Reply #17: Neither scenario, nannying nor increased benefits would help [View All]

in some cases; some aggressive/progressive diseases/comorbidities are just too complicated to manage well over days, let alone a month. Any change at all can spike an "unforeseen" complication. Though we'll never know how it really happened, FIL said he fell out of bed shortly after discharge. A visiting nurse noticed a bump on the head and disorientation. DX: sepsis.

My FIL had a stubborn independent nature. He was unable to hear well, so educating him with voice emphasis was difficult. It's possible that he could not read very well, so pamphlets were not useful since he wasn't into medical terminology and healthy strategies like good nutrition. When a hospital discharged him, he considered himself well again or at least "getting better."

He was grateful and nice to everyone, and the nurses loved taking care of him because he never wanted to "bother" any of them. When he was as well as could be expected, home care was resisted at every turn; however, his turns for the worse were often and during the hospitalizations, he was at death's door multiple times, yet he didn't quite fit skilled nursing criteria with a strong like an ox cardiovascular system.

His conditions required planners to "flex" a lot of rules, scrounge for appropriate medical equipment, and plan a lot of "therapies" outside their normal locations. Still, at home, we had a hard time convincing him to even faithfully wash his hands to avoid infection, let alone take the myriad number of required pills on the correct schedule.

During his last year, his problems had him visiting a doctor nearly every week in addition to dialysis three times per week. He fired a nurse's aide we had hired to check on his welfare as he insisted on living solo. Finally, assisted living was the best answer to address his needs. I don't think he really understood how expensive this was, not being a nasty Medicare/Medicaid facility. It was only after he died, that Medicare began a 100-person pilot program across a whole state for Medicare coverage of this living arrangement--don't know if that was expanded or deemed not as good as the passport programs. One thing was clear: he did not want to live with us, but he could not stay alone.

He had Medicare and good insurance to pay a great portion of the costs of his multiple illnesses that required many hospitalizations, and we thanked the Lord he had such a fantastic doctor/specialist who never failed to take our calls nor to seek the best care for his problems.

Well, he died; we lost our jobs, our home, our health insurance, in this train wreck doing the right thing by him, and I lost my mind. The family doctor threw us out for a $50 charge that went to collections. Looks like we'll get whatever the free clinics are passing out or not this week should our health, physical or mental, fail which it surely will at some point. Fun times in the new America!