AGING PARENTS

lucked out, the application is pretty much identical to the one we got approved for, so I filled it out much the same way with updated details, and it is now submitted. hoping that we can keep him where he's at as they've done a wonderful job w/ him at the new place.

here's hoping it resolves rapidly and for the best

thanks!

so naturally my brother is trying to push back on this idea. It took every bit of restraint for me not to write back "So glad you are comfortable telling us how dad should be cared for when it's not you that has to fucking do it - go on and tell Mom and I what we should be doing different, then, while you live your life unimpeded!"

but I didn't, and this morning I wrote a much calmer but long message basically telling him that Mom and I have been in over our heads for a while and it's caused us physical and mental strain, and that it's far better for him to be in a place with equipment and trained professionals rather than two civilians who barely know what they're doing.

everybody has been suggesting institutional care and we've dismissed it simply because we didn't think we could afford it, and now we realize we can thanks to the Community Spouse provision of ICP.

I had this chat w/ him mostly because I don't want him getting mom mega upset today when they talk, as I'm going out of town for the day and won't be here to jump in and tell him to fuck off. she already broke down crying on Wednesday as she thinks dad doesn't know who we are anymore (I don't think that's the case, but I can understand why she thinks that - he's non-responsive lately).

mom and I agreed anyway that our bro's opinion on this gets significantly less weight than ours because he's not actively participating in the care. that was my stipulation from day 1 - he deserves to be included on what we're doing, but he doesn't get to override our decision (and technically it's mom's decision as his POA)

Kepro denied our appeal. Reconsideration request sent, which is end of the line.

which means if denied paying for room and board at this skilled nursing facility falls to us come Monday. sigh. of course this latest development happens as I get ready to see the Misfits.

i'm just gonna forget about it and enjoy myself as I've done all I can do tonight.

Should keep him LTC as “Medicaid Pending.”

That's what I was wondering because I had read that!

That's what mom and I are gonna figure out today.

Thanks Quincie

we're visiting today to make them aware he's now Medicaid-Pending (Access Florida has received teh application and has it officially as pending).

thanking the lord this is a much easier process than the LTC application/wait list process.

ICP vs LTC, so many acronyms, so confusing

facility is helping us w/ the application. I had alraedy submitted it but of course they ask you for a sea of supporting documentation. which we seem to have already gathered! thankfully we kept it all together after last time.

my mom naturally neglected to tell me she had a CD account AND gave me the wrong info on her life insurance as having no cash value, but fortunately the combined assets are well below the limits.

last time we applied they picked up on all of the Zelle payments I sent my mother thinking it was income but I pointed out to them that this isn't 'income' this was me sending money for rent/bills that mom pays and they said that was ok.

One year out from my mother’s passing and still plenty to think about. That’s all I will say.

i always just assumed if anyone came to live with me it would have been my mom and not what i have now which is my dad because mom lived right and my dad lives on candy, lemon soda, and cereal and has never ever exercised. and i can't help but think about what it would have been like the other way around. my mom got the alzheimer's and had to go live in a facility after she started visiting the neighbors late at night and my dad is 88 and still lives on candy and lemon soda and cereal. he's got god and the people in his family like his mom who lived to be 100+ on his side.
and i'll tell you what it would have been like the other way around. if my mom lived with me my kitchen would be IMMACULATE every day. so, that's my WHAT IF.
and i love my dad but my dad...and this is no exaggeration...doesn't know how to do ANYTHING. i don't think...and again this is not hyperbole...i don't think my dad has EVER made a pot of coffee. for real. i don't think he knows how to do it. my mom did it and then when she couldn't do it he would go to the convenience store or the coffee shop. i don't think i have ever seen my father do dishes. i have never seen him cut a vegetable in my life. he has never cooked a meal in his life. unless heating a can of ravioli on the stove counts. he basically lived at home until he got married and he never lifted a finger at his childhood home and only did stuff in a disgruntled boy way if my mom yelled at him long enough. he would mow the lawn. trim the hedges. he DOES know how to eat candy and read the Wall Street Journal and watch Blue Bloods though. And read crime novels. He is very good at these things. he worked a lot. that's his excuse. i don't know what his excuse is for the last 20 years. i didn't see him much when i was a kid. he travelled a lot. my mom did EVERYTHING. which, in the end, is why he lives with us. him at home alone was a sad sight and only getting sadder.
he never taught me how to do anything. But he did give me my love of jazz. so, all is good.

was that too mean? just felt like venting. this is a support group, right?

beth parker started this thread!! that's how old it is. i love beth. i hope to see her someday soon. maria saw her not long ago.

ya dude vent away.

my mom for the first time ever was "watching the kids" while i worked, since i am alone with them for a bit. it took less than an hour for them to literally almost kill her. my best guess is they accidentally ran into her while she was getting some water and bowled her over. she's not been in the best shape since surviving a stroke and the kids are supposed to know the "rules" about playing with grandma (no jumping on her, don't ask to play tag etc). but having to *firmly* remind them of her limitations while she was in earshot kinda felt crappy... but man when i came down the steps and saw her on her side in the hallway, soaked, with my three year old on top of her screaming like a banshee i thought she was fucking dead.
i was literally dialling 911 when she waved me off insisting she was fine.

scary!

it felt good to vent. i do love my dad. i like having him with us! i like feeding him. he has eaten more salad in a year than he has probably ever eaten. he still gets his candy and soda in but we sneak food in there somehow. i try to be patient. we have laughed a lot. we have watched a lot of american football. we both miss my mom.

kinda prosaic, but i beg you all to try to secure as many of their websites/accounts/passwords as you can while you can. especially the email stuff, of course. trying to get access to shit like credit cards/gmail/amazon without it is a fucking nightmare

Scott, we ran into a lot of similar issues when my Dad passed away and my (pre-dementia) Mom had to suddenly start trying to make sense of monthly financial statements, talking to people at the bank, and learning to hang up on callers who began with 'we believe your Windows OS has been compromised. . .' Most people my age (62) and younger have lived alone at some point and thus have a little experience in all parts of running a household, but like your folks my parents went right from their parents' home at 22 (Dad) and 19 (Mom) into the marriage, at which point the traditional division-of-labor immediately started. My wife and I joke that if my mom had predeceased my dad, we'd have had to teach my dad how to shop for groceries and turn on the stove.

So DCF approved my dad's Medicaid application! For at-home care. When we applied for ICP (institutional care) benefits. I'm at a loss as to how they fucked this up. These are separate options on the application, not even similarly named, and I checked, and we chose the right one.

So we talked on the phone, and they tried to tell me the nursing home/I submitted the wrong application, that we requested at-home care and not ICP. I pushed back twice saying we chose the Medical assistance for person in nursing home option, which even the nursing home (who submits these daily) said was the right one. And then I found the initial response letter from them which acknowledges that the application is for a nursing home, tells us they can't choose one for dad, but that we need a nursing home placement form filled out (which the skilled nursing facility did fill out and send back).

after pushing back a few times (politely), the lady said she was going to recode the form and re-send it internally.

the nursing home said this "happens all the time" to them. but my main concern is, if we resubmit, then the benefits probably won't go back retroactive to when he was first admitted, meaning we'd be on the hook. so I'm working with someone there now to make sure that doesn't happen.

really just fucking sick of their ineptitude. we had a similar issue when we applied for home health, where they wrote back to say my mother was denied for Medicaid (when she hadn't even applied for it), and the Senior REsource Alliance had also failed to provide timely documentation to them despite us having contacted our case manager there four times with the requested information.

I should have known - they kept asking us to verify two bank accounts that we didn't include on the application, that were from the original application in 2021 for home health, and I couldn't figure out why or where they got that from. seems like they were looking at the wrong packet.

after all that, they reprocessed it...INCORRECT....AGAIN!

I am now wasting time during work escalating it again.

it's almost as if they don't know how to read their own forms. given how Florida works, most of the people hired at this place are borderline incompetent at their job - sometimes the letters they send us are riddled with typos, including spelling my own mother's name wrong on the application.

part of the problem is their "Apply for Additional Benefits" option on their site apparently triggers a renewal of existing benefits, which you can't turn off or opt out of. But that's fine! But the application ITSELF still shows the additional benefit that you are applying for on it.

I'm sure they're going to say "we processed the renewal first, we were getting to the second part, you are just impatient", but the application is showing as closed, they themselves told me that it was closed and that I'd "done it wrong", only to retreat, and they also processed the same thing a second time in a week.

Jesus, it must be so exhausting.

kinda prosaic, but i beg you all to try to secure as many of their websites/accounts/passwords as you can while you can. especially the email stuff, of course. trying to get access to shit like credit cards/gmail/amazon without it is a fucking nightmare

Yeah, when my brother died we lost access to his Amazon account, which amusingly had a load of credit on it because we were trying to make sure he could buy food and clean sheets and stuff. Luckily for us, my husband set up most of my parents' online presence, so we have all their passwords. I know this because I regularly have to help them log into things that should be easy for them to log into.

After my Dad died at age 90 in November 2020, my brother and sister and I alternated in staying with my Mom who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. For awhile I could even work there and take lunch and dinner breaks with her. In September 2022 she had a health downtown and was in a hospital, got Covid , and then was in a rehab facility. In October 2022 she entered an assisted living facility. While some of the staff were good and dedicated , they were responsible for many patients. Occasionally my Mom would fall trying to get herself out of bed in the morning. The bed had partial rails and we put pillows under the sheets near her hips. My Mom, a former nurse with a sharp wit, a Hoboken, NJ based teenage Frank Sinatra Fanclub president, and sports fan sometimes coherently and cognitively showed her old self. She might forget the days of the week and said sorry it’s the disease I have , but she still remembered us and attended my son’s wedding last year. Alas, on July 13 when we were not there early in the AM she somehow got or fell out of bed and hit her head. She was in a trauma hospital and then a hospice and passed away this week on Tuesday July 25 at age 89. She’s at peace without Alzheimer’s or pain now but I miss her and will cherish my memories of her.
https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/washingtonpost/name/glenda-kiviat-obituary?id=52568464

i'm very sorry for your loss, curmudgeon. may she rest in peace <3

I'm so sorry.

Very sorry, curmudgeon. Glad she is at peace.

so sorry to hear, curmudgeon

I am sorry for your loss

Condolences, my friend.

Thinking of you and your family as you learn to navigate the world without her.

Thank you all. Need to make it through the graveside funeral Sunday morning and take every day at a time.

Yes indeed, and sorry and thanks for posting that account and obit.

My deepest condolences, curmudgeon.

Sorry for your loss.

So sorry, Curmudgeon.

dad is finally approved for ICP Medicaid.

the spousal diversion calculation is way off but we'll get that addressed.

Neando, forgive me, but every time I see you refer to ICP Medicaid I must resist making a Juggalo joke.

Lmao oh me too, don't worry. Daddy's a juggalo now, have to reteach him how magnets work

so, glad that dad's ICP application is approved, but naturally, the share of cost issue I mentioned above still isn't resolved because:

A) the person we were working with in the business office left, and the person who's always there now is a trainee who barely knows anything, and the more experienced person is rarely there, and

B) Mom just can't seem to handle these convos, she lets the other people confuse her, she doesn't push back enough or ask the right questions, even when I prep her.

I spent the last month harassing DCF to approve the right application, often spending work hours doing it, and it mentally wore me out. I told my mother on Saturday at lunch that I can't do it anymore. The business office is only open weekdays during the hours I work, and work is way too busy for me to take time off to go there to handle this. But also I just can't mentally handle it right now - I have way too much responsibility on my shoulders at work and it can't fall to me to do everything. I told this to mom over lunch on Saturday and she understood and agreed.

But today she waits to go visit dad until too late, when the more 'on top of things' business office employee is gone, and only the green, inexperienced person is there, and she's rude to mom and also a complete dumbfuck from the sounds of it. But mom also didn't ask the questions I wanted her to ask and from the sounds of it didn't properly explain what we needed so...now we've lost three days to get on top of this.

i'm at the point where I'm about to type my mother a script with what to say on it, except the last time I did that, for a phone call, she managed to still not ask the most important question even though it was written down right in front of her.

God....I wish we'd bought into a long term care plan years ago.

(btw, quincie or anybody who is Medicaid knowledgable reading - do you know who exactly helps with the recalculation of the amount the patient can send to their spouse vs how much the nursing home gets for a Community Spouse scenario? that's all we need to know and apparently the office in charge of billing people has no clue).

and well it's stressful because if we don't get this recalculated, mom will not be able to pay her bills with what's left over. and I can't foot the cost. so I just hoped she'd treat it with more urgency. if I do have to get involved, i'm going to be a very ornery person.

(main issue is they clearly didn't include mom's rent over the FL threshold and utility cost in the calculation, which should divert $300 - $400 more to her. and they're including income she will no longer be receiving).

man I've been in v similar---can you see any way you're not going to have to take care of it yourself? If you do have to, fucking have to, won't your work people understand? Is there no one else at work who can cover when you're dealing with this?

they would, it's less that than coming back to a mountain of work to make up when I'm back. I took one day off this week for pre-planned PTO and I took forever to get caught up today. and just the unbearable pressure of being the one guy who 'has to get it right' or everything falls apart.

i'm going to give mom an outright script to work from tomorrow, if that doesn't cut it then I may have to bite the bullet. problem is you can't really make 'appointments' with them, they just show up when they feel like it and sometimes aren't there when they say they're going to be.

O shiiit---could your brother do it?

heh. that was my second idea. now he is a wilting flower in front of people but if I gave him what to say and he went with mom together the whole will be greater etc etc.

i'll figure it out. just tired of the 'rubber bands around my chest' feeling.

Word. Go listen to some headbang, every day, if don't already. Thuh allotment.

oh for realz, u know it

Both my parents are gone, but now it's my older sister.. moved to a suburb of Kansas City where she knows hardly anybody; hasn't been working; was diagnosed with some serious health issues to do poor living.. and is now asking me to pay her electricity bill because the power was shut off, almost $500 to restore

I think she's received an eviction notice

She needs like a social worker or something, but I've been looking at the Missouri Social Services website and it's fair to say they're not so generous with their benefits

Very stressful, there's no one but us, no rich relatives to bail her out.. she's gotten herself into this situation but she's in awful health now, I don't know what to do

'due to poor living'^^^