Aging/ailing parents - So thankful we had "the talk"...

[James Burke]

It's not about "if", it's about "when"...

About six years ago, I began sensing the need to begin dialog with my aging and ailing parents about managing their affairs should they become completely incapacitated. Dad was a bit indifferent, but not totally opposed. Mom, on the other hand, thought it was a good idea. My brother and I had been given power of attorney for their estate ten years prior, but we really didn't have an action plan in place.

Over the course of a couple of weeks, we sat down and I put together a file folder briefcase of information pertaining to every financial and medical detail of their household. I wanted to be able to access any of their affairs within seconds, and I wanted it all in one place so I could be out the door with everything I needed in case of an emergency. Once each year, we would get together to review and update their information. Dad passed three years ago, and at that time we added both children's names to her banking accounts.

Well...this weekend, mom's "when" occurred. Things are still a bit "touch and go" as she fights infection on three battle fronts. She was fairly well the day before, but things went horribly wrong in a real hurry and it looks like nursing home care is in the picture after hospitalization.

Yesterday, I sat down and wrote my first wave of checks from her account. Becoming my mom's parent wasn't on my list of things to do this weekend, but I'm thankful we had a plan in place and that she was cooperative.


JB

 

[reQ]

That is sad to hear... Its nice that you had the plan in place but gut wrenching at the same time. Can't be READY for these things for all 100%

 

[Big Print Signs]

My thoughts are with you as I am going through that myself. It's definitely not an easy discussion but better done sooner rather than later.

 

[bernie]

Always sad to go thru this! What a relief you and your brother got involved in this early enough to know what needs to be done. Few families take the time to do this or they put it off until its too late. Or the parents
balk at it.

We're totally on top of it here both with my mom who probably won't see 82 health rapidly failing, and my "other mom" who is now 92 that latched onto me almost 40 years ago. So darn important to make sure one knows what is going on with elderly parents and to have the legal POA to act in their behalf. Even more important is being "their mouth piece" when they can't fend for themselves any longer as living with strangers is darn scary for them.

My brother has always had POA on mom and total discussion as to her care. Best laid out plans still are a major struggle because if we're not battling with the insurance company or medicare issues, we're battling with her physical care. With my "other mom", the POA on that is unbreakable and I acknowledge we 100% lucked out with her care facility after a major stroke 5 years ago. She is in a private home,
owned by a family of nurses and they are on top of her care as well as I could expect anyone to be. These kind of places with this kind of care are few and far between.

I highly recommend people stay on stop of these care facilities. Even what you think is the best, may not be. They are not owned by the doctors, nurses or aids who are understaffed, doing their job, have little to say and have a large turnover of employees. They are owned by corporations whose only concern is how much money they are making. Follow the money trail.

I am so on top of popping in at different times / days and I'm seeing my brother doing the same lately. We both own our own businesses, our schedules are super hectic, we still make it a point to pop in and check on mom who is 45 minutes from either of us a couple times a week each. This is how I know what food they are serving as some meals really suck and these sucky meals are NOT what we have been told they are eating, if they are getting her up to pee (this has been a huge issue and one that should be monitored both with any ones mom or dad), and what is bedtime at night. When I discovered they didn't want mom to have a tv because they wanted her to socialize and then found out when I popped in at 6:30 pm, they had put her to bed for the night, right after dinner so that would have been about 5:00 pm, lights out and door closed ... I brought in a tv and specifically said lights and tv stay on until at least 8:30 pm. When your parents can't fend for themselves any longer ... someone had better be there to help them. They are so incredibly isolated and vulnerable.

I'm sad as to how many elderly people are in these care homes, areas like mom with dementia, heart and kidney failure, who have absolutely no one from the family check on them or check on them on a regular basis. Not excusable.

 

[geb]

James, I give you and your family all the credit to look forward. I wish your mom the best. As you already know, things will be difficult, but you have a plan and plans, good luck to you and your family and we will be thinking of you.

George

 

[James Burke]

Hey everybody...

Thanks for the kind words and encouragement. I could sure use that right about now...

As usual, the hospital and doctors seem to be as elusive as ever (lack of communication). If I don't happen to catch the doctor while on rounds, I have to wait until the next to day and hope I get lucky. I have access to an online portal that shows test results and procedures that have been done, but if it hadn't been for Google, I'd be sifting through medical books to get answers.

Yes sir, 2016...the forefront of technology and communication as we know it...and we're left guessing all the time.

If I learned anything from dad's passing, it was ask, ask, ask...even at the risk of becoming a PITA.


Blessings,

Jim

 

[klmiller611]

Hey everybody...

Thanks for the kind words and encouragement. I could sure use that right about now...

As usual, the hospital and doctors seem to be as elusive as ever (lack of communication). If I don't happen to catch the doctor while on rounds, I have to wait until the next to day and hope I get lucky. I have access to an online portal that shows test results and procedures that have been done, but if it hadn't been for Google, I'd be sifting through medical books to get answers.

Yes sir, 2016...the forefront of technology and communication as we know it...and we're left guessing all the time.

If I learned anything from dad's passing, it was ask, ask, ask...even at the risk of becoming a PITA.


Blessings,

Jim

Jim:

My thoughts are with you on this. I went through this with my mother, coming up in May, three years ago. It was exactly the same scenario, I waited all day for Doctors to show up, and never saw one, left messages, left my number, nothing, nothing, nothing. A few good nurses, a few poor ones, some that really wanted to help, some that couldn't have cared less. Push hard for questions, and get answers. I did not, and regret it to this day.

My mother was on the road to recovery, and taking rehab at the hospital, she would have had her 92nd birthday in June. I went up to see her on Friday morning before going to work. Her nurse, whom I'd not seen before, asked if I was her son, said that my mother reminded her of her grandmother, and if she was me, she'd get her out of the place, they were killing her there, they were pushing therapy, hard. My mother had been doing very little short of moving around the house since my father had died two years before. Now they had her lifting weights and such.

This nurse said, she could not say anything officially, but she needed to be in a less stressful place. They were going to give her a heart attack or stroke if they kept on. The backstory is I did not want her to go to a nursing home, the one nearest the house, is where two of her sisters had died, and I knew that would be on her mind.

I told the nurse to make it happen. She said she'd let them know. Four hours later, my phone rang, I thought it was the hospital about moving her. It was a nurse, saying to get over there, they think she'd had a stroke. On the way, I had phone calls from two different doctors about doing various things, of which I'd agreed on the way. Not once had these people bothered to contact me or answer my questions that I'd left.

When I got there, she was in ICU, and barely reacting to me. They did a carotid artery scan and found one side 100 percent blocked, the other side was 80 percent blocked. At that point, I knew she'd never recover, so I said stop, no more, let her alone. Then the doctor berated me about first saying do the stuff they wanted, then changing my mind!

I was livid, I tried to talk to people for almost two weeks, not once would anyone make the effort. I they were just trying to jack up the bill, I am sure. I told them I wanted her home, that was her wish, was to die at home. They tried to stop that, said she my die on the way. I told them I did not care. They finally got her home the next day (saturday) and she passed away the following Wednesday morning.

I'd like to think she might have had a better chance if I'd pushed for better communication, but know I did all I could.

I only regret not having a real nurse tell me sooner to get her better help. The real caring ones are few and far between, and are restricted by the system to say anything.

My lesson was be a PITA, it is your loved one.

Best wishes, and good luck
Ken Miller

 

[Jwalk]

When my grandmother passed she became a ward of the state. My grandmother was so difficult to deal with it came to that.
My father in law was dealt with reasonable well.

I know mother is going to be a sh1t show, I hope not but am preparing for the worst.

One good thing is my parents are dirt poor, so nothing in the financial side. My grandmother was extremely poor too.

But the medical side is still going to be real hard.

 

[James Burke]

I'd like to think she might have had a better chance if I'd pushed for better communication, but know I did all I could.

I only regret not having a real nurse tell me sooner to get her better help. The real caring ones are few and far between, and are restricted by the system to say anything.

My lesson was be a PITA, it is your loved one.

I came to that conclusion three years when my dad died. The medical world may have the latest life-saving technology, but it falls horribly behind the times when it comes to effective communication. Perhaps because they don't want to be bothered by those who have taken the time to inform themselves of better options.

I'm finding that mom's general practitioner to be the source of contention for me. In my opinion, he should act like a professional "quarterback", calling the shots and directing her to specialists with a determined goal in mind. But sadly, it's turning into more of what I used to see nearly forty years ago with our Sunday afternoon pick-up games of touch football: chaos, and a lot of confusion about who is supposed to do what, where and when. It took them five full days to figure out that she was a fall risk.

Thankfully, there's Google and a world of resources available to whomever will freely avail themselves of it, but that only goes so far.

The really sad thing is how they fill her full of false hope when all her test results are clearly headed in the wrong direction.

JB

 

[visual800]

We swap roles towards the end. We take care of those that took care of us. no matter our age it is still very "odd" to have to make decisions for the ones that you always thought had it together. Wishing the best for you qand hoping nobody parents have a long struggle

 

[James Burke]

We swap roles towards the end.

In more ways than one, and our path goes like this: Child>Parent>Parent>Child

First, we are our parent's children
Next, we are our children's parents
Then, we become our parent's parents
And finally, we become our children's children


JB

 

[TheSnowman]

I've been watching this play out as well. All of my great grandparents died in their 60's and 70's, so they still were kind of able to stay at home and take care of themselves, and died at home. My grandparents now (3) all went into assisted living within two months of each other. My mom ended up "retiring early" because she's having to spend 8-12 hours a day, every single day, getting things figured out with their finances, homes to sell, auctioning their 60 years of stuff from living in the same house the whole time, etc.

It's crazy to watch, and you don't realize how much time you waste on it. Had they just admitted they were getting older and needed to get some things in order, they could have saved her from what's been going on since early November last year. It's just unreal how much time it takes, and how they just can't handle basic things like talking to someone at the bank anymore.

Seems like any phone call they get now about anything, my mom has had to handle it because their brain just can't do it. I've been assured my parents will have all of this in place so it's not a burden on me some day.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

Had they just admitted they were getting older and needed to get some things in order, they could have saved her from what's been going on since early November last year. It's just unreal how much time it takes, and how they just can't handle basic things like talking to someone at the bank anymore.

It's easy to say that on this end of things. You are assuming that they even realize themselves what's going on. My mom went through this exact thing with her mother. To us, it actually looked like someone flipped a light switch off, when in fact, it could have been months (if not years) in the making. Rather my grandmother knew what was going on or not, hard to tell when someone has dementia and not there locally to see her everyday.

It's a sad thing for sure. Dad lost his mother (she would have been 102 this past Feb) last Sept. Mentally, she was all there, physically not so much. Particularly the last 2 yrs. Now my other grandmother (above paragraph), she isn't there mentally at all, but physically she can still get around. She was the tough one to get everything done and mom some long sleepless nights getting her affairs in order. She's got a handle on it now, but it took the better part of a year to get everything manageable.

 

[James Burke]

It's just unreal how much time it takes

Even with a plan in place, I've spent the last three days just getting up to speed with it all, and I'm not finished yet.


JB

 

[James Burke]

Several days into the process of working through mom's paperwork, I discovered I didn't have things nailed down the way we thought we did.

For starters, I thought that signing her advance medical directive made us her power of attorney. It does...but only for medical decisions, but not for legal matters. And even though we are named on her bank accounts, that's just about where our legal rights end as her children.

When you begin to factor in medical insurance (very good insurance, by the way), Medicare, nursing homes and the potential need for Medicaid into the equation, it can get complicated very quickly. The complexity compounds even further when assets (and their disposal) are involved, and there's only so much authority granted with a valid will.

So...I met with an attorney and established a legal power of attorney and modified the deed to her estate so my brother and I are now her named beneficiaries. Anything less can cause the estate to go to probate and then the court decides how to handle her affairs if mom passes or becomes unresponsive. Mom still retains full legal authority until she is no longer competent.

In our case, mom's physical health is all but gone, but mentally she is still alert and "with it", and that made the process extremely easy. She was glad we were on top of things and got it taken care of before it was too late.

Kudos go to her attorney, and we were able to sign papers the next day after our initial consultation. A lot of paperwork is involved, but as I mentioned earlier, we had all our ducks in a row prior to starting the process. All I needed was two final documents from the bank and the courthouse.

That said, I would encourage anybody going through the same thing to review their situation with an attorney to make sure you are prepared.


JB

 

[James Burke]

... and to have the legal POA to act in their behalf.

Bernie,

That's just where we were lacking. Thanks for the reminder.


JB