He was nearly 86 years old. My brother was the primary caregiver while in the last three months of his life I was there and usually handled the night shift. While my father lost a lot of weight, I'm not very strong so trying to life him when he weighed 120-130 pounds was extremely difficult.

A few weeks before my father passed away, my brother went to work that weekend and I was alone at the house to monitor him. I woke up one morning and my father had soiled the bed linens and was barely alive. I struggled to get the linens off the bed and move him to a wheelchair so I could get him to the shower. A home health care nurse was scheduled to make her first visit with my father on Saturday and when she rang the doorbell I rushed her into his bedroom since he was near death. His respiration rate was at 2 breaths per minute and the nurse told me to call 911. While I was on the phone in the living room, the nurse was yelling at me in the bedroom asking me whether I wanted her to administer CPR. I was still giving the address to 911 and had to make the split-second decision to tell her to give him CPR.

I ended up getting a lot of blame from my family for that decision, but I certainly didn't want the nurse to think I was a monster by saying no. I imagine that I would have also been blamed by the family if I had told her not to give CPR, so I was in the catch-22 no matter what decision I made. There was a lot of anger towards me at that time from the other family members since I had been unemployed and had to move home.

Providing home health care for the elderly is extremely difficult for everyone involved and having outsiders intervene is extremely expensive. The cost of long-term health care insurance is beyond the reach of most families. In the end, my father survived but was bed-ridden for the remaining three weeks of his life. It did provide an opportunity for one of my sisters in Wyoming to see him before he died which was good because she delayed and didn't see my mother before her death. My other two sisters that had stayed with him occasionally over the previous years didn't have the emotional strength to deal with the problem and didn't visit him in those final weeks.

Please note that there are people that understand the predicament that you are in and you can DUMail me if you need some support.

and that was thirty years ago. Hard times, but much, much less painful now. What I remember now is his blue eyes and his gentle smile.

"I am stressed and I honestly shouldn't be."

Yeah, you should. Hang in there; it will pass.

And lay it all out with them...there are good and there are lazy fucks that will do nothing....if you get a good one...they will process medicaid right then going active in two weeks and get you state and medicaid supported hospice home health care....


Wish I knew all that before...know it now.

Just make SURE BEFORE you contact them that YOU are the one with power of attourny and can make life choice decisions...and get the big stuff out of his name!

Watch out! If anything such as a house or land is still in his name when you open the case with HHR they will call it an personal asset and take it at the end to "defrey" costs...rather than his intensions of it going to the family via the will.

Drew.

but in IL, large assets have to be transferred 5 yrs before Medicaid application. Otherwise, that property will be counted as an asset for the individual and will go to the state.

advanced directive. Does your dad have a 'living will'?
My mom had one and we obeyed her every wish as much as we didn't want to let her go.

Meaning he does not mind a gtube ("They ain't no big deal...they close right up) and a trach.

Dad did not think Terry Schaivo should have been taken off life support, if that gives you an idea.

His directive also says that *I* make these decisions because he knew I know what he wants.

These people can fuck off. Also, I put him on FULL CODE. They've never once had to, so there's that. I am not kidding, these directives muddy the water regarding CARE