Page 45 - Aging Parents - FDCCPublications

PATIENCE, PLANNING AND SUPPORT: REFLECTIONS ON DEALING WITH AGING FAMILY MEMBERS
and when I hit the gas, Dad fell backward in his wheelchair. When I thought I killed him, his boisterous belly laugh came forth, and we both laughed until we cried.
Dad always knew who his children were throughout, but between dementia and his failing sight, he was less sure about others, such as his closest friends. He had periods where he was out of it and other periods where he snapped back to total mental clarity. The distance between the mental clarity periods grew significantly over time. At first, it was
a few days, then weeks, then months. It was as if it was two entirely different realities for him. When he had mental clarity, he didn’t recall anything that had occurred in what I called the “darkness.” When he was in the darkness, he was generally just confused.
There was one occasion closer to the end when he hadn’t slept in a few days. Sundowners are such a severe side effect of dementia. He ended up in the hospital. We had been trying to reason with him to go to sleep, then cajoling, then begging. But he wasn’t having it. He was conversing with himself at the hospital, who he thought was sitting in the chair at the end of the bed. Our excellent caregiver, Peggy, said to Dad, “Mr. Miller, visiting hours are over now. Mr. Miller needs to leave and let you rest, O.K.?” Miraculously, after days of trying to get him to go to sleep, he responded to her, “Yes, O.K. – bye, Ray!” and laid back on the bed, closed his eyes, and went to sleep. Peggy, who we all hoped would be there when we needed a caregiver, was not formally trained but had that amazing ability to put herself in his shoes and make everything better. She had been “caretaking” for people all over town for many years and had a great heart and a fantastic knack for people in their last years, months, and days.
Dad died in September 2008, nearly 97 years old. It was sad to lose him, but we also knew we did everything to make him comfortable, happy, and loved in those last few years.
Aunt Estelle was my one aunt. If I’m honest, I didn’t like Estelle much growing up, and my mother’s view of her probably influenced me. Aunt Estelle was the oldest of seven children, and my mom was the youngest, and they grew up during the Depression. So, in a six-week trial, I got a call that Aunt Estelle, at 90, had driven her car to an auto
dealership in town to get her tires rotated – during a tent sale. Of course, the dealership convinced her to trade in
her very gently used car, which worked great and had low mileage for a small SUV that didn’t fit in her garage. Her great-nephew on her long-deceased husband’s side called
me in a panic and had already tried unsuccessfully to resolve it with the dealership. Our aunt had begun down the road
of dementia and shouldn’t have been driving, but she was making her way through life. Without anyone else able to step up, this began the next four years or more when my cousins and I took responsibility for our aunt while none of us lived nearby. I was the closest, initially residing three states away. She had signed a joint POA naming three of us.
Lessons learned from caring for Aunt Estelle:
1. Getting the guardianship probably would
have been better than a POA. Some legal papers and issues would have been easier if we had the guardianship versus the joint POA, particularly early when she was in and out of it with her dementia. We chose not to do so because she was pretty independent, but we ended up unnecessarily waiting on some things until she was fully lucid enough to sign documents.
2. Keep the elder’s financial records simple. Our aunt’s funds were in US Bank, but I personally had Wells Fargo, so I moved some of her funds to separate checking/savings accounts in Wells Fargo, thinking it would be easier to manage primarily because I disliked US Bank’s bill pay function at the time. I should have just kept them at US Bank or simplified it to one checking account. The savings account interest wasn’t worth the headache when I had to apply for Medicaid for three years to take care of her finances. At that time, Medicaid was a five-year look-back period. I’m pretty sure I spent a few hundred hours preparing
the application and financial records describing why
I moved money from one account to another each
time I needed to pay bills. I would also recommend either Quicken or an Excel spreadsheet to track each expense over $50. The state didn’t care about more minor expenses than $1,000, but I felt more comfortable detailing each expense, and the application went through without a question.
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