Here's a pet peeve:
I dislike it when I go to the doctor's office with my 85-year-old mother and the doctor talks to me instead of to my mother.
My mother broke her arm during the week and has a soft cast. She is scheduled to see the orthopedist tomorrow, but my husband and I spent the afternoon in the ER with her today because she started bleeding through the cast. Turns out she has a laceration at the site of the fracture which she must have disturbed somehow by movement, causing it to start bleeding. The doctor re-bandaged it and put the soft cast back.
When she was ready to be discharged, the nurse asked if one of us wanted to sign for her. I said, "She can sign for herself." She started to hand me the discharge papers and I said, "Give them to my mother and explain them to her, she can understand everything." At which point my mother piped up, "Yeah, I don't have dementia."
So the nurse explained everything to my mother and had her sign. But only with my prompting. What she should have done was ask her first if she were able to sign and speak to her without my prompting.
Elderly people are not little children.

"The Cheat is GROUNDED! We had that lightswitch installed for you so you could turn the lights on and off, not so you could throw lightswitch raves!"
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- I'm always all right.
- Is all right special Time Lord code for really not all right at all?
- You're all irresponsible fools!
- The Doctor: But we're very experienced irresponsible fools.
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THOOLAH member since 2005
EZBoard Survivor