my daily dilemma today is this:
why does it take getting upset and angry to get someone to listen?
i find this with my children. they do things, usually, just by being asked. but there are those things that i ask over and over and over again, and i finally have to get really upset, bordering on irate, in order for them to get it across.
scare tactics.
i encountered this today at the office. patient with a multitude of medical issues, from a life of just over 60 years spent living hard and playing way too hard. i actually had to threaten to put her in a nursing home in order for her to start taking care of herself.
i don't like to be that way. and it wasn't an empty threat. her medicines are all wrong, and no one to this point has taken any responsibility for it. she was seeing multiple specialists that just kept writing her prescriptions for things. and now she's mine, and i have a duty to make sure things are right.
she wasn't receiving the proper care at home. it made me think more than once about calling adult protective services.
so why is it that the only thing that will work is to "scare them straight"? why is that the only tactic left? and why is that always left to the last resort?
i've found, as callous as it sounds, that taking someone's freedom away is the worst thing you can do. i can talk until i'm blue in the face about people needing oxygen, people needing insulin for their sugar, people being on dialysis, or losing toes because of blood pressure. but it doesn't sink in until you tell them they have to go to a nursing home.
then it's "straighten up and fly right."
seriously. i had the conversation with her two weeks ago. today, in the office, she thanked me for the "come to Jesus" we had. she agrees that she needs to take better care, and she's demonstrating it.
why does it have to take such drastic measures to make people see?
