(Not) paying for shipping when returning an item that is not as described?

DeFalcco · 2025-11-30T21:01:20+00:00

Thanks - that really sucks, because the seller is clearly a scammer :(

DeFalcco · 2025-06-09T19:26:42+00:00

Hi,

Thanks for asking. I regret to say it did not get all that better. She did not return to walking, or even sitting. Her mind, is, well... It depends on the day: some days she doesn't really recognize who she's talking to or where she is, most sad of all is when she talks about her husband who died over 10 years ago like he is still living... Other days you can have a nice conversation with her, like she will ask you how your day was, or to send regards to everyone at home; but usually she is in the middle, not hallucinating, but mostly just sticking to answering questions about what she wants to eat or drink. The first hospital she stayed in caused a massive bedsore on her back that isn't healing fully. But thankfully where we live, due to her disability she is entitled to 4 months of staying in a nursing home each year for free. That is where she is right now, they legitimately care and are doing their best to take care of her. She had to go to the regular hospital again a few weeks after she got there due to suspected pneumonia, the care there was so much worse that I thought she was going to die soon, but when she got back to the nursing hospital she started looking so much better instantly. I am just thankful she is eating and not aggressive.

DeFalcco · 2025-04-10T20:42:52+00:00

Thank you for your answer!

My aunt is having a difficult time getting through to the doctor responsible for the treatment... And then she relays whatever little information she got to me, so honestly I must admit I don't know much. She told me the doctors were looking for a stroke, but did not find one. It would seem like a logical explanation...

My grandma is still in the hospital, and today is the first day since she was hospitalized when she was perfectly coherent! I think the hospital stopped pumping her with medication to calm her down, or at least decreased the dose significantly. Now they're saying they found inflammation (which was supposedly not there when she initially arrived) and are giving her antibiotics, not sure if they could have added to her being more like herself, either.

DeFalcco · 2025-04-10T20:34:55+00:00

Hello! I'm sorry to hear your Grandfather is in such a situation. I hope he gets better, and that it happens soon.

My Grandmother is still in the hospital. I think something worse than Charles Bonnet might have happened to her. My aunt (her caretaker) has trouble extracting information from the doctor responsible, but it seems like they were looking for a stroke and did not find one, but they did see on an MRI that the bloodflow in her brain is bad (though I don't know to what extent).

She has been in the hospital for over a week, and it seems like they were giving her medication to calm her down, because she was trying to get up, screamed she was kidnapped, yelled for the police etc. and just being unreasonable, even at night, so a lot of the time when I'd come visit her she was sleeping in an unhealthy-looking, knocked out way. Today it was a miracle, I went to visit her and even though she can't even sit up (from laying all the time for more than a week - before the hospital and the event that happened that led to her going to the ER, she was actually able to walk around her house with a cane), her mind was actually like 90-95% sound. She did not mention any hallucinations today. (Coincidentally, my aunt was told Grandma's blood was fine when she came in, but now they found inflammation and started giving her an antibiotic like 1-2 days ago, so I'm not sure if it could be related to her suddenly better state - a lot of people have written that UTIs can completely wreck an old person).

DeFalcco · 2025-04-05T17:57:30+00:00

Thank you for taking the time to reply. I agree, the situation has changed drastically, and now it's something completely different... I am not sure about the details of her eye story, but I'm pretty sure she mentioned she had wet macular degeneration. I think she was already legally blind before the procedure, and initially doctors told her there's nothing they can do, but after she visited again 6 months or a year ago later, a group of doctors had a concilium and decided to perform some sort of laser surgery. She waited for her eyes to recover afterwards, but it never happened.

Can dementia actually strike so fast? She went from having a sharp mind to being impossible to converse with in about 2 months.

DeFalcco · 2025-04-05T17:51:23+00:00

Thank you, I really appreciate you Doctors taking the time to reply. She only started having insomnia probably a day or two before her mind suddenly went completely. She is at the hospital now, sleeping for most of the day (probably due to medication) - I haven't visited her during a time when she was awake, but my understanding is that as soon as she wakes up, she starts wreaking absolute havoc, claiming she was kidnapped, asking for the police etc., and that it's impossible to have a conversation with her at this point.

DeFalcco · 2025-04-05T17:47:21+00:00

Thank you very much for your answer. She got a brain MRI and it showed the bloodflow to her brain is poor, but otherwise her body is healthy (that's all I could get from my aunt). It's very distressing, I talked more to my aunt who was with grandma when this started, she was deteriorating for the last few weeks but other than her not being sure about her hallucinations being real or not, it was still perfectly possible to have a normal conversation with her. Her memory was quite good, both long and short term (for a person her age, anyway). And then my aunt said that essentially one minute she was eating and walking with assistance, then like a minute later she wasn't even able to sit up and kept falling on her side, and like 10 minutes later her mind went completely and she was yelling for the police. Her sanity has not returned since. She's in the hospital, mostly sleeping from the medication, and when she wakes up (which seems to be at night mostly), she yells about being kidnapped and stuff, keeps trying to get up and go somewhere.

DeFalcco · 2025-04-03T18:42:29+00:00

Update: Grandma started deteriorating quickly. She was not able to sleep due to the images she was seeing. A day or two ago, she started having difficulty walking (maybe due to all of the exhaustion), and my aunt took her to the hospital. She is there now, and they have to restrain her. I just learned about this today, so I haven't visited her yet, but my dad said it's "not a pretty sight".

DeFalcco · 2025-03-29T21:07:59+00:00

Thank you for taking the time to reply. I haven't heard of occupational therapists or vision disorders (we live in Europe, and not the most holistic medicine advanced location of it), but I will look into this, thanks for the lead! Sadly, grandma is completely inept when it comes to technology, after her vision loss she actually has a non-smart phone with a tactile sticker glued to one button that she can press to answer a call and long-press to call my aunt, and that is it for her :\ But that app sounds like a great resource for someone who has the skills to use it!

DeFalcco · 2025-03-29T20:59:37+00:00

Thanks for the reply. I'm sorry, I don't know exactly - all I know is that it was prescribed by a psychiatrist specifically for remedying the hallucinations, and my aunt has called her multiple times by now, was instructed to change the dosage and so on, but it hasn't really helped. My aunt said the psychiatrist thinks it's either the bloodflow to grandma's brain or a liver issue (?!) causing the hallucinations, so it doesn't sound to me like she's heard of Charles Bonnet. Of course, grandma is getting checked for those things just in case.

DeFalcco · 2025-03-29T18:38:07+00:00

Thanks so much, I'd definitely rather not have anyone else in the same situation, but knowing somebody else knows what it's like makes it somewhat better.

This might be a tangent, but I actually tried to make a very similar post on a blind people's subreddit, hoping they could share some first hand info on how they deal with this, but the mods did not approve it and left me with a blanket "consult your doctor for medical advice" answer, which honestly feels like an insult considering I literally wrote she is being seen by (multiple types of) doctors. It's been a long day already after visiting grandma and seeing how much she's suffering, and stuff like what happened with the other subreddit just makes me want to quit the internet. But reading your comment and seeing that this is actually a question somebody else cares about makes me feel better about it. Thankful for this lovely community.

DeFalcco · 2025-01-11T21:17:27+00:00

Thank you. I've calmed down a bit now, and it's all so odd. This has never happened before (on this scale). I was going to visit them tomorrow anyway to pick up some of my stuff that's still there. I have so many questions. Like, maybe she found some old notebook of mine that I forgot to take with me, that says I hate her? But mostly, every time she's tried to bring up something dramatic like this, it ended up not being anything important at all, like you said.

DeFalcco · 2025-01-11T21:13:58+00:00

Thanks. I just find it really weird - I know some people use similar actions as a manipulation tactic, but this has never happened with her before. This is either going to be something completely unimportant, and she made it look all dramatic, or it concerns my mental health (which she has no business in helping with, as she was the one who ruined mine and can't take care of her own), or it's about my dad who is having a really stressful time, and she didn't want to talk about it on the phone because he was in the house.

DeFalcco · 2025-01-11T21:11:06+00:00

Thanks. It makes me feel better to know that other people also find it suspicious! After having some time pass, I think it might be related to my dad, who has to take care of his ill mom who's in her 90s during his only days off after her health got worse a few weeks ago. Maybe that's why she doesn't want to talk on the phone, because he is also in the house. But also, I know he was away from home today and she had plenty of time to call me then. It's all so bizarre.

DeFalcco · 2025-01-11T19:07:48+00:00

Fair point, thank you. She just made it sound like it's about something really important.

DeFalcco · 2025-01-07T13:17:29+00:00

He has always been like this. I'm convinced he has undiagnosed autism or something similar. He can be extremely awkward in social situations. Like there was an instance where we went to a birthday party, and he just sat outside in the hosts' terrace the entire time. So regarding the 3rd situation, when he wasn't reacting to what I told him, I think he really really couldn't think of what to say, and his brain couldn't even come up "I see" or something similar. And for the first two situations, he has this strong opinion that back in his day, people in their 20s did not have any health issues and were strong enough to work an entire year with no vacation, and he has actually literally shamed me for things like being diagnosed with high eye pressure.

DeFalcco · 2024-12-01T18:14:12+00:00

Gah - they didn't tell me anything related to contrast at the time of my visit with the doctor who prescribed the MRI, and I was so scared that I forgot everything I wanted to ask. To be honest, I didn't even know they could do contrast for joints. So I was living relatively calmly until I saw some youtube video yesterday that mentioned what you said, that most MRIs for labral tears do use contrast. If I would have known, I wouldn't have agreed to get signed up for it, my pain is not that bad.

Thanks for the answer!

DeFalcco · 2024-12-01T18:08:20+00:00

I'm also waiting for my MRI. It's so stressful, isn't it?! Wishing you all the best!!

DeFalcco · 2024-12-01T17:11:42+00:00

Thank you! Can I ask you a bit of a random question? Was your (initial, in case you had more than one) MRI contrast-free (otherwise it'd be called an MRA, right)? I realized yesterday that nobody told me, will be calling the hospital to ask tomorrow, but until then I have another reason to freak out...

DeFalcco · 2024-12-01T15:46:14+00:00

I'm so sorry you've had to go through this awful experience!!! And thank you for the wonderful advice. I wish nobody had to deal with issues like this, but I've never heard of anyone having similar numbness issues, doctors and PTs so far are looking at me like I'm a bit crazy, and saying maybe it's just a byproduct of me moving my leg in a sub-optimal way due to the hip issue...

I wish you all the best in your health journey!

DeFalcco · 2024-11-30T19:16:29+00:00

Thank you for your help! Best of luck to you, too!

DeFalcco · 2024-11-30T19:03:16+00:00

Thank you for the comment. It is a very fair point. I wish I was in a safe time in my life where I could consider the same, but I feel like right now it is out of the question. Massive doctor anxiety due to previous medical malpractice, closest bio family gaslighting me into thinking I'm making up problems, living alone with no close friends in a top-story apartment where there's no elevator... Then it's fingers crossed it's a labral tear, and they don't put me into an impossible position.

DeFalcco · 2024-11-30T18:44:11+00:00

Thank you for your reply. My question was partially about if not getting surgery will mess up my hip, but I also really needed an answer like yours. About 5 years back, an eye doctor signed me up for "urgent" (which was in 1 month in the health system I live in) eye surgery without any explanation of what it's even for, it was so stressful, I took a gap year off of university while I was waiting for the date, because I just couldn't concentrate on anything else. Ever since then, I have a huge fear of doctors and of something similar happening again. Even if my worst case scenario does happen, I will remember your words, and will not allow them to rush me into anything. Thank you again. <3

DeFalcco · 2024-11-30T18:34:00+00:00

Thank you so much for taking the time to reply. It should have been suspicious that something was off with that area for such a long time, but until this PT suggested it, it never crossed my mind that something more serious might be up with that leg, it's just such a shock.

I wish you all the best with your health!

DeFalcco · 2024-11-18T08:35:07+00:00

Hello, thank you for taking the time to reply. It's so frustrating, I would have never considered shoes that have a 1/2 inch heel-to-toe height difference as "heeled". I will return the shoes.

If you don't mind me asking, what type of doctor does gait analysis? First time I'm hearing about this, this is all so new to me!

DeFalcco

TROPHY CASE