I’m back in New York City after two weeks in Central Florida visiting my mother, who has chronic kidney disease stage 3 after complications from diabetes. No doubt also in part from being on the trial end of diabetes medications such as metformin.
I was happy to be there for her, and try to ease her suffering. Together we researched nutritional supports and alternative methods of healing to accompany what her doctor and dietician would decide. However, my brother, a 45 supporter and I did not mesh, but for my mother’s sake, I kept quiet. The last thing she needed was stress. She’s on high blood pressure medication and on Medicare—and I have NEVER seen such incompetence with the doctors in Cape Canaveral who were supposed to call in her blood pressure medication. After a week (I kid you not) She still didn’t have it and I went with her to the Publix pharmacy, days after her doctor appointment. The pharmacist gave my mother 3 days of HB Pressure medication gratis. The pharmacist couldn’t believe the incompetence, either. My mother called the doctors office every day!
Now there are some who believe Medicare patients are treated differently – poorly, and if this is true, shame on you, physicians who took the Hippocratic oath.
My trip to Florida was difficult for several reasons. I hadn’t been back for over 12 years, but glad I was able to spend time with my sixteen-year-old niece. We became quite close after this visit. I spent time with my grandmother who will be 88 in two weeks! She was all smiles, and soon shared a brief history of her early years in Greece, when at 13 or 14 she was married! She soon left my grandfather, with my mother only 3 or 4 years old, and proceeded to find work that would allow her to house and feed my mother. House cleaning and singing in a club while my mother danced. She cried, that she could not feed her and had to stop.
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My aunt and I are trying to get her to finish telling her story with a talk to text tool. It is a story that must be told. Here she is!
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| Mary Chapelle, born in 1929 in Samos, Greece. |
