More on Gwen and previous musings

Well, after all was said & done, we decided that having Gwen go into assisted living was just too expensive. Even with all of the help she could get from the .GOV, she was coming up about $2500 short top cover anything that looked like a decent place to stay (and some of them weren't any too pleasant, believe me!). That means that if we liquidate her assets at their current value, we'd have to figure out something that would cost less (and probably be much less pleasant) in about 2.5 years. On top of that, we just couldn't see how it made any sense to sign on for that and essentially give up any hope for her having a decent life.

Anyway, the upshot is that Gwen is now living with us in our little 3-bedroom, 2-bathroom, single story home while we try to sell her 2-story (that she can't live in because she can't go up stairs even though she thinks she can - she almost fell going up the 2 steps into our house). I don't know what we're going to do longer term. We had considered buying a house jointly, but the liabilities associated with that are somewhat off-putting at this point, and Gwen won't go for not having her name on the title deed. She has a phobia about not owning her own house, and won't face up to the fact that the house will be seized to pay for her long-term care if her name is on it, when the time comes that we can no longer provide the level of care she needs (I'm not sure, but I don't think that situation is that far off in the future).

At this point, and considering her health, I won't buy jointly with her and have her name on the title deed, so we're sort-of stuck. I suppose we'll either have to find a bigger place to rent and start charging her some portion of our expenses, or we'll have to buy a home on our own dime that is more than we'll need in a few years (but at least it won't be taken when she is forced to go into a more comprehensive care situation).

I hate this. I have to think in terms that I find repulsive. She's family, and we are doing what we can, but on top of her other health issues she's suffering from dementia and goes between 6 & 15 in her apparent mental age. She really is in no condition to be making decisions about anything that requires adult thinking, but we don't want to take it to court and try to force guardianship. First of all, I'm not sure we'd actually get it. She can hold it all together for the short time needed for various evaluations & such, but then goes off the deep end for a couple days afterwards - that's how she fooled the docs for so long. The docs didn't believe she was demented (or physically deteriorating) until she was in hospital for a long time and couldn't hide it from them any longer. Same thing happened with her COPD, CHF, and severe depression. Now she's trying to take herself off the medications (she's simply refusing to take most of them), and her mental & physical state is getting quite bad. In fact, her condition is worsening quite noticeably from day to day. I'm not sure what will be the next step, but we're going to have to do something soon, I fear.