Thank goodness Pickles has a second family...my daughter and her family...he loves them and I think he loves my oldest grandson Michael better than me. And they love him also, he has his own setup at their house.
I think that this is tragic as well, @Ken Anderson , and I totally understand how you feel about not leaving the cats. I wish that Evelyn's son would at least continue to keep Sadie, and then when they took Evelyn for a visit, she would be able to see her beloved pet. They have had Sadie there for the past year while Evelyn was staying with them, and Sadie is used to being there, so it will be devastating for her to lose both her owner and her home, and she doesn't even know why. I talked with Sharil, the daughter that seems to make all of the family decisions, to see if maybe Evelyn could come back to Huntsville and be in a nursing home here. Then , we could take Sadie, and I can go and visit Evelyn, and take her places on days she was feeling well enough to travel around. Because she is now a Mississippi resident, everything would have to be changed back over to Alabama again, and apparently they do not want to help Evelyn do that. If she were still here and living in her own house, then she could have at east made the decision what she would do. She was just two houses away from us, so it would have been easy for me to check on her and get there if she needed help; but that option is no longer available to her at this point.
I can feel for her but I know from experience that being a caregiver is physically and emotionally exhausting. Her family is likely doing what they think is the best they can do for her. That is my biggest fear, becoming a burden on my family. If it comes to that, I think I will choose to go to a nursing home. I hope that I will die before it comes to that.
My Dad suffered from a physically-disabling disease which rendered him largely immobile for his last several years. My Mother cared for him at home. This dragged her down slowly, along with him. Toward the end, he was placed in a care facility but passed away shortly after. Relatives from his side of the family denigrated her, claiming she did not do enough. I knew otherwise. None of those complainants had ever cared for anyone under similar conditions, or at all. The Doctors came up with several diagnoses, MS, and Parkinson's being among them. They settled on the latter, but I to this day disagree with that diagnosis. Several of the key symptoms of Parkinson's he never had. Much later in life, thanks to the PC, I found a brain-related disease which fit his symptoms, which had not been yet described back then: Progressive Supranuclear Paly (PSE). Frank
Oh no, that's terrible for Evelyn. She is such a sweet person, and although ill she was always helping her daughters by baby sitting or cooking for the family. She must be crushed, and she must be wondering where she went wrong in raising her children, that they could do this to her. That's the way I felt after Michael died, and after everyone who got whatever they could until I said no more. When you give so much of yourself to others for 30, 40 years, and then to have to realize that those people only want you out of their conscience eyesight is horrible. @Yvonne Smith when Evelyn is settled, and you think she's ready to communicate, let me know how and I'll join you in trying to keep her spirits up. What has happened to our family structure? Even though I worked and went to school, I home cared both my in-laws, both my parents, and raised three of my grandchildren when their parents died. It never occurred to me that it might be too much trouble, or that we would have to stretch an already tight budget. It never occurred to me that I could do else wise. Whether or not I got along with any of them wasn't even an issue. Money wasn't an issue either, we just cut back where we could and made do with what we had. My husband's family's greatest concerns involve money first of all, so of course they thought I was just a sucker, and they were happy to take advantage of the free care. But I've never regretted caring for any of them. In the last two years since Michael died,I've had three of my outer family suggest that I allow them to be a co-signer on my accounts. Of course I've said no thank you, and all three of them haven't contacted me since. If the grandson that has been staying with me for the last year decides it's all to much for him, and he chooses to move elsewhere, I'll have to hire someone to come in. But what it cost me for his room and board, and the allowance I give him, I could afford to have someone come it. I am nowhere near rich nor even well off. Most of my life I've lived with the insecurities that poverty brings about. Around 20, I began to really see the elderly that seemed to have no one, and all where afraid of ending up in a nursing homes, or of how they were going get through each day in their own homes all alone. So as soon as I turned 21, I started thinking about and preparing for the day I couldn't work anymore. Recently I set up my will so that if anyone tried to gain control of my care or finances that all would be liquidated and donated to a charity. If my grandson stays with me until I die in my own bed, then he'll get most of whatever is left.
I am glad that you have things set up to protect yourself, @Ina I. Wonder , because what happened with our friend Evelyn is exactly what I have been concerned about happening with you. I know that you have been having more and more health issues, and I was concerned that if it keeps getting worse, eventually you would need more care than your grandson is able to give you. It appears that the one relative that would be most likely to try and help you is not the place where you want to live, or to have take over your finances, so I was afraid that your family would do about the same thing as Evelyn's did to her. I know that losing your beloved Izzy would devastate you, just like losing Sadie is doing to Evelyn. Her family decided everything when she had to be hospitalized, and was not in any condition to speak up for herself. If we could at least help Evelyn move back to Huntsville, she might be able to be in a senior apartment and still keep Sadie. I was telling Robin about this last night on the phone, and she said that if Evelyn wants to move that she will help me move her back here. So, I guess at this point, we just wait and see how well Evelyn can adjust to living there, and if she likes it, and then if it isn't working out, maybe I can help her do something different. I am going to try calling her today and see how she is doing.
Caregiving gets tricky and power of attorney is usually needed and even with that, not everything is covered. My mom lived with my sister since 1997 and my sister was her caregiver and had power of attorney but when my mom was dying, the hospital and drs called me in California and I had to agree to having the vent removed or not as I was the oldest. This is the law in NJ...it might vary by state. There was never any problems using her POA until how my mom was to die came into question. I of course said that whatever my baby sister wants or says I agree to because she knew the situation better than I did. The 4 of us debated and agonized all day over what to do but thankfully my mom died during that night. In my case, my daughter and her husband have a trust set up just in case they would die together in a crash or something and I'm still alive. It will pay off my mortgage and provides for me financially and I'm also the guardian for the 13 yr old and would manage the money that's in a trust for him... The guardianship just got changed recently....my son and his wife were guardians when my daughter's boys were small but now that one is almost an adult and the 13.yr old was asked who he wanted as his guardian and he said me and my daughter and SIL feel I would raise him the way they approve...meaning we share the same goals for him. Plus my son now has 3 boys of his own to raise and lives in Illinois.
I think I mentioned it somewhere else but I had an aunt, who just passed away a couple of years ago, who had a stroke. When she left the hospital, she wasn't able to care for herself so her son had her placed in a nursing home. He was a real estate agent so he wasted no time in having her house sold, assuming that she would never recover sufficiently from the stroke to be able to live at home again. Well, she not only recovered but she sued him for the money from the sale of her house, bought a car, and spent at least the next twenty years traveling the country. I think she even had a motor home for a while. One of her daughters ran a children's home in Mexico at the time, and had a house in McAllen, Texas, near where I was living at the time, and she visited me there a couple of times. I know she drove to California at least once, made a few trips to Florida, and back home to Michigan. She finally had another stroke while she was in McAllen and didn't recover from that one, although she had an active year or two in the nursing home before she passed away. She was in the only good nursing home that I knew of in the Rio Grande Valley, and everyone came to know her there.
Good for your aunt @Ken Anderson. How does one's family get such control? I thought a person had to be mentally impaired to loose control over their own destiny. Who pays for the nursing home when a person owns no material assets?
Just out of curiosity I searched nursing homes....if someone doesn't have good insurance or lots of money they sound horrible...read some reviews of one and I'm assuming it was one that accepts Medicaid ....YIKES...I'd rather die. They were some reviews that said some patients in the nursing home were criminals and had police watching them....
Pretty much my only experience with nursing homes was in the Rio Grande Valley, and they were certainly horrible. Staffed with nurses who couldn't find work at a hospital, patients were attended to mostly by unlicensed aides. The nursing staff wouldn't know anyone's names or anything about them, which is a key toward knowing how much care they're getting. But there was one good one, and every time I went to visit my aunt, the staff knew just where she was. They talked to her and seemed to be very caring. Whenever we picked up a patient there (as a paramedic), they were on top of things. I did visit another aunt in a nursing home in Michigan a couple of times, and that one wasn't so horrible either.
Was the good one for people who could pay? I only know of a couple people in nursing homes and I didn't visit personally....one was my DIL's grandma who at 96 refused to leave the home her husband built when they were first married...she lived in Door county, Wisconsin...but she fell and there was no choice....she was in a good one but she died a few months later anyway.
I don't know. It was certainly a step above the others. The others are paid whatever they can get through Medicare, and then Medicaid picks it up and, after Medicaid pays the bills for a while, any assets that the person might have, such as a home, can be taken by the state. But yeah, caregivers who don't really care will sometimes treat a Medicaid patient differently than someone who is paying their own way.
There are some decent ones. I'm not an expert but I think that when someone first enters a nursing home, the nursing home cleans up. The new resident may have insurance that will pay, a Medicare plan that will pay, or some assets that can be used to pay the bills. But they charge a lot and eventually, probably sooner than later, they've reached the cap on their plans, and the only thing left to rely on is Medicaid, unless there are relatives who are able and willing to pick up the tab. A nursing home gets some income through Medicaid but it's not a lot. Plus, it's likely that by the time the resident has to resort to Medicaid, her needs are greater. A nursing home can afford to carry a few residents like that but when a large percentage of their residents are on Medicaid, profits fall. When profits fall, they cut corners, and nursing homes that cut corners are less likely to get residents with money, so it can turn into a dead end.