Old Age

My wife's mother is 89 and for the past few years she's lived alone. The past couple of years the serious falls have occurred more and more frequent. The last one hospitalized her for a month. ( luckily covered by insurance)  but now she's recovered. Except we just can't let her go home alone to fall again. And she's forgetting to take her pills. Eating ( or not eating junk  food with too much salt etc. 

So for $281 a day she's staying in the care center  until we can  get a place in the assisted living. Then it's $11,000 a month. 
 Let me repeat $11,000 a month. 
   Now there is help because she's a widow of a Vet. And there is Minnesota assist, plus her social security.  But it's still going to cost thousands a month out of pocket. 
       Her Children have set money aside to help her.  But if a good place costs that much now what will it cost during our last months?  

Dang, that stinks. I wish you the best in dealing with her situation. 

Hang in there buddy. A lot of us are getting up there.

IMO: All you can do is talk with family and sort out a plan that is good for MIL and the family.

Hope it goes well!

Rog

Really tough to deal with this. Physical fragility combined with some degree of cognitive decline really sums up the things we all hope to avoid.

I hope you can find a way to keep her under care and well for as long as possible. 

MIL apartments look cheap compared to assisted living but are we qualified to care for our parents?  

Some assisted living places have a pay up front plan where you give them $100,000 or so and then you life savings on a monthly basis and you are guaranteed care for life once you are broke.  Sounds great huh!

We we’re looking into this but my FIL never made it that far.

Her oldest daughter who lives 20 min away tried to help her stay her condo. But eventually she  had a stroke and could no longer help .  
  We have searched  for less expensive places. Those with a staff to care, most of the staff were English as a second language or those willing to work at that level of wages.  Rapid turn over was normal.  
Visiting those places you smelled soiled clothes, bad cooking odors. And urine/vomit.   The occupants sat in wheel chairs with vacant eyes awaiting their death. Or lay in bed with the TV on too loud.  
     Luckily we are in a position to not have to rely completely on the most basic and pathetic "Nursing Home"  Those truly are depressing. 

Floating Doc (Forum Supporter) said:

Really tough to deal with this. Physical fragility combined with some degree of cognitive decline really sums up the things we all hope to avoid.

I hope you can find a way to keep her under care and well for as long as possible. 

Fortunately aside from hearing loss her faculties seem clear. If she takes her medications as scheduled and eats properly. 
Both of which at this place is perfectly taken care of for her. 

It's hard to find a place that takes good care of people in that condition. My stepdad's mom was barely able to sit up, we couldn't pick her up if she fell, but we tried to take care of her at our home and it was just hard. So, she ended up in a home, and she hated it there, she was lonely, she hated the food etc., and she went downhill fast once she got in there. My stepmom who recently passed from cancer was briefly in a home for "rehab" trying to get her up and walking again (before the cancer just became too much), the worker wasn't paying attention and she fell while trying to use a walker and hit her head. So then she didn't feel safe there and they had to move her somewhere else.

I guess maybe that's why the good places cost so much. Because the cheap ones are just not nice places to be. And even those ones aren't very cheap.

She is lucky to have people who care about her. In a previous career I had a home health care business. Several clients had families who never visited or had involvement in the persons care.

Another option that I've always thought made sense, is to pay for a professional to live with the elderly person in their home. If a PSW gets free room and board AND a better income, it makes sense to me. $100k+/year should go a long way...

I really don't know why nursing homes cost so much. The staff doesn't spend that much time with those in their care and they don't earn a lot. There is the odd nurse on staff, but they're not that common. The food budget is comparable to a prison. Does the "hospital" building standard drive up costs?

In reply to Snrub :

What you say may be true for most places. They only cost $50-60,000 a year.  We're putting her in a $132,000 a year place. 

L5wolvesf said:

She is lucky to have people who care about her. In a previous career I had a home health care business. Several clients had families who never visited or had involvement in the persons care.

I'm sure that's true. Luckily not for Her.  

I feel for you. I've lost four of my five parents (including in-laws). Two died clean and easy, while the other two drained the bank accounts on the way out. What little was left was scarfed up by my conniving brother in law.  Yeah, what to do? It looks like I'll lose my wife to cancer, so it will come down to my son and I in the end. My resources should see me through, but my son's an artist, and he's the one I worry about. Will there be enough left for his end days? Depressing stuff.

Frenchie, please forgive me for hijacking your thread, but I've never felt able to post this. 
 

My brother and my dad wiped out my dad's assets, plus quite a bit of mine. A direct and accurate quote from my brother, "we don't care about you, all we want is your money."

Then, when there was nothing left, my dad (concurrent with progression of his dementia, and via manipulation by my brother) actually disowned me. 
 

A couple of years later, my brother's psychosis and alcoholism rendered him unable to care for my dad. At that point his dementia made it impossible to keep my dad in a private home. My wife and I stepped up and got him taken care of until he died in 2019. 
 

My brother was found dead in the house this spring, probably two months after he had died. 
 

It's a lot easier to care for someone that appreciates it. After being taken advantage of so many times, I didn't owe my dad anything. I did it because of who I am. 
 

It helps me to read about your concern and care for your mother in law. My MIL was a jewel, one of the most delightful people in my life, and we were able to keep her in our home until the day she died. 
 

What about one of the visiting nurse deals like Visiting Angels?  Your MIL can stay in her home and have someone with her at all times.

In reply to Floating Doc (Forum Supporter) :

We took care of my MIL till she past and we also had my alcoholic drug addicted sister in law in the mix. The level of stress is such that until you go through it one cannot imagine how bad it is. 

My dad was in a $3200/month place - part of the Marriott family of business.  With his Social Security and not paying $8000/year in property taxes and more in general home repair he made it work.   

But he came alive, he taught iPad classes and enjoyed all the people versus living and arguing with my sister the year he lived with her.  Costly but he made friends.   He even taught the chefs how to make home made cheese ravioli.   

In reply to frenchyd :

My sympathies to you and yours, during all of this. My wife and I have been in the middle of the same for basically 9 years now. First with her father... but at least her mother was still there to help. After he passed, my wife stayed in Homestead FL  with her mom, while I traveled off for work alone. Then my dad, who fortuonly had to be in a home several months before he passed. My mom is only one left. She is in he 80s, in a good retirement only facility, and will probably run out of money about the same time she needs more care. Prolly end up moving across the country to our place for a while then. 
Been a long time, and still a ways to go. 

triumph7 said:

What about one of the visiting nurse deals like Visiting Angels?  Your MIL can stay in her home and have someone with her at all times.

That's even more expensive. Plus then you have issues of compatibility,  privacy, and competence.  

   We tried a version of that for 3 years. 

Geez, I find this whole discussion pretty scary for when I get older and infirm and living in Michigan. I'm lucky, in that my parents are in a great place in British Columbia for about $3300 CDN and my MIL lives on her own in a seniors rent controlled apartment in Ontario. All three are financially independent so far. When my end comes I hope I just drop dead from a heart attack.

In reply to DeadSkunk (Warren) :

Exactly. The state supported places are absolutely  grim. So if you don't have a pile of assets, or great insurance. That's where you're sent. 
The nice places seem to start at $10,000 a moth and up.  Well to be fair, if you are unable to do much yourself. I'm talking wheel chair bound, can't cook a meal or remember to take pills. 

I do not envy the Americans here for their health costs.  Up here in Canada assisted living costs start at around $3500 Can ($2800 US) a month and even for top of the line costs less than $11,000 US. But then we pay nothing for surgeries that cost you guys tens of thousands plus.  Of course I am sure your system is far superior (I just can't figure out how).

I too like Canada's health care system. But your basic  assisted living at $3500 Can is that grim like it is here? People just waiting to die? Minimal staffing of minimum paid workers? 

frenchyd said:

I too like Canada's health care system. But your basic  assisted living at $3500 Can is that grim like it is here? People just waiting to die? Minimal staffing of minimum paid workers? 

As someone who lives a few months in Canada every year, I can offer a wee bit of input.  For the most part, Canada has the healthcare you would expect.  From a US point of view, it is typically lower-staffed proportionally to their lower population, but I find that of all the things in Canada that are bureaucratic messes, healthcare doesn't seem to be one of them.  Doctors are often given more direct access to treatments, unlike here where the insurance companies make you try the cheaper drug first, or make you have three different procedures before the one your doctor knows will work.

I think the quality of care is almost as good as the states, certainly better than 30 years ago.

One of the things you'll find about the Canadian healthcare system is that it worked in the one primary way that it was intended:  It's cheaper.  That $3500cdn probably translates to $15,000usd.  I'm totally guessing.  Canada doesn't have the $150 aspirin, the $1300/night hospital beds, and the $3000 ambulance rides like we do.  We have let private healthcare and insurance companies set prices, so of course they'll be ridiculously inflated.  Canada doesn't really have that trouble.  When the entire government says "hey, Pfizer, we need 20 million doses of insulin and this is what you're getting," it works a lot better than 2 million individual doctor's offices asking for ten doses each.

I've only visited one nursing home in Canada, it was probably 15 years ago, and pretty far out in the sticks.  It was a little institutional from the design aspect, but I didn't really notice anything different from a US nursing home.

I just looked up some numbers.  Median income for healthcare workers (not including doctors) is about $45k in Canada with an entry level around $35k and a high end of $117k for experience/years on the job.

The US has a median of $56k, but with much lower entry level and top-tier numbers of $28k and $67k.