agonyaunt | (no subject)

(no subject)

DEAR ABBY: The other night I had to go to the ER for severe knee pain. After being seen and released, I called my son to come and pick me up. It was 11:30 at night. Neither he nor my daughter-in-law answered the phone! The next day, his wife told me they have full-time jobs. (Both work at the hospital.) My grandson said his mom isn't mad at me, but I feel so hurt. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. -- NO RESPONSE IN VIRGINIA

DEAR NO RESPONSE: This unfortunate event should be a lesson for the future. Have a talk with your son and daughter-in-law. The three of you need to come to an understanding about what should happen in the event you have a medical emergency. This includes not only who should provide transportation but also what kind of supervision you might need. You should also have an advance directive in place that includes who should be contacted -- in case you are unable to speak for yourself.

https://www.arcamax.com/healthandspirit/lifeadvice/dearabby/s-2751456?fs

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Here's some advice: If you might need late night help getting home from the ER, tell people before 9pm that you'll need help. (Unless you don't go to the hospital until after 9pm, in which case let them know immediately.)

Also, don't ask your grandchild to mediate between you and their parents.

Is the issue that LW's son and DIL ignored the calls or simply didn't receive them? It could be the latter, and DIL referenced their full-time jobs to explain why they had their phones silenced. In that case, there is a technological solution. Rather than silence their phones at night, son and DIL should use do-not-disturb mode and program their phones to still allow calls from close friends and family members. Of course, this comes with the reasonable expectation that those individuals will call at night only for emergencies. (I do this on my iPhone, and I assume the same function exists on Android devices.)

If they ignored the call, then LW should initiate a conversation about how they will care for one another in the event of an emergency. In most families, a ride from the hospital is not too much to ask. I will add that LW should have informed her son that she was going to the hospital once she could reasonably do so and should not have surprised him when she was ready to be picked up, if that is indeed what she did. This letter reads like it has been aggressively edited, so I find it hard to tell.

I agree what everyone is saying here. That once she decided to go to the hospital she needed to let them know she was expecting them to take her home. I know plenty of people who put their phones on DND for the night. If there is no other way to reach them then.. you got yourself there (somehow) you can get yourself home. Tax/cab/uber/lyft, neighbor, etc. Some ambulance services also drive people home. (generally since people are elderly and not driving/homebound.) She obviously got home that night somehow. Holding onto anger about it is more important to her than making a plan for if it happens again.

Definitely feels like more information is needed - how did you get to the ER? Were your son and daughter-in-law aware that you went to the hospital? Were they aware that you would need a ride home prior to you calling them? Do you have a history of crying wolf that might have led to them ignoring your calls at 11:30 on a work night (which sounds awful but this is something my parents had to deal with when my grandmothers were alive)?

Yes, Android does have a setting for that.

When my sleep schedule was less predictable, I figured out some Advanced Tricks (with IFTTT and later Tasker) and set my Android up such that a single missed call from a certain set of contacts will unmute the phone; therefore the second call (if there is one) will actually ring. This would let my contacts try calling me at hours they thought were reasonable without immediately disturbing me, but also let them get through to me if it was urgent. (Unfortunately if a call comes from an unblessed contact after the unmuting, that will also ring.)

I'm a night owl, and I STILL turn off my ringer/notifications around then (and don't turn it back on until I wake up, which is later than some people would prefer.)

I do have certain people on Emergency Bypass (iPhone allows those calls to ring through even if it's in Do Not Disturb mode), but my mother isn't one of them ;P

But, yes -- LW is holding onto offense and hurt feelings when the answer may just have been that her son/DIL were *asleep*.

As others have said, it would also change the calculation to know whether or not LW called to let them know she was going TO the hospital, and ASKING for a ride home, rather than expecting them to drop everything on zero notice, late at night, when the emergency was dealt with and she just needed a ride back home.

Edited 2022-11-30 21:28 (UTC)

which sounds awful but this is something my parents had to deal with when my grandmothers were alive

I don't think it's awful to bring up that possibility -- I've heard of not a few people who've had to deal with relatives like this.

LW, it isn't your kids' job to be on call at all hours just in case you need them. (It was your job as a parent for awhile, but that expired on both sides when they became adults.

It isn't your kids' job to be on call *for anyone* at all hours, unless they are also parents. Remember before everyone had cell phones? You would go shopping or something and be out of reach for awhile? People are still allowed to do that.

(I don't set my cell phone DND, but at night there's an even chance it's on silent, the battery is dead, or it's in another room. We still have a landline so people who really need us know they can call the landline...but we don't pick that up unless we hear you telling the answering machine why it's important.)

The one I will never forget is the time my grandmother called my dad at 2:30 am because she must have a very high fever, she was sweating, she felt like she was burning up, she needed to go to the hospital...and when he got to her house, he found the thermostat set to 95 degrees. "Well I was cold earlier"

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