Checking in on your aging family and friends

Elderly folks, as a group, usually don't text.

and this is why I call hamburgboy regularly and my best friend checks in with him occasionally as well (she's local to him, I'm not)

Do you surmise she wants to get a phone call (or text message) every day? She could be just being nice, since you bother? Has she expressed delight at hearing your voice? Is she ill? exceptionally old? quite frail?

Maybe she gets almost daily phone calls from some company that wants to give U.S. (or other country) seniors some kind of free button to wear that signals some call center if she should fall., or whatever. Not kidding, it's probably three or four times a week. I keep getting them because I don't even want to talk with them for thirty seconds. Then I have to erase the message, which is further aggravating, so I can keep my number of messages within the maximum.

Me, I keep my small utilitarian old cell phone routinely charged and handy when I leave the house or climb a ladder to change a ceiling light bulb or venture to walk on my immediate neighborhood's very poor paving. I get to call it poor because it is; as a retired landscape architect, I know paving.
The phone is in whatever room I'm in, most of the time, including sometimes the bathroom, carry it there, that being one of the more dangerous places for seniors who may slip getting out of a shower or tub.

Back to those emergency buttons you can wear - while getting one is free, using one isn't: there is a monthly fee. My cell phone is less than half as expensive and has other uses besides if I fall..
I think of the button thing as fear jewelry, though it probably is helpful for many. I think of my cell phone as my many uses cell phone, normal.

Why once a day? That seems a bit often. Our mother (her mother, my mother in law) is 88 and she calls us every Sunday at 6 PM. If she has not called by 7 PM we call her. She would hate to be asked every day if she is OK.

Are you OK, Boss? We haven't spoken recently. I was worried about you. Be careful on those stairs, now, OK?

Yes, that would be annoying. Maybe a couple times a week.

Me? I'll be fine to answer. Might give you an emoticon smilie. Don't worry, I'm not usually an emoticon person.

I always read you but have thought you were through with me - back in what are now olden days.

I'll report, but in summary, things have improved med wise.

Manana.

Sorry to take so long - first, I was thinking about what to say, since I'm really fine but could meander back in health history and current goings on and bore even myself, so I put off answering right away.

Next, I didn't see the thread come up again, and got involved in other threads.. bla bla bla.

But - thanks for asking, and I'll try to be as succinct as I can (or not).

~~ The easiest to describe: my eyes, subject of past threads when I tended to freak out, are very stable. I've stopped freaking out.
I've learned via a mailing to me from the first university I went to and they confirmed what I thought, that I have had Retinitis pigmentosa for some long time, but just didn't know it (night blindness, poor peripheral vision, changes in retina). Of those, I'd only guessed because of the night blindness, not so good as a kid catching fireflies.

However, that letter from UCLA asked me if I'd had any odd things going on (not their exact words) when I was born. I wrote back, yes - I was a blue baby. I take it that this may be why my RP hasn't been progressive, barely at all over decades. I'm still a fool walking by myself at night, but no worse now than years before. I still conform to having RP, but, from my researching, most people with it deal with serious decline (unless I haven't read better news).

Re the other stuff - six eye surgeries after a first messed up cataract surgery left me with one bad eye and one pretty good with just the RP. BadEye has blepharitis (uggabugga, but not worse), and glaucoma (traumatic), also stable now for some years. It also left me insurance poor, since I was still paying Bluddy Blue Cross a lot a month just to have it and paying for what they didn't, thus affecting life choices, like moving. That was pre my getting medicare, early as I could, the dumbest choice but I had to. Except for the last surgery, which I had put off from fear - I didn't want to have another debacle with the remaining non surgical eye.
By then I was in New Mexico and went to UNM. That surgery was at least semi picked up by Medicare, and my ophthalmologist is rather dear to me.
He lead the surgery crew in singing for me as the trickier part of the surgery on GoodEye was finished.

~~~ Really great and freeing change - my previous high blood pressure is way gone for at least a year now. I check it, of course, but it is virtually always just right.

Those earlier meds made me faint several times.. hitting the floor, including with blood, so I do not miss them. It was a mutual decision with my clinic doc. We weaned me for a few weeks, but it became clear I was better without them.

~~~ Next problem - Balance

I'm dealing with a neighborhood that was developed by an apparently idiotic or worse contracting firm. Worse, is my best guess.
Anyway, the road paving and sidewalk paving are almost funny here. I am now resorting to a holding a stick I like, to make me watch the ground harder.
You probably know I've years into designing paving/approving paving or not. Almost makes me laugh.

It's odd. I'm fine going to the Home Depot here, the paving ok, race or lallygag at our grocery store, but I have trouble on my own damned block.

It is also true that I am more iffy in space now.
I used to be an ordinary jogger.

Thank you for you patience, Set.
Be well yourself.

I was 3 months premature (in 1952!) and had a condition called (then) retrolental fibroplasia; (now) ROP (retinopathy of prematurity). I am grateful for the eyesight I have, and I don't miss what I never had.

I thought I was being too wordy, yet again.

We can understand.

If the old person sucks at texting as much as suck I, you would be wise to just call or something.

One thing I do fear is being alone in extreme old age and having bossy kids trying to run my life for me.

And maybe help deciding how to spend your retirement fund.

Especially that. An aunt died, and her husband (my uncle) met another woman after 5 years and they decided to get married. His kids, my cousins, tried their best to break them up because they felt that (when he died) his house and savings was "their" house and savings. They spoke of her "getting her hooks into him". What made her especially bad, one cousin told me, was that she was "a Catholic". I am glad to say he ignored them and also that they didn't get a penny.

True, I still talk to my old neighbor Gilbert in Florida at least once a week. He never text and rarely uses the computer so if you don't call him you won't hear from him.

Snort - I only have an old fashioned cellphone. Texting? that is out of my league. Might not be if I could swing for a superduper phone, but that will be a while, and I'd probably get confused just looking at it.

I remember you talking about yourself and Gilbert, nice to hear his name again.

Well, that read as odd - I didn't mean it in an iffy way, as I hope you know.