Communication

October 11, 2010

I have done my best to communicate well with all of Mom’s doctor’s and check to be sure that they communicate with each other. However, Mom does not always communicate everything with me.

The evening before we went to see her GP, she experienced chest pain while I was helping her bathe. I got her Nitroglycerin and it went away right away. At the doctor’s, I reminded her to tell him about this, which she did. And he asked if she had been having more of these incidents since her last visit and how often. She said, “Oh, about every two weeks.” At which point the doctor gave me “the look” and asked if I had taken her to the cardiologist recently. Mom had not told me what was going on and when I had asked her about the same question, she just said it had happened a couple of weeks before.

She’s very good about sharing some things, but not others. I think this is a way for her to exert some control over her own life and of trying to protect me from stress and worry. I know that she doesn’t want more aggressive treatment for either her heart or her kidneys. Knowing her medical conditions as well as I do, I can understand this. Each specialist thinks that his organ is the most important. More aggressive treatment for her congestive heart failure will probably damage her kidneys. And she does to want to go on dialysis. This is a decision she made years ago and still maintains. “When you are capable of making informed decisions, your choices should be respected.” (from Ethical and Legal Issues, AGS Foundation)