Mental Decline & Dependency/Coping With Aging Loved Ones

I don't think that will be a problem, rog. She's 100 and the funeral home folks have been around a long time. I'm more concerned about the transition to Medicaid. I want to make sure that what the facility manager is telling us is true. I don't want to learn that we have to move her to a nursing home to get Medicaid to cover her. I guess I should call the State agency that regulates this stuff.

My mother was exceedingly confused, minute to minute, in the years she was still responsive. My visits (long drives in heavy traffic) were an act of will, crushing horror at first, and once in a while ok. This went on for a long time. I first caught on something was wrong in 1969, just after my father died, when I thought it would be a good thing to take her back to Boston to visit her childhood friend... when I was 27. Well I remember her not wanting to go meet the friend once we got there.. though we did, for a short time. I have a fading photo of her standing outside the motel, which I think was a travel lodge. She is smiling, wearing dark glasses, in front of a row of those concrete blocks that have cut outs and make a kind of airy wall. She was confused on that trip many times, and I was traveling in shock.

She died in 1979.

My best memory of those years - I have a picture of her in my red fiat convertible spyder, wearing a scarf I brought her. It is to weep, but also a kind of treasure.


Somewhere at the beginning of all of this, probably when she was already in nursing care, she looked at me and said "I forgive you." I'll take that as a moment of comprehension, though she also could have been talking.. more likely.. with someone in her past.

Still, I'm sure it was good to hear it.

This site has a pretty good explanation of the processes and requirements.

http://www.ltcistrategies.com/?TID=15

Thanks, Eva, and it was, though even then I sort of got that she might not have taken me as me.

I'd previous experience, as my father also had psychiatric problems. That's more complicated and I doubt it was alzheimers. Looking back from 2009, I'd be looking at his meds as a VA patient. He went in there normal, if anxious, or at least semi normal and came out weird. He got to be a mental mess, and I was no help as I called an ambulance and that only brought sorrow. Skipping along, I'll say that one day, when he was home from varied hospitalization, he turned to me in the kitchen and looked me straight in the eye and said, I know I've been (confused) and I'm better now. Just a sentence. That was the last real conversation with my father, who died in '68.

I take my father's coherence that day as not the same as my mother's who really did have alzheimer's.

I seem to be explaining at large here, but something about Walter's post got to me.

My mother went through the process for my father. She said it was the most humiliating thing she ever had to endure. She was required to produce 60 months worth of bank statements, itemized credit card bills, and anything that showed financial assets and expenditures. She didn't have 60 months worth of everything on hand and had to get them from the banks.

The "buying down" of assets has to be towards things that directly relate to your mother. I can see how her funeral expenses would qualify, but your mother (assuming she's able, otherwise it will have to be the person legally responsible for her affairs) will have to explain any transfer of assets over the 60 month period that gives the appearance of trying to shelter money in order to meet Medicaid qualifications.

My mother said the person she was working with treated her horribly. I'm sure she's paid to assume that folks try to hide assets and her job is to ferret them out but it was a Very Unpleasant Experience for my mom.

Goodluck, Swimpy. I hope the facility where you mom is has an ombudsman who can help with the process.

Horribleness at a hard time.

Thanks, J. My sister is the executor (if that's the right term.) I'm also the co-executor of her living will. Mom and Dad sold their house 30 years ago, just weeks before Dad died. She has no other assets except her savings and a small life insurance policy. My sister assured me that we would make this decision together. I might suggest we consult an elder attorney before we spend any money on funerals.

Mother has had one (or more) smaller strokes more recently, most probably after the operation.
She can't move one leg at all and the other is the already "handicapped" one.

But she really looks fine, and is doing fairly well.

Today, finally, a doctor from the medical service of the health insurance companies came, examination if she'll move in an higher care-level in the long-term care (that's paid by the mandatory long-term care insurance, which is -officially- a different branch of the health insurance.)
She couldn't walk at all, but told the doctor that she regularly goes shopping, makes dinners, the household ...

So, no problem with that: she'll get some more money for the - now more expensive care - ... and will have to pay herself quite a bit more, too.
(From February onwards, since then we applied for it. [She's been in hospital on the previous dates.])

Best wishes for Mother Hinteler.

So true, JLN. Also, the demented or those with Alzheimers should be allowed to "live" wherever they happen to be ementally, whether with a long dead sister or temporarily with the person with her in real time.

Sorry to be so late replying, but still catching up on the lives of the people I love on a2k.

Monday last week, mother wanted to 'visit' her sister, my aunt. (She's just upstairs, but only to reach for mother with changing two elevators. - Mother hasn't been there since months.) The leading motivation therapist drove her there: it has been quite a good meeting (considering all and everything).

Of course, mother doesn't remember that she'd been there nor that my sister visited her.

But she started to sleep a lot during daytime since then.
Today, she asked me - at 2 pm, the sun shining in her room - what time it was ... and if it was two in the night or day; she fell asleep while I was responding.

Walter, even though you still have the same problems with your mother, at least you sound a little calmer. Has your sister left you alone? That would be more than enough to give you a little peace.

I think of you often, especially the last time you came to visit when you and Dys took that incredible RV trip around northern New Mexico. My favorite memory is when you returned and began singing German lullabys to Fred, just after the cover was put over his cage for the night. Your friendship has always been a treasure to Dys and I, but that endearing relationship you developed with Fred (our pint-sized parrot) will be with me for the rest of my life.

Are you ever able to take the time to go back to good thoughts and happy memories as a way of returning, even briefly, to your own, private life? I hope so.

Diane

Thanks for that nice response, Diane. (Yes, I remeber all [!] those nice things from NM .... we'll be certainly coming there again.)



I haven't heard (directly) from her since 22 months now, haven't seen her since more than two years (disregarding that I saw her from the distance in their car at her MIL's).

Momentarily, my biggest trouble are with the person who pays (or doesn't pay) my aunt's rent (from selling her house/shop 20 years ago). Though we agreed to deal suggest by the judge - she's taken now a position as I [= my aunt] was a kind of petitioner ...

Mother was driven (in her wheelchair) to the barber's (in the home) this afternoon when I visited her.
She's doing fairly well - she has been invited to a "fest this week ...

Well, and she forgot again that she can't walk anymore: got a call from the home that she 'slipped' out from the wheelchair = X-ray at the local hospital (and hopefully that's it and not again here in the accident surgery!).

Edit: she's stying now at the local hospital in my native for observation; might well be that she'd be transported to the hospital here ... for further examination re her new hip.

I've decided to get her back from the hospital to the home: some (= perhaps two) hair-line crack in the pubic bone region. Surgical treatment would be conservative so that's better in my opinion (and the head surgeon agreed) that she stays in bed at the home and not in hospital.

Shame, Walt and Mrs H.

Our sympathy, that you have these trials and tribulations.



edit- I forgot, in English that "shame" means "it's a great pity."

Sorry.

I hope she's resting comfortably, Walter.

She never felt pain as long as I can remember - that's why the home sends her relatively quite often to the hospital ... and in nearly 100% it had been something more or less serious.

She's now as comfortable as possible - but doesn't know why people are caring about her and looking after her so often. (She didn't remember being in the hospital, minutes after driven back with the ambulance.)

The really sad think - for me - is that I'm seeming to get used to such.

Peace to you, my friend.