Repeat after me, they are not responsible for lost or stolen items.
It’s another first world problem for sure, but my elderly parents become quite testy when the items that they liked and that they spent hard earned money on disappear. We try to be careful and take only the bare minimum of what we need to hospitals and other care facilities, but the saga continues with the things Mom has loved and lost.
And before I go on with the stories I will just say that as a working sandwiched only-child advocate for my mom and just having Dad, who is aging and has many of his own medical issues, and some peripheral help from family and friends, I just plain CANNOT be there with Mom and her things all the time EVEN during every admission, discharge, or transition. I have tried when she was being treated repeatedly at the small hospital which was 10-15 minutes from our home depending on traffic and lights. But now that she made a move to the big hospital just under an hour away, I absolutely have to rely even more on transport teams and facility staff members and sometimes I regret that that is the case.
I believe the first incident was a nice charging cord being left in an ED room by a staff member who was pushing Mom’s gurney to her room upstairs in the small hospital during one of many re-admissions. I know I told a staff member about it before I left but it was the middle of the night in the ED and Mom insists that she told the person transporting her to bring it along but that was a time when heavy pain meds were on board so we are not sure what was communicated but the charger never made it to the next destination. Dad filed paperwork and they said they would cover the cost. I insisted that he follow through with that and I honestly don’t know if the small hospital ever reimbursed us for it but when you’re sandwiched some things just must fall off the list.
The second items that disappeared were in an Acute rehab facility over the holidays. Mom had some white blankets from home with her bedding as she is always extra cold and our first mistake beyond bringing the personal blankets to a rehab facility in general was that they were white. When they change those beds every bed linen (ALL of them white) gets scooped up in a heap and hauled away to a laundry company who services several of the facilities. From the moment Dad reported the personal blankets missing they were long gone mixed into oblivion in a sea of white everything and could have been shipped back out to any one of the services facilities. Dad repeatedly asked for them to reimburse him for the cost of those brand name blankets and they showed him the form I had previously and quickly signed upon admission that said they are not responsible for personal belongings.
Most recently, in the last week, Mom was discharged from the big hospital to their very nice Acute Rehab facility nearby and transportation on a weekend night on Labor Day weekend when I had taken the opportunity to go a few hours away to the shore with my husband and children and I was grateful for that transport team and the ambulance that took Mom to Rehab and the one that had to bring her back less than 24 hours later to the ED. I need to get Mom’s clarification on when the items were lost but one of the transport teams never brought in an arrangement of flowers from my aunt that traveled with Mom nor a pack of her personal briefs in which she chose to pack another cell phone charging cord and her favorite glasses case, all of which have now grown legs and run off on us. She had staff call the ambulance company but no one knows a thing.
Just thankful that the glasses she needs weren’t in the glasses case. We always hope whoever has the items truly needed them more.
Sandwiched Support 