My mother is significantly better, and so am I, now having the mental energy to be perturbed that she's hesitating from getting some sort of financial redress over what happened. It was some sort of combination of doctor fault and equipment fault - the doctor has said as much - and while she is going from strength to strength she won't be able to pick up toddlers anymore, travel with big suitcases alone, haul around her own 99-year-old mother whose right leg stopped working around the same time all this happened, and she'll need to hire someone to clean the house, since my father seems to still believe vacuuming isn't a man's job.
I have to say this is grinding my gears, that she won't seek redress. Probably more than it should, since this isn't my event - this is hers - and I've said my piece politely and then shut up and stewed because it is 100% her decision. I understand it was an accident, but it's an accident she'll have to pay for financially and in terms of what she just can't do for the rest of her life, and she doesn't have accident insurance, while the doctor does have malpractice insurance.
Oh well. I have to just sort of back off my anger about all this. If she wants to take the financial hit, well, she's got the finances to cover it, and maybe it's about time she stopped hauling around her mother, her grandchildren, and vacuum cleaners anyways. But this is the sort of thing I have to remember and analyze in my own personality - this tendency towards self-abnegation and not getting punchy about one's own interests, this superfluous putting-forward of other people's interests when it isn't even particularly in their interests - I mean, doctors have fucking malpractice insurance for a reason; it's for accidental shit like this, not because they get sued for being Dr. Fucking Evil or something.
Anyways, I really gotta back off all of this anger - I've been getting pissed off at the drop of a hat these days. Being in North Bay always summons muscle memory of all those angry adolescent hormones, I guess.
11 commenti:
In one sense I admire it.
Litigeousness is tacky in it's own right...but it's the notion that things should always go to plan. If they don't...somebody's gotta pay. That's what burns me.
This sounds legitimate...perfectly legitimate. Financial and physical damage because of a professional mistake. It's like a mechanic screwed up her car...and now she's gotta buy a new one. She shouldn't do that on her own dime.
I know what you mean about the litigious society. And I think that's the way my mother is seeing it, so I don't think she's a fool, and I can't not see her moral stand on the issue.
The way I tried to spell it out with her is that I feel she should make a calculation of the money that will have to go out in terms of more weeks per year of professional care for my grandmother, so many hours per year of housecleaning here, so many hours per month of babysitting for my brother's daughter she won't be able to do and they'll have to hire someone to do intead - dollars and cents that malpractice insurance is there to make up for, rather than some big winning-the-lottery type settlement for emotional damages or something.
The difference between how she feels about it and how I feel about it is that for her it's all the same thing - it would all be a vulgar, selfish pursuit of a payout - and for me it's just giving a point to her doctor's malpractice insurance payments.
Just one more reason to hate frivolous law suites...makes sane people hesitant to be associated with professional litigants...even when they have a case that the system was put in place for.
Can your Daddy make a claim? I bet if it had been you that was hurt she'd be less inclined to let it go.
Speaking of your daddy. I need to talk with him...somehow I got stuck with folding and ironing clothes this morning.
I'm also on the side of making insurance pay for their own stupidity and incapacity to do their job right. Gr. I would keep hounding the poor woman until she sees the light or gets really angry with me for hounding her.
She's already threatened him with some sort of death if he acts alone, he said.
I haven't yet tried the "what would you have done if this had happened to me?" card yet, but I think it's one I'll have to pull out. Because you're right, Lady, I can't really leave this alone.
BTW, e.f., the 1950s called; they want their shitty attitude back.
I would crack some jokes here but, I'm already dealing with one woman who wants to kill me (three hours in the car with me and the Boy today while we looked at houses...just too much testosterone and immaturity for one frazzled woman to take. The Boy's just now almost killed himself playing on a stool).
We won't talk about supper either.
It's all academic to me anyways, as neither I nor the F-word ever iron anything.
I do the folding and a lot of the ironing...that's when I watch movies.
Started Amigo this morning.
I wouldn't want to be around when the 1950's get this months phone bill...I heard Martha telling the Boy this morning that girls don't take the trash to the curb. That's boy's work.
Hmmmm.
Oh ouch!
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