Over the 19 plus years my MIL lived with us after FIL passed away, Our daughter
was under two. I was trying to keep up with everyoneʼs appointments including my
own work and decided that after a couple of years it was just going to have to
change. It was a challenge to say the least, MIL did not enjoy change and coming
from a lifetime of being in control of everyone and everything, losing some of that
autonomy was hard on both of us. In time we learned to speak frankly to each
other, laugh at each otherʼs special personality traits and we got on pretty
successfully.
I leaned a few awesome tricks that worked well for me and saved a ton of
time...especially medical appointments of which there were quite a few over our
time together.
Trick one, migrating MILʼs primary health care to my own GP. This way we got
to make our appointment together, what a time saver, I was able to be
a better caregiver and also are care of myself.
Trick two, always make appointments so they included a fun outing for coffee or lunch so the medical appointment was brightened by her enjoyment of the outing.
Later, multiple medical care specialists became involved, and tests of all kinds were needed. I
would do my best to do the waiting in line while she was in process with one tech
or another and it sped things up tremendously.
The last and perhaps most important apart from having mandatory snacks and candies in my purse was to never give too much advance notice of pending appointments, this reduced
everyoneʼs anxiety immensely and we focused mainly on enjoying an outing.
In retrospect, I realized long ago and decided that if I was going to be the person managing and
executing these appointments, I could decide ahead of time how the day would go,
plan for the best outcome and get it done so we could go on and remember the
fun we had rather than being stressed and upset about the appointments.
Itʼs all in how you decide to be in the moment, especially since you know the
appointment is just what needs to happen.
If you are having trouble managing don’t hesitate to contact me just Book now, I am ready to help you figure this out.
