Reading Salvial_Ten's journal

I really hate to entitle my journal topic that, but there just isn't any better way to put it.

I know I've not been on the site half as much as I used to be in the past month but there have been some things going on that have needed my full attention. The first of which is the problems I've been having with my father.

I don't remember if I wrote about it here or not but roughly three months ago my father skipped town to go to Indiana in order to avoid going to trial and likely jail for getting into a wreck while he was drunk. The wreck happened back in June and of course, the court system being backed up as it is, didn't schedual his trial till July and the court date ended up being in September. The court appointed him a lawyer who flat out told him that there wasn't anyway he'd be able to avoid jailtime due to the fact that he'd gotten a ticket and arrested in May for public intoxication. Plus he went to jail for a weekend over the wreck and his Driver's Liscence was revoked. Not to mention he had a past history with alchohol related citations on his record.

So he got scared of going to jail, did the wrong thing by selling his truck takin' alot of money out of the bank and and buying a plane ticket to Indiana to avoid the arrest warrent and the court date. This was in August...I think.

About a month later we got a call from his mother (whom he'd been living with) saying that he was pretty sick and wouldn't eat or drink anything, and hadn't done so in a couple of days. My mother told her to get him to a hospital, and that he has Medicare which would cover the bill. His mother didn't believe us and thought that we were lying so that she'd be stuck with paying his hospital bill (she's a very selfish woman). Well, it took another few days for us to get ahold of his sister, who did trust us and took him to the hospital (I'd like to think she would have done it anyway, because she really is a caring person). By the time she could get him to a hospital he didn't know who anyone was, he had severe withdrawl symptoms (he'd been an alchoholic for 30+ years), an inflamed pancreas, slight brain deterioration (which might have been natural or alchohol induced), and on the verge of dying.

He stayed in the hospital for about two weeks, from there he was taken to a shoddy rehab center that misdiagnosed him twice in the month that he was there. He could only stay a month before they were going to start charging for his stay. My grandmother of course, would not pay for him to stay there, and my mother didn't like the treatement he was receiving.

It should be noted now that we were hearing all of this second and third hand from Indiana, seeing how neither mother nor myself could afford to get up north and take care of this. Plus the state of Texas did not know he was there.

So, grandmother said that she'd take care of him only if we sent her all of his social security and retirement to take care of him...My mother and I both knew that she wouldn't use the money for that so we told her that we'd have care arranged for him by the time he got out of the rehab center. And somehow we managed to do it. We got him set up with a nursing home, and on the day grandmother got him here mom was able to take him to the home. They had to get him there by four pm which was no problem for mother. (I didn't get through with classes until three thirty so I couldn't get him there. We live half an hours drive from my school, and from there it'd be another fourty five minutes to get him to the nursing home. I couldn't go with them.) My grandparents couldn't even stay long enough for me to say hi to them. In fact they'd been gone about five minutes when I got home...according to my roomate.

Thus is where the current trouble begins. We admitted him under their promise that he'd be more or less automatically approved for Medicaid because he's lving on social security and disability/retirement pay (due to an accedent that happened several years ago...I've writen a journal entry on it). They lied. According to Dad's Social Worker person (I really don't know how we ended up with one) my father makes 200 USD more a month than is the maximum allowed by Medicaid for Approval. At this point he's been in the nursing home for two months (October and November), further more, unlike the Nursing Home (NH) people said, Medicaid will not cover from the time he was admitted till present upon approval. Which means that we now owe the nursing home something along the lines of 109 USD a day from the time he entered care. They won't start billing till after they find out he's been denied Medicaid...however we've till January nth to get Medicaid.

This comes as a hard blow to mom and I. The social worker lady said that we can put all of dad's social security into what is called a qualifying income trust, which will gives mom the "beneficiary" a check a month out of what's left after medicaid takes what they need from the SS check. Which is great and all but they didn' know that they had to give us the forms to fill out and take to a bank. Nor did they know that a law was passed in 1996 that said we don't have to have a court order or lawyer to get the trust fund. Nor did they know how to get the paper work.

This leads us to yet another problem. The psychologist that works at the nursing home just declaired my father incompetent, which is true. Last time I saw him (Thanksgiving) he thought I was six years old, got left at home, and refused to acknowledge that I was even sitting in the room. From time to time he thinks mom is his ex-wife and sometimes he doesn't know where he is.

We don't have power of attourny over him and now have to get it. The good news is we can get legal services for free, the bad is that we have to wait for them to come to Wise County in January because you have to get the PoA in the county you live in. Mother wants me to have it as well in case something happens to her. Also, she needs to see about getting a will for her and father because she knows my second older brother (my dad's only son) will try and steal everything from our home and land out from under me...My grandparents in Indiana would try to as well.

The social worker lied another time when she said that we'd be responsible for dad's care up to the month his medicaid was approved. According to something I found online at a senior care website, they have to pay back three months of treatment on him (if we get things taken care of in January that will cover all of it). Another hard blow has come in that Medicare which he already has, won't co-pay for this because they don't handle mental cases. So that brings us to far above 109 USD a day...to mom won't even tell me what.

To make matters even worse, mom has been having "mini-strokes" quite frequently because of all the stress plus high blood preasure and insomnia. Her health is getting worse and her mind is slipping quite abit. I'm scared that she'll end up in the nursing home with father by the end of it all. So is she, so she's going to try and get power of attourny over herself and dad to me in case of that happening as well as getting their will made which would leave all their possesions to me. Just to make sure I don't get shafted (she know's I'd give certain things to extended family).

If they both end up in the N.H. I don't know what I'm gonna do, because I don't think I could go through and get all of this done myself. And I'm not even sure what I could do for mother, she doesn't qualify for social security and therefor not for Medicare/Medicaid either (as far as I know at any rate). And I know for a fact I couldn't take care of them myself.

In the end, if she can't get him Medicaid she'll have to bring him home, drop out of school, quit working and take care of him 24/7 which would be horrible, because of all her own problems and that would kill whatever social life she had. It's a hard way to live.

Also, because she just got promoted at Dollar General, she's available for really crappy insurance, which after the end of next year means she's at risk of losing her Veterian's Insurance which covers everything from eye exams to fully pay for the several medication's she needs to stay functioning. Her insurance at work won't even co-pay persecription meds.

At least we found all of this out after we got finnished prepairing for Christmas...though I wish now that we wouldn't have spent what we did. Also, I wish we could have found all of this out afterwards.

--Jami

P.S. Merry Christmas everyone, and I'm sorry I posted this, but I needed to get it off my chest.

--Jami Yeah, that's gonna sting in the morning.

That's really rough, but I'm sure you can get through this. I really wish I could help you out with this, but as of right now, my legal obligations permit me no more than a heart felt good luck. I really feel for you, and god how much I wish I could do more than that for you. Anyway, good luch, and I'm not your best freind or anything (I'm not against being it, but as far as I know, I'm not...) but if you need someone to scream at via typing, I'm usually around...

Seriously, I wish you the best.

I should be ashamed of myself.

Thanks, Aynjell, it's good to know you're there.

--Jami Yeah, that's gonna sting in the morning.

Oh my god. You poor thing. I feel so terribly for you, and I wish that I could take you away from all of it and hug you and make you feel better. :( You're a strong, intelligent person and I know that you can get through this, but I'll help you in any way I can. Just remember that the only person you can really take care of is yourself, and do so.

Lots of love.

For my next trick, I shall make you all disappear.