The Aunt Adele's Medicine Story (Short)

               

                                    Aunt Adele’s Medicine Story (Short)

                                                                     Written 1/28/2019

                                                                       Howard Yasgar

Aunt Adele was one of three sisters.

My mom Betty was the oldest and her sister Lilian was the youngest.

By 1964  all three sisters had all lost their husbands and were living on Miami Beach.

Eventually the youngest sister Lillian left for Connecticut, and my Mom leased a small 24 room hotel on Collins Avenue.

Adele met a nice guy named Al. Al, was a retired electrician from New York, they got along so good that Adele eventually moved in with Al who was living at the Monte Carlo Hotel on Miami Beach.

Adele’s son Allen and his wife Diana had 50 foot sailboat and every year they came from Colorado to sail in the Caribbean. When they did it, they always stayed with us a few days.

Over the years when my wife Katherine and I visited Adele, and we noticed her ability to talk to us was diminishing.

Soon it was at the point where she would only say “Hello dear”, and “Yes dear”, and that was it.

It was almost Impossible to have a conversation, actually it was embarrassing trying to talk to her.

One day when Allen was in Miami, we were all on Miami Beach visiting Adele.

We noticed that on her night stand, she had about thirty different medications, all in plastic bottles.

I asked Allen what he thought all the medicines were?

Allen picked one up and asked Adele who the doctor was and what it was for. Adele didn’t know, but she had been taking it for years.

Allen read the label, it had been prescribed many years before by a doctor in New Haven Connecticut, it was for some malady that Adele hadn’t had in years.

Allen made a complete list of the medications and went to see Adele’s Medicare doctor.

Allen presented the list to the doctor and asked if he would review it.

It appears the doctor for whatever reason took offense and said, “Exactly who are you”, Allen replied, “I am Adele’s son”. Perhaps the doctor was afraid  that it was a list of medications he had prescribed.

“Are you a doctor, the Medicare Doctor asked?”

Allen, seeing an opportunity to further irritate the Medicare doctor said, “Yes I am a doctor”.  Allen actually had a doctorate degree but it was in Engineering”.

The Medicare doctor said leave the list and he would look at it.

Of course Allen never heard from the Medicare doctor again.

The next time Allen and Diana were in Miami, we all went to visit Adele, but this time Allen had a computer, and he looked up each medicine on the internet. He was able to eliminate about 80% of the medications.      

On the next visit to Miami, when we all went to visit Adele, she was in a convalescent home for a few days recovering from minor surgery.

It had been several months since she had been off all the old medications.

We all met in the Convalescent home dining room.

To our surprise, Aunt Adele was her old self again, she was a talker, and we all talked about everything including world events.