Old Age is Not for Sissies....

            Last Monday we took mother to the eye doctor for a check up. Having regularly been on top of doctor appointments it had been 10 months since our last visit. But then, we had not expected Mom to have a stroke in November and a fall and fractured pelvis this past March.  In an optimistic moment a week ago, I thought it might be a good to get her eyes checked.

             Art came with me to help with the wheel chair and between the two of us got her there.  Asheville Eye Associates has unquestionably the best ophthalmologists in this area. But it is a factory.  Never have I been more aware of this than I was on Monday.  There are at least a dozen doctors and I couldn’t guess how many people pass through here daily. The parking lot is packed at all hours and the waiting room is the size of a ballroom. When you check in at the front door you are directed to areas of the waiting room that go from Area A to at least half the alphabet.  Once in the waiting room, assistants come out all up and down the huge open room calling out patient names every 3 to 5 minutes.

          

            The afternoon turned out to be long and arduous especially if you are 94 and frail.  (This was not Mom’s first visit.) First, we had to wait for an exam room that would accommodate a wheel chair.  When she was finally called we had been waiting nearly an hour.  A young efficient assistant who was used to getting patients prepared to see the doctor quickly, updated Mom’s chart and medications and then set about testing her eyesight.  Darkening the room, explaining in her Southern accent to cover an eye and look up on the wall and read the letters.  Mom hesitated because she hadn’t heard her clearly… then said she couldn’t see the letters.  The assistant changed the line on the chart and tried again…”No, I can’t see that…” mother said.  She tried a third time and finally mother simply said, “I can’t read any of it”.  

There was silence, as the assistant was not quite sure how to proceed. After all, everyone can read something on the wall chart unless you are legally blind.  And mother is not blind!  How was she to record this on the chart?  Suddenly she excused herself and we were left in the dark room.  Back she came with the doctor who greeted us kindly, looked over Mom’s chart and ordered dilation.  He left.  The assistant dilated her eyes. Then we waited in the “ballroom” another half hour.  Finally back again, we sat in the exam room for another 20 minutes until I wandered into the hall to see if we had been forgotten.  No…there were a few people still around.  I was losing patience but Mom sat quietly in her “good girl” mode as she had all afternoon.  I wondered what she was thinking.

Finally Dr. Haynes came back and looked into Mom’s dilated eyes with a special instrument.  Then checking her chart he announced that there was very little change since the last time we’d been there.  Her eyes were fine, and neither the glaucoma nor the macular degeneration had worsened.  What a relief to hear that she was not going blind which was what we were thinking. When he addressed why she had not been able to read the chart he said perhaps it was “situational”.  I told him that this was one of the few times that my mother had even been out in “the real world” in the past 10 months. He had no idea of the significance of this. Before he left he said we must come back in 4 months so she could be checked again.

 

Just as he was leaving,  he did lean close to Mom, seemingly sensitive to the fact that she is hard of hearing, and reiterated, “You are doing fine.  You are not going blind.”  He spoke to her in a slow, loud voice as people do when they are talking to someone very old. Then he was out the door and on to the next patient.

At the checkout desk, we were given her “follow up” appointment for four months.  Art drove us through rush hour traffic while Mom sat quietly in the front seat.   She was already a half hour late for her dinner but didn’t say a word.  I sat in the back seat going over what we’d just experienced.  It was then I knew I would not be taking her back there…ever!  After all, she is not going blind…no need to submit her to that factory assembly line again.