The Avalanche Begins...

Once the nursing home started taking her Medicare check as payment, things went from bad to worse. Not only were both of us still reeling over the fact that there was a very real possibility that she would never get to see her home again (she hadn't been home since the last week of March at this point), but my disability income had gone from a supplemental income to the sole income for the household.

The Credit Union told me I needed Power of Attorney to discuss her Home Equity Loan and/or accounts. Now that they have those papers, they tell me my name needs to be on the property in order for them to proceed with a loan modification.

That's nothing but a whole lot of red-tape baloney. According to the Power of Attorney, I am a legal agent acting in my mother's stead. They're making excuses, dragging their heels, trying to make me miss some crucial deadline so that they can just take our home. Everything we own is in this house. It was built for us. We have lived here for the past forty years. It is not in good shape. It needs a lot of work. It would sit empty while I wander around living out of dumpsters, and the most terrifying thing of all is that they just don't care.

I have budgeted myself into the very dust, and there just isn't anything left over for me to make a $300 a month loan payment ($400 now that some payments have been missed). It's bad enough that I have to leave my mother in that god-forsaken place, but I just can't bear the thought that she is going to lose everything that she worked so hard her entire life for.

I have been to every organization and charity under the sun, but their programs have either faced drastic budget cuts or been eliminated outright. It has shot past frustrating right into devastating. I have done everything that I know how to do, but it is never enough. Without help, this is going to bury us both. If we lose this house, neither of us will survive it.

Change Isn't Always A Good Thing...

Things were a lot more difficult now. Mom was fitted with a prosthesis that was customized with a fun frog print (we both love frogs) and started physical therapy. I learned how to fit her with it and how to put her through her paces with it. It was a grueling but necessary process, and we were managing quite nicely on our own until that fateful day that mom told me she couldn't breathe.

It was during her stay in the hospital that she was put on steroids to reduce the inflammation in her lungs. Her blood sugar skyrocketed, making insulin a necessity. She was put on medication to regulate her heartbeat, which made checking her pulse necessary. Things spiraled out of control so fast from that point on that we didn't know what hit us.

My duties would no longer only be wound care, bandage changes, dispensing medication, personal hygiene, physical therapy and providing meals. I would now also be checking blood sugar and giving insulin, taking her pulse before giving her the heart regulating medication and feeding her a diabetic diet. I was already exhausted enough with what I was doing, and her doctor clearly saw that.

She was put into a nursing home for rehabilitation, but her Medicare ran out. Only days from being forced to return home to my care, she was sent back to the ER. She spent another week in the hospital being successfully treated for a MRSA infection. When her doctor released her to the nursing home, he told me he was sorry but that this time, it was for good.

Another Loyal Customer Pays The Price...

My mom started having problems with her health back in 2006. She was limping; complaining that her little toe hurt. The toe was dark, so we both assumed it was bruised and that she must have stubbed it. When it failed to get better, my dad and I took her to a podiatrist. After examining her toe and expressing his displeasure at the condition of it, he called her regular doctor, who told us to take Mom to the ER.

Turns out her toe was gangrenous from lack of circulation. I never would have guessed that; I always thought gangrene would be accompanied by an unmistakably foul odor, but I learned that is not always the case. Her doctor ran some tests on her and discovered that her right carotid artery was 95% blocked. Since there were no cardiovascular surgeons in our area at the time, she was sent to Milwaukee to have the surgery.

While she was there, they discovered that the circulation in her right leg was blocked from her hip all the way down to her foot. She had a second surgery to restore the blood flow; stents were put in. Her doctor and I had been nagging her to quit smoking for years, but all of his warnings and my pleas fell on deaf ears. Even after she got the call from her doctor warning her that if she did not quit she was going to lose her leg, she still didn't believe him.

So strong is my mother's addiction that she still denies that it had anything to do with her losing her leg or damaging her lungs to the extent that she struggles for every breath. The look of bewilderment and fear in her eyes when she can't catch her breath is agonizing to see.

Thank you, Big Tobacco, for not giving a damn about what your product does to your loyal customers and their families in the long run. My mom will suffer horribly (and I along with her) as she slowly suffocates until the day she dies, and I have no doubt that she would sing the praises of your product from beyond the grave if she could. You ruined our lives, and I hate you for it. You make me sick.