Someone named Rosa from Woodland Terrace called while I was walking to lunch this afternoon. We had an amicable twenty-minute phone call about mom and her care. She was calling to see if I was the right person with whom to discuss mom’s care. She began by talking to me as if I had no idea that mom was there, or that I didn’t know anything about her care. I asked her if she’d spoken to Sherri Spillman or Sylvia Gray. Rosa said that she worked with them, but that she hadn’t talked to them about me at all. I told her that I was very involved with my mom’s care.
She was calling to ask how she was going to get my signature on a bunch of forms, since I live in Los Angeles. I told her she could mail them to me, but she seemed to feel like that would take too long. That led into a discussion about the fact that mom has been there well over a week now, and this was the first time anyone was talking to me about getting consent forms signed, and they’ve obviously been doing things with my mom this whole time, so I can’t imagine these forms are really all that imperative. Rosa stressed that the forms are very important, and “the State” allows for delays in getting them signed since so many elderly in Florida only have relatives in other states. We also discussed how I don’t have Power of Attorney for mom since by the time we realized we should get it, she was no longer legally competent to grant it to someone else.
She asked if she could fax me the forms and I explained — politely, I promise — that I don’t live in 1987, so there’s no easy way for me to receive a fax. She asked if she could scan them and email them to me, and I said that was fine. I gave her my email address, but then she asked how I was going to return them, since you can’t sign an email. I told her I would print them and mail them back to her using the USPS.
Rosa was concerned because, she said, “We’ve had a lot of storms here lately.” I commented that the postal service was actually pretty good about dealing with the weather, and, in fact, their slogan even references their perseverance through rain, snow, sleet, etc. 1 She said that she guessed it would be okay.
Rosa and I then talked for a few minutes about mom; I gave her the five-minute summary. I mentioned that I was a little annoyed that I had yet to hear from Dr. Peele in regards to the prescription he ordered (which I rescinded) last week, and she said she’s talk to Sherri about it. I stressed that I wasn’t in any way upset with Woodland Terrace about it and I was sure that it wasn’t their fault that Dr. Peele hadn’t called me.
Rosa seemed very nice, and I told her that she should consider me the only person permitted to make any decisions about my mom’s care in any way, shape, or form. She promised that she understood and we ended the call.
About a half-hour later she called and left me a voice-mail. (I was in a busy restaurant for lunch and didn’t notice my phone ringing.) She was very kindly calling to let me know that she had asked Sherri about having Dr. Peele call me, and that Sherri said he most likely would not call until tomorrow. He would need to be looking at mom’s chart when he called me, and since her chart is at Woodland Terrace, he wouldn’t call until he was there again on his next regular Tuesday visit.
Update: At 1:11pm PDT I received an email from the copy machine at Woodland Terrace 2 with no message and a 5.7 MB, 46-page PDF attached. The first twenty pages is a copy of the “Resident Bill of Rights”. The next nineteen pages are titled “Advance Directives In Florida”. Then there are some list of items allowed in resident rooms, a copy of the “face sheet” (which is sort of a list of who is allowed to talk to them about a resident; I am the only one listed), a welcome letter from a pharmacy in Tampa, Florida, and a “Financial Responsibility Agreement”.
1 Apparently there is no official slogan for USPS. The famous saying is inscribed on a post office in New York, though. Read all about it!
2 No, really. The return address appears to be for the machine itself.