In limbo...

School is done. Sun is on vacation. Time to gather speed toward moving Mom to assisted living... or so I thought. Everything is in place but one key item: the medical forms to be completed and signed by her primary care physician and then placed on file with the Case Manager at the assisted living building. The other information - an interview with the head of client services, financial forms, etc. - were completed in short order, but her doctor - the one who recommended that assisted living would be a better place for her - has decided to drag his heels. In looking over the forms that were delivered to his office six days ago, I can see that there's nothing being requested that he doesn't already know from the many recent visits she's made to his office. He's decided to wait until her 1 month follow-up appointment two days from now to fill in and sign the paperwork.

Fine.

I suspect he's getting back at me for my lack of confidence in his actual caring for his patient. Perhaps I mistook his preachy aloofness as a sign of cold callousness and he's really a warm and deeply concerned physician who's too shy to express that side of himself. However, I think not. I'm a pretty good judge of character, and this character is simply being spiteful, knowing that we need to move my mother as soon as possible to a better living situation. Leaving us in limbo for 8 days makes things difficult for my brother to know when to make arrangements to fly up from Texas, and for Sis2 to take days off from work to take part in The Big Move. It also leaves my mother in more of a state of agitation and confusion than usual, and that's not a good thing. Now, I understand from Sis2, Mom has begun to transfer a collection of her "good clothes" from hanging on the shower curtain rod to being slumped over the back of a recliner and the arm of the sofa in the living room and back again, at least once a day. She can't figure out why we haven't started moving her things to the new place yet no matter how many times we tell her that the paperwork isn't yet complete, so we have to wait, and we'll let her know the moment that it's time to move. Dr. G knows he holds her fate in his hands with this small collection of information on paper, and he's quite content to let us all tread water for another couple of days.

Between now and mid afternoon on Wednesday, my mother will have two doctor's appointments, one with a psychiatric nurse-practitioner at her own request ("I like her because she listens to me"), and the other with Dr. G. Input from each of them can influence the decision of the assisted living place to take my mother, or not. If either of them makes an official diagnosis of Alzheimer's Disease, we'll be looking for another place to take her to live because the current elder community is not set up to care for people who truly have Alzheimer's. From what I can tell - and I'm no medical professional, but many of my friends have parents with similar symptoms - she's somewhat senile, with some signs of dementia, and she's having more and more difficulty coping with life alone rather than with her husband around for moral support and companionship. My hope is that's what the two medical professionals will document so this move can be accomplished as planned.

Two more days to spend in limbo....