.shtml]
As timing would have it, Billy's mom got a letter from an independent firm TODAY affirming Medicare's denial of payments to Arriva Medical for diabetic testing supplies because her medical records did not support the bills. (Arriva has filed three appeals over the last few months trying to get paid and they haven't won one yet.)
Since February, Billy's mom hasn't been on a single medication other than Advil for her back and she's doing all right physically. The hundreds of medication bottles were mainly in his dad's name, but she was on a few that she didn't need to be on too. The guy had Billy's father on no less than 31 different medicines that I can find (4 of which should never have been prescribed for a cancer survivor!).
She finally got off the couch and started sleeping in her own room in (I think) about April ... and that was only because I told her out of total frustration one day that I missed having sex. Sad that it had to be like that, but it's true -- kinda tough to get your freak on when your man's mom is within earshot.
She's had a couple episodes of talking to people who aren't in the room and when we ask who she's talking to, she says it's the cats. But none of our cats is named Joe. Her younger sister who lives in Louisiana is named Jo though, and they're pretty close.
About six weeks ago now, again in the middle of the night, the medical alarm went off with its "EMERGENCY! EMERGENCY!" electronic voice. We vault out of bed again and start searching the house -- she is nowhere to be found! The back door was hanging wide open and a few seconds later the blue-and-reds start flashing out front from our circle driveway. Billy walked out to talk with the cop and find out what's going on.
The cop opens the back door of the cruiser and let Billy's mother out. "Well Jo, it looks like we got busted" and she giggled a little bit. Dressed in nothing but her half slippers, zebra-striped pajama pants and a wife beater t-shirt, the cop found her
almost a mile from our house walking along the highway. It was 31 degrees outside. Thankfully some guy passing on the highway had called the police and he somehow knew where she belonged.
A couple days later the new door alarms arrived and got installed. Most people use those to alert themselves to intruders -- we've got them now so we know if she "escapes." Billy can now sleep. I still don't ... not much anyway.
The final probate paperwork was sent back to the lawyer Friday so at least the legal stuff's about over with; only one of his creditors even filed a claim against the estate so his mom came out all right on that.
And right now maybe a half hour after starting this post, my heart is still pounding and I'm still shaking. I obviously have some of my own issues here and haven't been myself for a long time either. I've been relegated to keeping all of my thoughts to myself -- because I'm basically sick of getting yelled at when I do share them -- and I have no doubt that holding everything in now is doing me little good over the long term.
Even my longtime friends here know something's up but I rarely talk to them about it. For a diehard motorhead chick who's had nearly 10,000 posts on this board over the last ten years, I might have typed on FABO 30 times since last November. Frankly, I just don't know what to say. Or IF I should. (And if Billy ever sees this thread, I know he'll have a fit.)
And we still have a 14' enclosed trailer full of his parents' stuff that she needs to go through, sort out and decide what to do with. She's gone through a few boxes on two occasions since she moved in and the rest of it just sits there waiting. We don't know what to do with it either, and have no room to put most of it if we did. The ad on Craigs List doesn't get much attention despite its contents being listed at giveaway prices.
So here I am going through the daily motions, trying to run my shop, get the work done (much better now the last few months than I was, and the turn around time has improved a little), keep the customers happy and keep the new ones coming in ... but it still feels like only part of "me" is there. I've done everything I can to try to be positive, accommodating, understanding, patient, sympathetic and kind.
But if it was working and if she was truly happy being here and we were truly happy having her here, I don't think I'd be shaking with an accelerated heart rate as I sat here trying to tell you all about it.
Now please ... somebody tell me I'm WRONG. :-D
Thanks for listening FABO. Even if nobody reads this, it's kinda good to get some of it out.
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Knowing that this post is worthless without pics ...
This is the first pile I found ...
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Imagine finding all these ... and trying to figure out what's in them.
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