ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS

so, you would have thought we were close to the end of the story, eh? well, not really. i'm getting there, though, honestly.

all this time i had been and remained my mother's care giver and case manager. either job alone would have been more than i am equipped for, but both fell to me by default. adopted only child, so no sibs, no other close family alive still and no other family in the area, no agency with funding or manpower available, state and county social services worse than useless, and throughout my mother's independent living stay, a gradual but marked decline in daily living skills. somehow i was able to keep picking up the slack, but mental, physical and spiritual exhaustion were my constant companions.

without dwelling or going into great detail, early in this journey i had become my mother's power of attorney. prior to that we had agreed to pool expenses, which at least freed me to continue caring for her. once the POA came in force, that became something less than legal, the more so while under separate roofs. my finances rapidly became desperate, since a job was out of the question as i still had to look after my mother nearly full time, if you count the bureaucracy hours and the personal care hours, travel time and recuperative time.

still, i kept putting one foot in front of the other like an automaton. and then, my mother was stricken with a dysentery like illness that depleted her health and hygiene. in less than two weeks, in which controls did not work, she became sufficiently dehydrated to require hospitalization. this was to become, not unexpectedly, the end of her independent living days, and in fact she became and remains to damaged by health issues and dementia issues even to try for assisted living. she returned to her home's skilled nursing unit, and received the best care imaginable and amazingly patient efforts at rehabilitation. she was, however, at best uncooperative, and at worst combative... and at times nearly vegetative. she remained like this, and was removed finally from rehab therapy, after several valiant months, as i, and to some extent staff, prepared for her passing.

and then she got better...

we guess she just decided to adapt. she is now largely pleasant, she knows who i am and what my name is, and is grateful to both the facility and myself for the care she is getting and the comfortable surroundings she finds herself in. HUH?

throughout this the struggle to address my financial woes, and her awkward position of making too much to qualify for many aid packages and too little on which to survive, kept me awake at nights (figuratively speaking, as i am almost always awake at night) wondering how it will all end.

this story is NOW almost over. her medicare ran out, medicaid has unmet legal requirements that i was unable to address, and then; a stroke of luck.

i figured out with luck and research that there is such a thing as a public guardian, tracked down the one for our county, and against all odds, he had a slot available for a new charge. as of two weeks ago, the court papers making him her guardian, and freeing me to begin bailing out my own sinking ship were signed by a judge. he will now take over her case at the point it is at, and take it from there. he probably won't like me for a while, as he untangles all the loose ends. so be it.

right around this time of rediscovered personal life, there was an election... and some constitutional amendments.

what the results were, what that meant to me, and what i did is my next post.

if you got this far, bless you for patience. i will try to bring this all up to date tomorrow, so we can talk about all the interesting todays.

peace, out.

jack