Ironic, Don't You Think?

Irony of Ironies—

The VA has approved my father for something called “Aid & Assistance.”  The only thing we await now is the assignment of a fiduciary.  The company acting as go-between told me an examiner would come to see me, I guess to see if I’m fit to be a fiduciary.
I hope so, as I’ve been acting as his fiduciary for nearly three years now.

However, the nursing facility where my father was transported last Friday requires Dad to apply for MediCal immediately upon entering the facility.

This is where it gets catchy and ironic:  The VA, when it approves Dad’s A&A, will pay the aid retroactively to the date we applied.  This date was October 1, 2005.  However, if MediCal sees this money in Dad’s account, they will make him “spend it down” until he has less than $2,000 of total assets.  They “graciously” allow him $35 per month for “incidentals.”

So…I have to time things just perfectly, so that if and when the VA sends the retroactive payment plus the A&A monthly payments, it won’t spoil Dad’s application for MediCal.

He just can’t win.

I visited him tonight.  I spent nearly an hour with him. Poor soul, he’s so ill.  His left leg only moves reactively to other muscle groups; it is not functional at all. It bends, and ends up in what we might feel odd positions.  His left arm is completely flaccid.  I picked it up and his hand flopped limply just like a stuffed bunny’s floppy ears.

He is so very sad. He is so very lonely.  Also frustrated, since he can’t make sense of where he is and why he is there.  This is probably where he’ll live for a long time. When we talked this evening, he asked me every few minutes either how I got there (the nursing center) or how and why he was there.  He just can’t wrap his mind around staying there, and when he does, he gets sad all over again.

I simply don’t know what to do.  He is so weak, can’t bear weight on his left side at all; it takes two to three people to get him from a bed into a wheel chair.  I had to give up his apartment today, since the medical team at the last hospital he visited said there was little or no hope of recovering in any significant way from his last stroke.

My heart, from my more youthful and idealistic days, tells me to take him into my home and let him spend his days with my family. My family and friends, as well as other advisors, from my current life, all tell me unanimously that it would wreck me, and be unfair to my husband and children.  I’m so torn.

I want him to know that we love him and care about him so much.  It breaks my heart to see this loving, vital man’s body and mine betray him like this. I think about him constantly.

Am I being selfish or loving to have him in a nursing center, where his meals and meds are controlled; there is a registered nurse to take care of his health needs, and then (not “so that”) my family gets a little more of my time?

Or, am I being loving or selfish to want him in my home, where he can at least watch our family dynamics, see the girls grow up a little more, watch them laugh and play, bringing him some little bit of joy in his last years?

Or, as I’m prone to think, am I just insane.

I don’t like being a grownup.