North Port Florida

Now in North Port, Florida

We are now in Del Rio Texas

We are now in Del Rio Texas

Step Father Passed Away, Christmas Time, Golf, and Doctors for Patty

December 13 - 28, 2014   

On Tuesday the 16th at 12:05 PM EST my step father Leon Weber passed away.  He was 83 years old.  The hospice nurse called the day before on Monday to warn us that his time was near.  I got the word he had passed from the hospice nurse about 12:10 on Tuesday.  At first I felt like I may want to return for the funeral that was going to be held that coming Saturday, the 20th, in Indiana.  It really is tough to know your actual feelings when things like this happen.  After a couple of hours I kept with my original decision that I would not attend the funeral.  I had made my peace with my stepfather passing when I was with him just 3 weeks ago.  As I write this now I’m not sure I have completely finished grieving yet.  I have lost many in my life including my mother (I was 37), father (I was 6), and grandmother (I was 38) so I am familiar with this type of loss.  With each passing it becomes somewhat easier to cope with. For me, it is the knowledge that they are no longer here and that I am more alone than I was before.  Leon, as I called him, was a part of my life for the past 51 years, since I was 7 years old.  There is now only my brother Roger who has been in my life that long.  Just writing this has been therapeutic!  Good bye to you Leon and thank you for being a father to me for most of my life.

Other than my stepfather passing, it’s been a normal sort of time the past couple of weeks.  Our main focus has been getting in to see doctors for Patty.  We have decided to change our doctors to this area from Indiana.  We originally liked the doctors there in Indiana but we have become increasingly less satisfied with them.  Also, the 30 mile drive (60 round trip) to a doctor there became a drag too.  For me it’s not a big deal as I only have the one GP there to deal with.  Patty, on the other hand, has at least 4 different doctors.  We are even going to switch our dentist to this area from New Jersey.   We went from a dentist in Indiana that was just lazy to one in New Jersey that was an insurance scam.  

The medical issue has probably been the most challenging for us in this full time RV lifestyle.  I can get away with seeing a doctor once a year and that is just not happening with Patty. She probably needs to see a doctor every couple of months. We have mostly decided to spend a good portion of our year here in south Texas.  This will allow Patty to get consistent medical care most days with the exception of the time we travel.  This will still leave a 5-6 month window in the summer where we will rely on urgent care facilities.  It’s a damn good thing we have great medical insurance!

What we really need is a GP that will coordinate care for Patty.  She has a lot of issues going on that we believe could be related but span many doctors.  It just seems we are not getting to bottom of anything, just adding things.  Once we find a good GP I will switch also.  

We went to a new GP (Patty prefers PCP for Primary Care Physician) last week and were not impressed.  Patty started out saying to the doctor that her quality of life was not good right now as she was scratching her arms raw.  The doctor basically ignored the symptoms Patty was presenting and said that she needs to attend her seminars for a healthy life. Oh, and by the way, these are not covered by insurance. Yea and the doctor, out of the blue, said that we will get you off of coffee and alcohol.  There may be something to this and maybe more so for the alcohol but we have not been presented with evidence that these are related to anything that is affecting Patty.  There was not any discussion of even what Patty had going on either.  Anyway, we are seeing another PCP next month, keeping our fingers crossed.

This season I have decided to get back into golf, at least while I am here in the winter.  I’m hoping to improve my game or at the least get back to where I was 7 years ago with a score of 100.  Well, so far that has not happened. 
I have played now 6 rounds and I got worse!  The first couple of rounds I was scoring 104 – 106 which has been what I have scored during the past 7 years when I played the once or twice I would play a year.  Two weeks ago I scored a round at 116! Then, last week I scored a 109 round. 

Yesterday, Saturday the 27th we went to the driving range.  I really believe I have it in me to score under 100 and just need to, one, focus, and two, practice.  I play again tomorrow, Monday the 29th, so I will see if the little practice I did helps.  

Last week was Christmas!  Christmas here at the Natures Resort starts with decorating the club house.  Christmas Eve we have a wine and cheese party with music for socializing and also for dancing.  I started out Christmas Eve with a round of golf in the morning.  Then, this year Christmas Eve fell on Wednesday which is Happy Hour from 4-6 pm.  So we had Happy Hour and then went pretty much straight to the wine and cheese event.  Patty and I made a 3 cheese fondue to share and it was completely devoured.

Christmas afternoon we had a dinner in the club house.  The owners of the resort supplied the meat, roast beef and ham.  To top it all off, the temperature was in the 80s for  Christmas day.

So far the weather has been great here in South Texas.  We have had most days in the 70s and 80s with nights in the low 60s, perfect for sleeping.  There has not been much rain or wind either.  Anyway, that has been the story until today Sunday the 28th.  During the night the temperature dipped to around 40 and it rained.  The bad news is that the weather is going to stay this way, minus a nice break on Monday for golf, all next week.  This includes New Year’s Eve and Day! They are saying we will only get to 52 on New Year’s Day, bummer.  The good news is that it warms back into the 70s next weekend.

Ok, well that’s it from the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas.

Stay Tuned!

1 comment:

DebbieM said...

Mark, sorry to hear about your step dad. Hopefully you'll find a doctor that will take the time to really hear all of Patty's concerns. Nice that you have some golf to help relax. How nice to have mostly great weather!