Elder Care Thoughts

I just ran across this inter­est­ing arti­cle, Cost of Elderly Care Is Dou­ble Prior Esti­mates, in the NY Times.  It speaks to a sub­ject that, while not yet a part of my life, looms like a dark cloud on my hori­zon.  Actu­ally, in my case, it looks like an impend­ing first-class storm.  And some­times the prospect of how com­pli­cated and finan­cially dev­ast­ing elder care could quickly become a part of my life is sim­ply overwhelming.

Aging par­ents is some­thing that a lot of peo­ple my age (43) are fac­ing but few face the issue of aging par­ents and aging spouses at the same time.  If you’re a reg­u­lar reader you already know that The Hus­band sig­nif­i­cantly older than I am.  At 72, he’s no spring chicken

My father (70) is in ter­ri­ble health but his future is the least closely tied to mine — he has remar­ried, we are not at all close, and he has more than suf­fi­cient finan­cial means.

My mother (69), on the other hand, is still in excel­lent health.  She lives alone and is cur­rently more than capa­ble of liv­ing inde­pen­dently.  But she’s deeply in debt and doesn’t have any type of health ben­e­fits beyond her Medicare cov­er­age.  She’s self-employed but only works part-time.  She has no sav­ings and other than the lit­tle income her work brings in, lives solely on Social Secu­rity ben­e­fits.  If and when her health fails and she requires elder-care, my sib­lings and I will have to fig­ure out how to share the responsibilities.

Mean­while, The Hus­band is bat­tling inop­er­a­ble and incur­able cancer.  At some point the can­cer is very likely to matas­tize into his organs and bones.  I’ve nursed him through two pre­vi­ous bouts with can­cer but I know that this time will likely to play out much differently.

I guess I’m employ­ing a com­bi­na­tion of that’s-just-too-overwhelming-to-even-think-about pro­cras­ti­na­tion and we’ll-cross-that-bridge-when-we-come-to-it opti­mism with just a hint of keep-my-house-in-order-so-I’ll-be-in-a-position-to-handle-whatever-comes prag­ma­tism thrown in for good mea­sure.  What else can you do?

No related posts.