NON STOP MONDAY......AND STILL SEEKING A RIDE TO MY APPOINTMENT WITH DR. MCMONAGLE TUESDAY MORNING...........

As this top of the work week day closes, it has been a usually busy, but even more non-stop day.  8 a.m. Mass, followed by Monday parish administration work, kept me occupied, along with my morning antibiotic infusion therapy, until 11 a.m.  A liquid breakfast of coffee and juice, at 7 a.m., tied me over until brunch at 11 a.m., my scrambled egg omelette concoction, with turkey bacon and wheat toast; plus a myriad of phone calls, mostly financial assistance, and food requests, came in continuously throughout the morning and afternoon.  And with the Parish Office closed and Fr. Pius on his day off, yours truly took the calls.  I met with Sister Eliza, to discuss Sister Felicity's employment as Parish Director of Religious Education for the coming year.  I spoke by phone with Dr. Cookson's medical assistant, Barbara, about my physical therapy referral, and was told the agency, to her surprise had dropped the ball on me, because they normally send a fax request to the doctor, straight away.  I did not have to request or do anything, to get it, even though my home health nurse had insisted it was my responsibility to do so.  Then when the assigned nurse, called to tell me what time she would be making her weekly visit to me today, and I raised the question of her misinformation and failure to set my physical therapy home health in motion, she proceeded for the third time in twelve days, to blame me for her mistake.  Three strikes and she was out of here.  I told her not to return, called the nursing agency and informed the manager / supervisor, of the problems I have had, including a picc line dressing last week, that  was not properly taped down, and has been coming loose all week; a line that goes directly to the heart - the agency manager / supervisor agreed to send another nurse.    I laid down in the early afternoon for a nap, that resulted in laying down, dozing three or four times, and  each time I dozed, had an incoming parish call come in !!!!! So I got up and made and returned some calls myself, while awaiting other incoming calls.  Working on my infusion volunteer scheduling through July 29th, and trying to find a driver to my appointment tomorrow morning in Roseville, with Dr. McMonagle, from one of the handful of parishioners who have volunteered to drive me to medical appointments, they were either not available, or non responsive, so it looks like I will be taking another $100.00 plius taxi ride roundtrip to get to my appointment; unless as I stated last night in my blog column, I ask one of my South Sacramento friends, which given the fifty five mile plus roundtrip for them, I am reticent to do, when there should be someone closer who can do it.  It has been suggested that I hire a twenty something college student and paid him / her a nominal fee for their time and gas.  When confronted with my thrice weekly dialysis treatments for two years and a half years, in 2007-2009, before my kidney transplant, my living donor, and St. Rose's South Sacramento parishioners and friends, drove me to almost 100% of those appointments.  Picking me up at Presentation Church in Arden, driving me to the dialysis clinic in Orangevale, and returning home to South Sacramento.  Quite a haul, three days a week, for 379 treatment appointments, and probably in the same 55-60 miles distance driving, I referenced above.  The Presentation Parish Helping Hands Ministry, volunteered to drive me home from the dialysis clinic in Orangevale to the parish, a 30 mile plus roundtrip, three times weekly,during those two and a half years, and provided about 95% of my rides; all of them at the dinner hour for the people driving me.  And a goodly number of the Presentation, and also St. Philomene's parishioners, who volunteered were elderly - which at first observation of my current lack of appointment transportation coverage, could seem to be the cause. But then, wouldn't that also have been true, for as lengthy a time as my 379 dialysis treatments unfolded, of those who provided me those rides in the other two parishes ??   One of the differences may be that  in the other two parishes, it was a ministry, whose President did the scheduling of drivers, and a near perfect job of covering the need to get me home, to the parish rectory.  And initially they volunteered to drive me to and from Orangevale, for all of the treatments !!!!!!!!!!!  Who do I now tap to do the driver and rides scheduling for me ?  Thus here I am having to do it myself.  In the 'State of the Parish Address' I delivered on Pentecost Sunday in June, one of the goals for this current Parish Year, I proposed is a Helping Hands Ministry for OLOL Parish.  Whether it can and will achieve the same success here, is as yet unanswered; as an orientation, committed membership recruitment, and organizational meeting has not yet been held.  Whereas, at Presentation, when Helping Hands assistance was offered to me, a priest in the parish, I was concerned that accepting might take the ministry members away from addressing necessary and pertinent parishioners need for their assistance; here at OLOL, with our small and aging number of active participants in ministry, I wonder if as the parish priest, I find it hard to get the help I will need with medical appointments for several more months, whether ill, infirm, disabled, parishioners in need without family, friends, or neighbors, to assist them will have any more assurance of assistance when they need it.  On both fronts only time will tell and the responses, speak for themselves.  As I blogged previously this month, the older I become the more trustful that in God's Time and Plan, this too, will be resolved and covered, and that I won't be left to wonder more times than not, who is have available from the nearest possible location to the parish and the appointments, without having to call my taxi-man ??  In the words I directed to my circle of family, friends, and parishioners, in rounding up just seven Infusion Therapy volunteers for my 47 home health treatments this month - Can You ?  Will You ??  Help Me, By Sharing In The Rides To The Medical Appointments I Need ???...........Fr.  Troy