Sunday, January 11, 2015

Fiona's wisdom teeth.

Thursday  Fiona was supposed to have her wisdom teeth out.  I had arranged to meet her at the dentist. The dentist was in a city about 40 minutes from us.  I got an advance on sick time for the year at work and was waiting right on time.  Except that the staff at the group home slipped up and forgot the appointment.  I am baffled at how that happens. They had an appointment card. I had an appointment card. Our house has more people in it than the group home and we get everyone where they need to be when they need to be there.  And besides that, how do you forget something as important as a medical appointment.  The drs office told me that they had even called and left  a reminder message the day before.  When I mentioned that in my tirade discussion over the missed appointment I was told the home had no phone service for the past three days, and that Verizon was coming to fix it that day.  Which was either a signifcant health and safety concern for me or a prevarication.  I suspect the latter since I called them on their landline and all our discussions were on that line.

The error resulted in the surgery not happening and the dentist refusing to make another appointment.  My daughter has a consult with another dentist on the 14th. Hopefully the surgery will be scheduled promptly after that.

I went all the way up the food chain filing complaints regarding this.  I understand human error.  I did not get wicked upset when staff forgot that Fiona was going to the movies with us 2 weeks ago and we had to scramble around to get her to the cinema on time.  That is something I understand forgetting.  Medical things, no.  And it makes me wonder what else they have forgotten that I don't know about?

My email box has been full of communications regarding this matter since I filed my complaint and began my calling of powers that be. I am hopeful that this will show that I care. That I am vigilent and that for my daughter's sake, I am watching them with eagle eyes.

I also have toured a great potential day facility for Fiona to participate in.  When one of the group home higher ups called me to apologize again (!) I talked with her about this opportunity. She said she is taking my daughter this coming week to tour the facility. I said that I wanted to know what was being done about the mid day medication issue. The day facility does not medicate and I had communicated this to the group home after my tour. Fiona takes a mid day dose of a significant med so it is important to find out if this schedule can be adjusted. What a surprise (not!) to find out that the higher up had no idea that the program did not administer meds and that this would be something to resolve.I reiterated my desire for them to contact my daughter's psychiatrist and address the issue.

As much as this whole situation drives me batty, I wonder what happens for people who have guardians out of state or less involved.  I suspect it can't be good.

Sunday, January 4, 2015

Farewell Vacation!

My holiday break is about over and I am sad to see it go.  Life is so fast paced that it takes me a loooong time to really let go of thinking of times and schedules and by the time I do, it is just about time to think of them again! Also my job does not lend itself well to long times away.  Aside from breaks at this time of year, I mostly only take a lot of 3 and 4 day weekends with my vacation time. A couple days ago I started forgetting to put my watch on. That is my sign that I am really in a "vacation" mindset.  My watch is always on me.  Some people use the alarms on their phone. I am pretty old school for time pieces and have a timex that has a glow in the dark light! LOL

I love the picture above, even though I think I have used it all ready on the blog. But in the not too distant past I would have thought that this picture was not attainable.  All of us routinely together on holidays? But the Great School helped Fiona so much. She still has severe issues and probably always will, but pictures like this are myriad now in my photos.

I toured a really great day program for Fiona while I was on vacation.  I am not sure if it will work or not because the program is not allowed to administer medications. She has a psych med she takes three times a day.  I hope that perhaps there are adjustments that could be made that would allow her to participate in this.  The program has a learning component for adults who wish to expand their learning, a job readiness component (and they have a lot of connections in the community with employers who hire their people) an art component with a ceramics studio, a fiber arts center, a wet media room, and more.  There is a fitness room as well as a cafe for just gathering.  It has a school like set up where the participants choose with help their 4 focusses for each semester. I SO hope this works out for her as it would greatly expand her horizons.  The program needs to review her information and her psychiatrist has to look at the medication issue but it is at least a potentiality for 2015 to have a great opportunity for her.

The kids and I have had a lot of fun playing the games our family got for Christmas.  Games are always family games so no one person has ownership.  We have rocked out to Dance Revolution 2015, played Slamwich, Nada and Super Farkle.  Oh and Scrabble Slam which is a lot of fun as well.  In our house, games that you can do in about 15 minutes with a max of about 30 minutes are the best fit for our schedules.  All of these work well within those constraints.

I've marshalled the troops and they have happily spent a lot of time helping to undecorate our house and put up our snowman collection and tidy various messy spots within our home.  A family our size and a home our size seems to make a lot of messy spots.  I wish I kept up with that better but at least twice a year I get a chance to hoe through things really thoroughly, usually in winter and again once in the summer.

My wife was able to take the kids in to the city to see our friend Jane Houghton's art show at the Hanover.  She is an amazing artist and has taught our KC so much and continues to foster his artistic leanings.  The kids loved the show and her amazing mixed media work.

We read our 2014 memories together over supper the other night and enjoyed that too.  All year long when something happens that we want to remember, a family member grabs an index card, jots it down and puts it in an envelope that hangs on our kitchen wall.  They can be big things or little things.  Campouts, seeing ducks crossing the road near our street, sunsets rainbows, and physical achievements--anything can be written down.  It was fun to recount them together and to wonder what new things the year will hold.

I know that January is going to be very hectic at work and that on the 20th Rob will head back to school for the next semester.  Part of me feels very unready to launch back into the crazy.  But I know that once it has been going for a few days, it will be normal again, and I will at least be entering it with a more rested frame of mind than I have had in a long time.