I try to inform and entertain about the ups and downs of what we do to help our senior clients in these blog postings.
Unfortunately, this week, I need to share one of those down moments…
In a recent post, I kind of shared a rough experience I was going through with a client. In a nutshell: one of my employees showed up at the client’s home; found her in a terrible state and had to call 9-1-1. The Paramedics came and took her to a hospital and then she was transferred again to a more “specialized” hospital.
This “specialized” hospital was to keep her for about 3 weeks, giving me and one of her family members time to try and find her a new place to live since she would no longer be able to live alone in her Independent-living apartment again.
Unfortunately, due to her dementia, she was unable to keep up with the requirements and was kicked out of this program after only a few days. The hospital informed us on a Thursday late morning that they wanted her out the very next day by 3:00!
Well, needless to say, there was quite a lot of “rigamarole” to find her an appropriate and safe place to live in a very short amount of time, get her moved, get her out of her lease, get mail and bills transferred, etc, etc, etc, etc.
Months prior to these events, she asked that I step in to be her Power of Attorney (POA) should it be needed in the future. Well, the future was now and I worked with her Banker to get the POA put in place to help protect her assets and get her bills properly paid during this transition.
Luckily, we were able to find her a lovely Personal Care Home that had availability right away. Unfortunately, it more than doubled her monthly expenses putting a strain on her already limited budget.
This necessitated a need to put her on a $200 a month budget for awhile; at least until all the new expenses settled out. Well, this did not make my client happy. She was used to going to the bank and getting several hundred dollars for “pocket change” but forgetting that she had it and going back for more! When I was cleaning out her papers, I found over a $1,000 in little wads of cash stashed in her stuff! Needless to say, this was a really bad habit that caused her to have several bounced check fees each month.
However, to this client, being put on a budget of $200 a month was like me “keeping her from her money” or “having her beg” to get access to her own money. Within a week, she “fired” me. She called the Banker and wanted me removed as her POA.
I wasn’t about to fight her on it because…why force your help on someone who doesn’t want it?
It upsets me that after helping someone so much—this is how it turns out, but I sincerely hope that she finds someone who can help her because she is not capable of handling her own finances. Regrettably, her best option is to go the Guardianship route, or risk connecting with someone who really will steal her money…
I truly hope it’s not the latter…
