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[quote=Anonymous]Reading these posts makes me re-live the nightmare we had with my FIL.  I've written about it before on other posts.  In short, he had a massive stroke that left him paralyzed on one side, unable to toilet and some memory issues.  From the hospital, he went to an ALF for rehab.  I believe he was discharged after 3 months and returned to his home.  My DH worked from home so he basically stayed with his dad during the day and an aide came to stay the night.  It was awful.  Given the choice of us divorcing or putting his dad back in an ALF, DH chose the ALF.  As PP noted, it's hard to do from home so we waited until FIL had to go to the hospital and then moved him to an AFL from there.

After that, we met a financial planner with expertise in middle income clients and, importantly, well versed in elder care issues.  She was a godsend and I wished we'd met her when this first happened.  She had a lot of contacts and helped us to, once again, move FIL back home because it's a lot cheaper to get in-home care than it is nursing home care.  But, you have to be willing to be more involved than at an ALF.  For example, when there's a medical concern, the home aide will call you and you have to tell the aide what to do (do nothing, call 911, etc.).  In an ALF, the staff will call you but you have assurances that 'someone' will take care of the issue if you're not available.  There's a lot more peace of mind in an ALF - which you pay for.

The money issue is always hanging over you.  With my FIL, he burned through all his liquid assets and there was only the house left.  What do you do when you have no money to pay for care?  Our stress level was huge.  My DH spiraled into a depression, our marriage reached the breaking point and had no savings of our own because we had to pay for some of his care (which is one of many reasons our marriage was breaking - we have kids of our own, some with SN and had to halt therapies, etc.)  And, I looked at FIL and thought what a shame it was that his quality of life was so poor.  I'm getting OT here but it really brought home that just because we can prolong life, doesn't mean we should.  If he'd been in his right mind, he would never have wanted things the way they were.  I don't want to live that way and I don't want to put my loved ones through what we'd been through.  I made sure I documented that and filed it with our trust/will documents.  But, back to the story.  My FIL died right before he was going to be moved back to an ALF.  The plan was to get him to a hospital again and then move him to an ALF.

If you remember/read nothing else from my story, please remember to find a financial planner like we did to help you through this.  I might be able to do it on my own now that I've been through it once but I wouldn't want to.  If you can't find one, we used Amy Oviedo from Integrated Financial Partners (Amy dot Oviedo at IFPAdvisor dot com).  She's located in Fairfax but if you live elsewhere, she can still likely help you or help you find someone. Hugs to everyone going through this.[/quote]

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