Hey, everyone. For privacy reasons, won't be using my real name or names of my loved ones on here, but you can call me Eula.
I'll probably be making quite a few threads to ask for some assistance and insight shortly, as the past few months of caregiving have raised a lot of questions and complicated issues. I'll just be giving a (not-so-brief) run-down of our situation here as both an introduction, and something for reference.
I'm in my late twenties, and now married to my husband, who is in his fifties. His mother, who is 78 and a veteran, was officially diagnosed with Alzheimer's Dementia late last summer, though we now suspect she's had more difficulty than she's let on for many years. She lived independently and alone in a different state for about 20 years, and my husband would only be able to take time away to visit her for a day or two at a time around the holidays each year. We realized she was having some issues when my Husband took me to meet her a couple years back, just after Covid19 shutdowns gave us time off of work, but didn't realize just how severe things were getting until last year.
As we live in a different state, we couldn't just uproot and move in with her - her house is small, and frankly probably not up to habitable standards after lack of maintenance - so my husband would take time off work under FMLA to go down every couple weeks and take care of things she neglected, and we'd have groceries delivered to her weekly as she could/would not drive. Earlier this year, in February, she apparently decided to try shovel her driveway, and ended up falling. My husband had been calling her on a daily basis but one night she would not answer (which happened occasionally, she'd forget how to use the phone often, and sometimes would tear it out of the wall in frustration). He attempted to call again the following morning, and after still not getting an answer, he requested a wellness check (which he did on other occasions as well, given the issues with her and the phone). She was found outside in the snow mildly injured and with low body temperature and was taken to the hospital, where she was treated. But after that it was obviously clear she couldn't be left alone. After a brief hospital stay and a few weeks in a rehabilitation center, my husband brought her (and her only remaining senior cat) back to live with us.
Me and my husband live in a relatively small two bed, two bath apartment, where the second bedroom was previously my office where I worked from home, as I have a disability that prevents me from driving. As I no longer have a home office (isolated room required for my job, so I can't use the living room or our bedroom), and my disability has worsened over the past 10 or so months, I've been on a medical leave of absence from my job. My husband attempted to maintain his job, but FMLA only covers a certain length of time for job protection, and his mother just requires too much supervision and care, so he ended up losing his job officially in April. We are getting by, barely, with his mother's income and assets, and I'm attempting to qualify for SSDI due to the unexpected length of my disability, but financially we're definitely not in a great spot. It's been difficult (we only just got married in September, not exactly the honeymoon period either of us were expecting), but we're trying to support each other through all of this. Just seems like everything is happening at once and I don't know if there was any solid way of preparing for it, even if we had expected it.
His mother never did much of anything in regards to planning for this possibility (her entire family has had alzheimers, including her mother and sister, and she was always terrified of 'ending up like them', so she refused to acknowledge the possibility, counterproductively), through any kind of LTC insurance policy nor anything like a medicaid qualifying trust. Luckily she did have a durable power of attorney document naming my husband as POA, I don't know how much of this we could handle otherwise. There's not much I can individually do to help handle her affairs, as my husband is the POA and needs to contact financial institutions, insurance, and manage all correspondence to/with the Veteran's Association here, but I'm attempting to help where I can with household tasks and things he has difficulty with, such as tracking and budgeting finances and researching legal matters.
Sorry for the very lengthy post, but if anyone has managed to get through it, I hope it was coherent and you can understand my situation well enough. Like I said previously, a major point of writing this all out was for reference; maybe a bit of it is just to get it all (or at least a bit of it, still plenty more in here) out.
Anyway, I hope to both give and get as much help and support here as I can. Thank you
I'll probably be making quite a few threads to ask for some assistance and insight shortly, as the past few months of caregiving have raised a lot of questions and complicated issues. I'll just be giving a (not-so-brief) run-down of our situation here as both an introduction, and something for reference.
I'm in my late twenties, and now married to my husband, who is in his fifties. His mother, who is 78 and a veteran, was officially diagnosed with Alzheimer's Dementia late last summer, though we now suspect she's had more difficulty than she's let on for many years. She lived independently and alone in a different state for about 20 years, and my husband would only be able to take time away to visit her for a day or two at a time around the holidays each year. We realized she was having some issues when my Husband took me to meet her a couple years back, just after Covid19 shutdowns gave us time off of work, but didn't realize just how severe things were getting until last year.
As we live in a different state, we couldn't just uproot and move in with her - her house is small, and frankly probably not up to habitable standards after lack of maintenance - so my husband would take time off work under FMLA to go down every couple weeks and take care of things she neglected, and we'd have groceries delivered to her weekly as she could/would not drive. Earlier this year, in February, she apparently decided to try shovel her driveway, and ended up falling. My husband had been calling her on a daily basis but one night she would not answer (which happened occasionally, she'd forget how to use the phone often, and sometimes would tear it out of the wall in frustration). He attempted to call again the following morning, and after still not getting an answer, he requested a wellness check (which he did on other occasions as well, given the issues with her and the phone). She was found outside in the snow mildly injured and with low body temperature and was taken to the hospital, where she was treated. But after that it was obviously clear she couldn't be left alone. After a brief hospital stay and a few weeks in a rehabilitation center, my husband brought her (and her only remaining senior cat) back to live with us.
Me and my husband live in a relatively small two bed, two bath apartment, where the second bedroom was previously my office where I worked from home, as I have a disability that prevents me from driving. As I no longer have a home office (isolated room required for my job, so I can't use the living room or our bedroom), and my disability has worsened over the past 10 or so months, I've been on a medical leave of absence from my job. My husband attempted to maintain his job, but FMLA only covers a certain length of time for job protection, and his mother just requires too much supervision and care, so he ended up losing his job officially in April. We are getting by, barely, with his mother's income and assets, and I'm attempting to qualify for SSDI due to the unexpected length of my disability, but financially we're definitely not in a great spot. It's been difficult (we only just got married in September, not exactly the honeymoon period either of us were expecting), but we're trying to support each other through all of this. Just seems like everything is happening at once and I don't know if there was any solid way of preparing for it, even if we had expected it.
His mother never did much of anything in regards to planning for this possibility (her entire family has had alzheimers, including her mother and sister, and she was always terrified of 'ending up like them', so she refused to acknowledge the possibility, counterproductively), through any kind of LTC insurance policy nor anything like a medicaid qualifying trust. Luckily she did have a durable power of attorney document naming my husband as POA, I don't know how much of this we could handle otherwise. There's not much I can individually do to help handle her affairs, as my husband is the POA and needs to contact financial institutions, insurance, and manage all correspondence to/with the Veteran's Association here, but I'm attempting to help where I can with household tasks and things he has difficulty with, such as tracking and budgeting finances and researching legal matters.
Sorry for the very lengthy post, but if anyone has managed to get through it, I hope it was coherent and you can understand my situation well enough. Like I said previously, a major point of writing this all out was for reference; maybe a bit of it is just to get it all (or at least a bit of it, still plenty more in here) out.
Anyway, I hope to both give and get as much help and support here as I can. Thank you
