Our medical system is set up in such a way that we often encounter shame if we do not have the financial means of caring for our aging and loved parents when they become too sick mentally and emotionally to be cared for at home anymore.  This is what is happening in our situation, and I have watched my partner have to deal with our inability to care for her mother at home anymore.

Unfortunately, her mother has Alzheimer’s as well as is very physically ill at this point and needs skilled nursing around the clock.  Most private pay skilled nursing facilities are between $5,000 to $6,000 per month, and these are the least expensive ones.  So she has had to be placed in a rehab center for now (because she still has insurance to cover such).  And the process of looking for a Medicaid nursing home is underway.

We have encountered really wonderful people, and people who do not care about their jobs at all – just as it is everywhere and in all professions.  The really good thing about it, is knowing that this would be true no matter where she is.  She, herself, has no money at all and would have been on Medicaid many years ago had she not had a daughter (and a daughter’s partner) willing to take her in.  She most certainly is not the kindest of individual’s and in fact, has a pretty difficult anxiety neurosis that has made her difficult to deal with.  So the lessons have been great and on-going.

The main thing I am trying to convey in this particular blog message is that if you find yourself in similar circumstances and you, too, have to place your parent(s) on Medicaid, there is no shame in this.  You are one of millions of us that have or will need to do such – one does wonder how long our sagging system can handle so many people in this plight.