The Aunt Adele and her Medicine Story

A true story

Written 1/2019* 760 Words *

By Howard Yasgar

My Aunt Adele was one of three sisters.

My mother Betty was the oldest and my aunt Lillian was the youngest.

This story is about my Aunt Adele who was the middle sister.

By the time I wrote this story, all three sisters were single widows, their husbands having passed away.

My Aunt Adele stayed in New Haven Connecticut and continued to work as a practical nurse.

Eventually my Aunt Adele met a fellow she liked, and he moved in with her.

Unfortunately, he was an alcoholic.

The rumor was that her boyfriend would wait for Aunt Adele to go to work in the morning and he would head for the local tavern where he would stay until he ran home to get in bed before Adele arrived to make supper.

At the time, while he was living off Adele’s good nature, Adele won the Connecticut State lottery, earning her $700.00 a month tax free for 20 years. The lottery also paid for all the alcohol her boyfriend could drink.

When Adele’s alcoholic boyfriend eventually passed away, Adele moved to Florida, living on Miami Beach with her two other sisters Betty and Lillian.

My Aunt Adele eventually met a nice fellow who was a former electrician from New York City, his name was Al.

Al was financially sound, so he didn’t need Adele’s money and they got along well together.

At the time, Al was living at the Monte Carlo Hotel located on Miami beach, so my Aunt Adele moved in with him.

Now enters Adele’s son into the story. He’s my cousin Alan, who is now a retired professor living with his wife in Colorado.

Alan had purchased a 54-foot Gulf star sailboat so he and his wife Diana spent most of the year sailing in the Caribbean.

Because Alan and Diana traveled the Caribbean along with their pets, they had to have their pets quarantined in Miami, so my wife and I got to see Alan and Diana quite often.

Whenever Alan and Diana were in Miami, we always went with them to Miami Beach to visit his mother, Adele.

Occasionally my wife Katherine and I, would also visit Aunt Adele ourselves, but when we did our conversations with her were limited.

As Adele got older, we just assumed that had just become a woman of few words.

Aunt Adele would say, “Hello Dear, how are you?” Then once you replied it was sort of the end of the conversation.

So, usually we would end up talking more to her boyfriend Al than we did to Adele.

Whenever we visited Adele we saw that on her bedside nightstand there were about 30 plastic medicine bottles with various quantities of pills in them.

For older people to have numerous prescriptions is no big deal, but 30 bottles seemed like a lot.

My Cousin Alan picked up one bottle and asked Adele what it was for?, but she couldn’t remember.

He tried a few more, and some she said were for leg problems she had years ago in Connecticut. and they were still being renewed.

Alan was determined to find out what was going on.

He made a complete list of all the medications and went to see Adele’s Miami Beach Medicare Doctor.

When he presented the list to the doctor, he simply asked if the doctor would please review it.

For some reason the doctor took offense and said, “Exactly who are you?” Alan replied, “I am her son”.

The doctor said, “But you are not a doctor.” Alan being a bit of a wise ass said, “yes I am a doctor”, (he wasn’t exactly lying, he held a doctorate degree in engineering).

The doctor said, “Leave the list with me and I will review it”.

Alan left the list but he never heard from the Medicare Doctor again.

On his next visit to Miami, Alan brought his laptop computer with him, and he looked up each medication and he was able to eliminate 80% of them.

On Alan and Diana’s next visit to Miami, they called us to see if we would go with them to a convalescent home where Adele was convalescing from minor surgery, it had been several months since Alan had eliminated most of her medications, and now she was ready to be released to go back to the Monte Carlo Hotel with Al.

We all met in the lunchroom of the convalescent home, and we couldn’t believe it, Adele had total mental clarity and discussed everything with us, even current events.

For years my Aunt Adele, like so many elderly people, had been taking lots of unneeded medications.