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My Caregiver’s Notebook Epic Fail

My Caregiver’s Notebook Epic Fail

IMG_4360Since the end of October, my newly released Caregiver’s Notebook has been getting plenty of positive attention at this website and The Gravel Road’s sister site, DifferentDream.com and in Amazon reviews. But in the interest of full disclosure, this post describes my epic fail as a caregiver using the notebook I authored.

The epic fail occurred in December during the month long Camp Dorothy Extravaganza held here at Winter Camp HQ. After a road trip for a doctor’s appointment in Ankeny, the nurse called to inform the camp chauffeur/director/cook/nursing assistant that a certain specimen needed to be collected–I’m trying to be discreet–but that the specimen could be analyzed at the Boone County Hospital lab, much closer to Camp Dorothy HQ.

“I’ll fax the orders to the lab,” the nurse said, “and you can just run it into the hospital lab.”

So after the camp chauffeur/director/cook/nursing assistant enlisted the Man of Steel to assist in the collection process, I “ran the specimen to the hospital lab” just as directed. With the specimen bottle discretely tucked in my pocket, I asked the nice lady at the information desk how to get to the lab. She pointed the way, I trotted over to person at the lab window, and pulled out the bottle v-e-r-y discretely. “Here,” I said.

“Have you registered at the desk?” the nice lady at the lab window asked.

“No,” I said. “I was told to run this to the lab.”

“You have to register first.”

She pointed the way, I tucked the bottle back into my pocket, and trotted over to the registration desk.

Once the nice lady at the registration window had keyed in Mom’s pertinent information, she asked, “Do you have her insurance cards?”

I blinked. “The nurse told me to run…something…to the lab. She didn’t say anything about insurance cards.”

The nice lady’s attempt to not level a are-you-kidding-me look in my direction was her epic fail for the day. “Well, do you have her numbers? Anything?”

That’s when I remembered Mom’s copy of The Caregiver’s Notebook. Which I would have brought with me if the nurse had mentioned it. Or if I’d watched any of the vlogs in The Caregiver’s Notebook Vlog Series. Which I haven’t yet. But that is on my to do list. I promise.

Anyway, I knew exactly where the notebook was at home, so I called the Man of Steel who was filling in as Camp Dororthy activities director while I just ran a little something to the hospital lab. “Would you check the insurance section of Mom’s Caregiver’s Notebook that’s on the table beside my chair in the living room?”

He found it, I handed my phone to the nice lady at the registration desk, and she keyed in the information as the Man of Steel read it off. Then she handed the phone back to me, I thanked the substitute camp activity director, and turned off the phone.

“Do you know what’s really bad about all this?” I inquired of the nice lady at the registration desk.

“What?” she asked.

“I teach people how to organize caregiving information, and I wrote that notebook.”

She giggled and handed me a piece of paper. “You can take this to the lab. Do you know where it is?”

“Sure do,” I responded and then trotted over to the lab window. I fished the well-traveled bottle from my pocket and v-e-r-y discretely placed it on the counter. “This is for you,” I whispered the nice lady at the lab window.

A few minutes later, I was driving home, mulling over my epic Caregiver’s Notebook fail. Until I realized that perhaps it wasn’t really an epic fail. After all, without the completed insurance section of Mom’s Notebook, a trip home to dig through Mom’s purse to locate her cards and a trip back to the hospital would have been required to get the information for the nice lady at the registration desk.

And who knows what might have happened to the discretely hidden specimen bottle in my pocket with all that extra running to the hospital lab. I really don’t want to think about it. Do you?