She got out of the hospital after a week long stay yesterday. Mom has COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease). She's going home with oxygen. I don't know if it is for the rest of her time or if it's just for awhile. She will have a visiting nurse 3 times a week and again, I don't know for how long.

I asked her if she had ever thought of putting an upstairs apartment on her house so that we could go home to take care of her. She said she hadn't, but that it is an option and something to think about.

I just kept thinking this day would be down the road, not so soon.

I've been researching information all day yesterday and today.  There is so much information out there it is mind boggling. 

What I don't understand is that to get help to pay for someone (outside the family) to be a caretaker, the patient needs to be money poor.  They are not "allowed" to have any savings.  That just really irritates me to no end.  So if they have an inheritance in a savings account to live on for the rest of their lives, they need to give it away or spend it.  And you can't have any kind of insurance policy worth anything over $1,500 either. 

Unbelievable.  Funerals cost over $6,000 these days, are they going to pay for that since they won't "allow" you to keep enough?  Give me a break. Why do the elderly, especially the ones that don't have much have to suffer so when this time comes in their lives?

It's pitiful and inexcusable that seniors have to choose between medication or food.  Heat or food. 

It's outrageous that someone that lives on so small of an amount such as $671 a month has to have insurance premiums taken out of their small checks and whatever else the government takes. 

And now, "you-know-who" wants to starve our seniors and make them ask for food stamps of which they'd get all of $10 per month.  How does he or anyone expect one to eat on $2.50 a week?  I wish the president and every person in congress would live with my mom for a couple of months. I'd take their wallets away from them and make them provide for themselves and my Mom on the $10 in food stamps and on her pittance of money she receives each month.

You think they'd make it?  I think all involved in this should be extremely ashamed of themselves.  How can they sleep at night?  What if it were "their" Mothers?  You bet this wouldn't happen to them.   Click here to read the article:   http://www.nhpr.org/node/10223