Thursday, July 10, 2014

As Iyanla says............

My pre-op vent......

"Call a 'thing' a 'thing'!" So says Iyanla Vanzant. She ain't wrong. You cannot treat an ailment that hasn't first been identified, diagnosed. This is as true in medicine as it is in life. So here am I, calling a 'thing' a 'thing'.

People want to be optimistic. We want to be hopeful but in reality neither optimism nor hope is a strategy. We can hope we don't get sick, but we have to eat right, avoid overindulging in alcohol and recreational drugs if that is to actually occur. We want to be 'height and weight proportionate' but for that to occur we have to eat right and exercise. Eating a 7 oz serving of beef and with a side of potato salad slathered in mayonnaise at nine p.m and hoping to lose weight is a nonsense and we know it. Likewise, being optimistic that we'll somehow - by magic maybe? - be able to navigate the additional costs, mental and financial, of long term care without a carefully laid and executed plan is equally a nonsense. I'm doing my very best to make it known that it's a nonsense but I don't know how much success I'm having.

Years ago, I warned my family that not making the necessary plans would have ugly consequences. I knew then that someone, somewhere along the line would need resources for health care and the resources wouldn't be there. What I didn't know as I was laying down my (apparently) prophetic word, was that the one to suffer would be ME. Honestly, this is laugh out loud funny. Laugh out loud. If this were a movie, we would turn away saying that the plot twist was too incredulous to be believed. We would smirk and say that the plot had 'jumped the shark'. Well, this ain't no movie and this is indeed the plot. No sharks have been harmed in the making of this film, lemme tell you.

merry go rounds photo: WEEEEE buddypoke4.gifThe evidence abounds that something has been wrong with the way we've managed Mummy's care. It's the primary caregiver who's got to have surgery. It's the primary caregiver who's not been seen by doctor regularly in quite some time. It's the primary caregiver who hasn't been to a dentist in way too long. 

Look, I don't know with any degree of certainty that managing the whole differently would have yielded some radically different outcome but I do know that if we'd had half a plan, things would definitely not be as they are right this minute. Of that I am certain.

I haven't written in a while so I haven't had opportunity to beat my "buy some long term insurance" drum but I'm back now and beating that drum HARD. Let me say this one more time: make a plan. You're going to need it and as I've recently written, when you hop off the merry-go-round to care for an aging parent or handle other life business, there are no guarantees that anyone is going to slow the ride long enough for you to jump back on. Avoid the hop off (and the surgery for long untreated minor ailments) if you can. Make a plan.