If I could construct a flow chart of a phone call to an elder lawyer today, you would see circles and arrows and if-then’s and more confusion than you’d care to know about. Just envision your shoelaces tied into thousands of knots. That’s what comes to mind. That’s how I feel, like one of a thousand knots.

After a bit more than an hour and a half on the phone, I am just as confused as ever. Perhaps I shouldn’t feel that bad―the elder lawyer had no answers either, just one possible recommendation: that my mother be moved to a tiny assisted living in a group-home like setting with a few other adults. A  setting where she would get more attention, wouldn’t need a private aide and costs would go down.

The lawyer emailed about twenty pages of resources and information and attached a bill for $480.00. Confusion comes at a stiff price.

And it’s complicated. When an elderly person is mentally intact there are many considerations, for one thing, that person’s wants and needs. She wants to be left alone. She doesn’t want to be around people with dementia. She doesn’t want to have to socialize. She doesn’t want to lose her independence. She doesn’t want to move. She wants good food. She wants the option not to have to go down to a dining room, where she is inevitably coughed on by people who come to meals ill.

She has begun to have outbursts. I attribute the behaviors to a last hurrah. She has lost her independence and doesn’t like it. By the same token she knows she can’t be alone. The aide observes that “the balance isn’t there. When she stands up she begins to topple.” My mother has physically become a toddler in the care of a sitter. Little does she know how necessary this all is. Little does she know that I wrote a check from her money to pay for the aide for last month: it was well over $7,000. That doesn’t include her almost $3,000 rent for an assisted living facility where she is living “independently” and making very little if any use of any of the amenities.

After reading through the papers and putting them on my desk with no answers, I slept for two hours in hopes of getting rid of a migraine. This is how it’s been for seven months and it isn’t getting any better, it is like a crescendo that will have it’s final blare of trumpets and then will peter out. Into what I don’t know.

Move her up here? She is too frail, and once up here where would she go? It would be the same scenario if not worse. Move to an assisted living? It is more than twice the cost in New York City and she would still need an aide and that would be twice the cost too. Eventually if and when the bucks run out, many of these facilities do NOT accept Medicaid. So you are welcome as long as you can pay your way and then it’s buh-bye.

It would have to be a nursing home. Here or there. Or that group home model in Florida. Either way I doubt she would survive.

From what I learned today, once you are broke you can apply for Medicaid. You can get into a nursing home―the final frontier―without a problem, but to waive that and opt to stay in a home situation there is a waiting list. A long one. And it is frozen. Would a group home if it were viable be enough? She might have to share a room. She would never go for that. Share a bathroom? Forget it? It’s all instant death. And it is WORSE in a nursing home. For the life of me I can’t figure out what a person is supposed to do if they are totally broke and on a waiting list. How do you eat? Where do you live?? What do you do??

There are also Veteran’s survivor benefits but you have to be broke for that too. The assignment of benefits appears to be arbitrary and based on income and age. You would think they’d be happy to help the ninety-five year old surviving spouse of a WWII veteran, I mean, how much longer could a frail person have? There is no “look back” into finances so theoretically yo can divest yourself to family and apply, but if you eventually need to go on Medicaid there is a five year “look back” into all your finances and if there is evidence of your money being gifted, you are penalized a month I believe for every thousand dollars.

It’s a lose-lose situation that I am sure millions of Americans who have worked hard their whole lives have gone through and are going through and millions of families echoing my sentiments and confusion. Is this what you get when you are lucky enough to reach a very ripe age, with your faculties intact?

Is poverty and a nursing home what we have to look forward to?

Will it go round in circles―
Will it fly high like a bird up in the sky?

This series is linked: see “continued here.” Also, below the line there will be links for the previous post and the next.

The series starts here

continued here