Kathie Gagne died 4,583 days ago.

Six Simple Steps!
July 16th, 2012 @ 7:01 pm


My sister just received an email from Department of Children and Families, ACCESS Florida Program <donotreply@dcf.state.fl.us> The subject line is “Online Notices – My ACCESS Account (Ref#:9246)” 1

Please, do me a favor and take a look at the screenshot of this message. Can you even imagine being able to make any sense of it if you were elderly? I cannot fathom there are many able-bodied, able-minded 40 year olds who would be able to understand what this message means, much less how to view one of their notices. 2

1 I’m sure that helpful subject line will sail right through any mail server spam filters.
2 What is a “notice” anyway? And why would someone elect to not receive a paper version of one? Does the State of Florida seriously believe that there are that many elderly citizens there that are so computer literate that they’d prefer to receive all of their updates electronically?

Trying to Talk to Mom
July 16th, 2012 @ 5:09 pm

I called Woodland Terrace on my way home from work tonight to try to talk to mom. Someone answered the phone on the second ring and I said that I was trying to get in touch with my mom, who was in room 207 on the West wing. The woman said, “That’s on the West wing. Hold on and I’ll transfer you there.” I felt pretty confident that I’d be able to talk to mom tonight, since I had previously discussed my plan to do so with Nurse Cheryl and she said she’d be prepared for my call.

After being on hold for two minutes and five seconds, someone picked up the line and then immediately hung up.

I called again, and the same woman answered the phone. I explained that I was the one who had called two minutes ago, and that the call wasn’t transferred. She said something along the lines of, “They must not have picked up. Hold on,” and put me on hold again.

This time I only waited one minute and then Lisa answered the line in the West wing. I told her I was trying to get in touch with my mother in room 207 and she asked me to hold so she could get Nurse Cheryl. I waited on hold for five minutes and twenty seconds and then the line disconnected.

I called again and this time Lisa answered on the first ring. She apologized for the disconnection and I asked her if she had a number to the West wing, so I could call her directly instead of going through the front desk. She told me that was a good idea, especially after seven o’clock when there is nobody at the front desk. She said she wasn’t sure, but she thought that the number to the West wing was (386) 740-3017. She said that she found Cheryl and was going to let me talk to her. Cheryl picked up the line, asked me to hold on, and then I got disconnected.

Less than a minute later Cheryl called me. She apologized for disconnecting me and said she was going to try to transfer my call to the portable phone so she could take it to mom’s room. I listened to the sounds of her attempting to transfer the call for about five minutes. There seemed to be some problem with the portable phones — it sounded like the whole phone system there might be something like Vonage or one of those Internet phone systems — and she kept mentioning that they’d recently had a very bad rainstorm.

After a few minutes she was able to get one (of the two?) portable phones working. Then I listened for another few minutes while she tried to transfer the call from the “regular” phone to the portable. She did manage to get that working, and then walked down the hall to mom’s room with the portable phone.

As soon as she got to mom’s room — I heard her say, “Kathie?” — the line disconnected.

She called me just a few seconds later to say that she didn’t think the portable phone was strong enough to reach down the hall to my mom’s room. She said she would make a note that they were having problems with the phones and suggested I try again in the morning.

Typing a frowny-face emoticon here doesn’t really seem appropriate.

A Small Cut
July 16th, 2012 @ 4:30 pm

Nurse Cheryl, mom’s night nurse at Woodland Terrace, just called. She seemed to have no recollection of talking to me last week and I had to remind her that we’d talked. Whatever. She was calling to tell me that she was filing an incident report for mom.

Nurse Cheryl said that a CNA had checked on mom at 5:30pm and she was fine, but that just now there was a small, bleeding cut under her nose and her lips appeared swollen, as if she had banged her face on something.

She said that the CNA told her it didn’t seem serious, and that after wiping her face she was able to get mom out of bed and she ate about 75% of her dinner, that she seems fine. Nurse Cheryl said that they keep asking her what happened, but mom, “isn’t letting them know.” She said it’s really tiny and looks like just a scratch.

Nurse Cheryl told me that mom simply cries all the time, and that it’s “really sad.” I told her I was aware. She said that she doesn’t seem to know why she’s crying — I insisted that she’s been crying like this for months now — but that maybe it’s because, “she came in with a really bad rash on her bottom,” and wondered if that was why. I told her I didn’t know that she had a rash, but that I highly doubted it was related to mom’s depression, because — I explained again — she’s been crying like that for many months. At this point I felt it prudent to give Nurse Cheryl the five-minute history of Kathie Gagne that I’ve now given approximately seventy-three million times to nurses and doctors and administrators all over Volusia County.

She agreed that it was very sad. Then she let me know that mom was in a “low bed” because they are worried about her hurting herself because she keeps trying to get out of bed; I told her I already knew that.

Nurse Cheryl said that she seems more alert now, and in general mom seems less agitated than she was when she arrived. She thinks it might be related to discontinuing all the psycho pharmaceuticals, and I told her I thought that might be true, too.

I told Nurse Cheryl that I’d call in about an hour when I left my office and hopefully I’d be able to talk to mom then if she could help me get her to a phone. She assured me she would.

Confirmation
July 16th, 2012 @ 1:33 pm

I just called Woodland Terrace and talked to Jessica, the Unit Manager, to confirm that they had stopped administering the levothyroxine. Jessica promised that they had, and that when Dr. Peele arrives tomorrow she will dial my number and hand him the phone to make sure he talks to me.

She was extremely kind and understanding, which was nice. With one notable exception, everyone there has been very nice to me and I am (hesitantly) feeling confident that things might be changing for the better.

A Call from Rosa
July 16th, 2012 @ 12:51 pm

I received a voice mail from Rosa Rivera at Woodland Terrace. Here is a transcript of the message:

“David, this is Rosa with Woodland Terrace. I just spoke with you. Just wanted to let you know that I let Sherri know about Dr. Peele‘s call and she asked that I let you know that you probably won’t be hearing from Dr. Peele ’til after tomorrow when he’s in our facility because he would probably make the call while looking at her chart, and the chart is here. So if you have any questions about that please feel free to call me back. If not then you should be expecting a call from him tomorrow. Okay? Thank you. Buh-bye.”

Rosa Requests Consent
July 16th, 2012 @ 12:22 pm

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.

Medication for Hyperthyroidism
July 13th, 2012 @ 3:45 pm

I sent the following email to Sherri Spillman and Sylvia Gray at Woodland Terrace (and copied my sister):

Dear Sylvia and Sherri,

Sherri called me at six-fifteen this morning because she said my mom had asked to speak with me. Sherri then let me speak with Jessica, the Unit Manager, because I had been asking about what medications my mother was being administered.

Jessica told me all the prescriptions my mother was taking, and told me that she was being given levothyroxine, which is used to treat hyperthyroidism.

On May 29 of this year, Dr. Escander at Halifax Hospital specifically told me that he had done a test which confirmed her thyroid was normal.

Jessica said that Dr. Peele, the house doctor at Woodland Terrace, saw mom on Tuesday, July 10th and prescribed the levothyroxine. I told Jessica that I wanted the levothyroxine stopped until Dr. Peele called me and explained what led him to diagnose hyperthyroidism, since nobody told me anything about any tests being performed since she arrived at Woodland Terrace.

I also said that under no circumstances should my mother be given any medications (aside from Aspirin or Tylenol) without my prior consent.

She said she understood completely, and that Dr. Peele is one of her favorite doctors (even though she said they aren’t supposed to have favorites, which I thought was a little silly). Jessica told me that he visits on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but that she would call him and give him my number and ask him to call me as soon as possible.

I just wanted to make sure I had told you both about this so you would know, in case you saw a note somewhere about it. I didn’t want you to think I was flying off the handle or anything like that.

Thank you very much,

David Vincent Gagne

Re: Kathleen Gagne
July 13th, 2012 @ 3:23 pm

I just sent the following email to Delia McClain at ElderSource:

Dear Delia,

It has been almost six full months now. Can you tell me if any progress has been made on the Medicaid application process for my mother? Can you tell me what the status of her application is?

David Vincent Gagne

I haven’t heard anything from anyone over there since January.

Early Morning Phone Call
July 13th, 2012 @ 6:14 am

While I was having breakfast this morning, around quarter past six, I received a phone call from Woodland Terrace. It was Sherri Spillman, the Administrator of the facility. She apologized for calling me so early in the morning, but said that she was calling because she was talking to mom and she specifically asked to talk to me. She handed mom the phone and I said, “Hello?”

Mom said, “Hi, David,” and then she just started making softly weeping. She wouldn’t respond to anything I said; I asked, “Why are you crying, mom? What’s going on?”

She said, “Because,” but that was all. Sherri took the phone away from her and started to talk, and I heard mom in the background say, “Tell him that.”

Sherri asked her, “Tell him what, Kathie?” but she didn’t reply.

Sherri tried to reassure me that she actually did ask for me. She said that my mom clearly said, “I’m trying to participate,” when Sherri went to visit her this morning. (“Participate” would be the word with most syllables she’s said in months.) Sherri asked her if she wanted to talk to her son and she said, “Yes.” She said, “His name is David,” and mom said, “Yes.” Sherri said, “He lives in California,” and mom said, “Los Angeles.”

Then she and I started talking about how mom was before all this happened last year. I started explaining to her about how I was concerned about the prescription she’d been on for Zyprexa and the many mistakes I feel were made by Dr. Caliendo. Sherri said she wasn’t qualified to speak about medications and handed the phone to Jessica, who she said was the Unit Manager.

I quickly gave Jessica the five-minute synopsis of mom’s issues — I’ve gotten to the point where I can summarize the relevant details of sixty years into a five-minute monologue now — and then she listed the medications mom is receiving right now:

  1. daily 325mg Aspirin, which seems like a good idea
  2. 220mg of Zinc sulfate each day for the next fourteen days, which is apparently supposed to help with bed sores, skin irritation
  3. lots of Vitamin C and a multivitamin, which seems like another harmless, good idea
  4. protonix, which is supposed to be for acid reflux but which Jessica said was for treating colitis; I suppose those are the same thing
  5. mesasalamine, which is another drug used to treat colitis
  6. Sulfasalazine, which is yet another drug to treat colitis
  7. Megace, which is an appetite stimulant, because I take it she hasn’t really been eating well
  8. levothyroxine, which is used to treat hyperthyroidism
  9. 100mg daily of Zoloft, an anti-depressant
  10. lisinopril, which is used to treat high blood pressure
  11. metaprolol, which is a generic for Lopressor, another medication to treat high blood pressure
  12. Ativan, as needed for severe anxiety

(Jessica also told me that she saw in the chart that on July 9th Susan stopped the Aricept and the Haldol, which was good to learn.)

When Jessica was listing these drugs, I interrupted her when she got to the levothyroxine, because I had never heard of it and nobody has ever told me that mom has hyperthyroidism. Understand that I have been talking to nurses and doctors twice each day, almost every single day, for nine months now; and that almost every time I ask to be informed of any change to her medications or diagnosis. So to suddenly randomly hear that she is being given a new medication for a new diagnosis was surprising.

Jessica said that Dr. Peele, the house doctor at Woodland Terrace, saw mom on Tuesday, July 10th and prescribed the levothyroxine. I told Jessica that I wanted the levothyroxine stopped until Dr. Peele called me and explained what led him to diagnose hyperthyroidism, since nobody told me anything about any tests being performed. And, obviously, I said that under no circumstances should she be given any medications beyond aspirin and Tylenol without my prior consent.

She said she understood completely, and that Dr. Peele is one of her favorite doctors (even though she said they aren’t supposed to have favorites, which I thought was a little silly). Jessica told me that he visits on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but that she would call him and give him my number and ask him to call me as soon as possible.

PostalPix
July 12th, 2012 @ 4:48 pm

PostalPix is a really cool iPhone app that I use frequently. I just ordered twenty-four prints of photos from my Camera Roll and had them delivered directly to my mom at Woodland Terrace. She’ll probably receive them by Monday, and it only cost me $8.52 total.

I’ve used PostalPix to send photos to my grandmother, my mother-in-law, and my dad, too. I highly recommend them.

PS: No, they are not paying me to say that at all. It’s just really a cool service.

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