Several new developments with mom. First, in February, I submitted an application for her citizenship. That was as long and tiring a process as you can imagine, and because of all the other things I had to do, it took me several weekends to complete all of the paperwork and to get the required documents from mom.
Originally they said it would be a nineteen-month-long process, but then they suddenly sent us the fingerprint appointment and said it would be a total waiting time of nine months. That sounded much better, only that the date for fort fingerprints was scheduled for one of the days of my European trip, and in addition, Igor could not take time off work on that day.
Fortunately, Anna was a savior: she came to Chicago and took mom for that appointment, But three days later, they sent us another notice telling us that the fingerprints could not be processed and we needed to come one more time. This one more time ended up being a Good Friday, which was very disappointing since I have it off once in a lifetime! But what can I do?!
We managed to get through several of mom’s medical appointments, including tuning her hearing aid (Igor took her there while I was away). The timeline in short: call the doctor’s office, schedule a tele-visit (mom has to be present, so I had to take time off work and come to mom’s place). Getting the referral, scheduling the audiologist, taking mom there. Scheduling her ear cleaning, taking her to that appointment, looking for the audiologist referral to the audio lab (finally found it), and taking mom there. And lots of calls in between.
She is still complaining about her left wrist, and now she is saying that she never said she did not want an x-ray, and I am making it up. I started by requesting a referral for occupational therapy. Mom’d doctor said that she would try to request the home visits and if not, then “we’ll see.” When I looked at the referral, I saw that there was no provider name or phone listed, so I had to call to find out (waiting, leaving a callback number, they call when I was in the meeting, etc.). They looked for the information, then gave me the name of the place, and then we got disconnected. I did not want to wait on hold again, so I googled the place, called, and left a message. Nobody called back, so the day later, I called again and asked to connect to the reception. They found the mom’s referral but told me that since she is on Medicaid, not Medicare, the house visits are not covered. They said they do not do office visits, which was a pity since this office was very close to mom’s house.
I had to request another referral, which meant another office visit. Fortunately (?) I had to take her to the doctor anyway because she needed the ear cleaning, so we saved one visit. I finally had the name of the place and the phone number, but the next available appointment was in four weeks (I accepted it), and it was very far from where we leave. I am contemplating ditching Medicaid and asking what would places close to where I live charge uninsured people.
Also, in the middle of my trip, mom started to email me that I was hiding from her where I was, and because of that, she had no idea.
Hettie's Reflections 