While Milford was in the nursing home, life went on at home. It was almost as if we had two homes: our home and the nursing home. Plus we had our work. My duties as administrator of the summer programs at Sayre School were ramping up at the time Milford went into the nursing home. We were getting medical attention for Marjorie’s leg. She had two appointments a week at the University of Kentucky. I left most of her appointments to Lawrence, and I ceased to dress and wrap her ulcers daily, because the doctors were using another approach. She had a nurse coming weekly while we were at work to check her wounds and take her blood pressure. I truly do not know if the nurse showed up or not, however. Marjorie said she didn’t on several occasions.

Marjorie also said the nurse that I hired to take them to their appointments and to the wedding and reception stole money from her. She said the nurse wrote herself a check from Marjorie’s check book, but when I looked, there were no checks unaccounted for.

Marjorie accused her grandson, our son Jacob, of leaving a pile of trash in the middle of the road in front of our house. I did not see any trash in the middle of the road. It hurt Jacob’s feelings terribly. He tried so hard to be kind and loving to his grandmother. Most of the time she was kind and loving in her words to him.

There were items that went missing after Milford went into the nursing home. A framed poem that Marjorie had given us years prior disappeared from it’s place hanging on the wall. The recharger cord for a camera, some kitchen items, magazines and other odds and ends also could not be found when we wanted them. We are tidy, with a place for everything and losing items was not common in our household. I found her pills in the garbage.

Once I came home from school to find the front door wide open, and Marjorie was not within sight. She liked to step out on the front porch to smoke, leaving the door open. I found her lying on the couch, taking a nap. She just forgot to close the door after coming in from her smoke break. No telling how long it had been open.

Marjorie would not cook for herself. Even if I left food for her in the refrigerator, she would not eat it. I showed her how to use the microwave, but she had never owned one, calling it a radiator, saying it was dangerous to our health, and refused to use it. The only thing she would eat was bananas and Honey Nut Cheerios. However, if I cooked and presented the meal at the table, she had a robust appetite.

Marjorie had no trouble operating the washer and dryer. It was a front loader with easy to use push buttons. She once told me that she enjoyed doing laundry more than any other chore, and she would wash just a few items to have something to do. Once she washed one sock. The washing machine was always going while she lived with us, it seemed. But she rarely changed her clothes and she didn’t wash our clothes. Marjorie didn’t take baths or showers either, that I could tell. I gave her the benefit of the doubt and did not challenge her in the matter. She didn’t have an offensive odor.

Marjorie loved to talk on the phone. I had an internet provided land line before they moved in with us, but it did not have 911 capability at the time, so I switched to a land line that did. When she first moved in, I bought a phone just for Marjorie’s use, one that had large, easy to read numbers, like the one she had at her house. I asked her to call me each day and tell me how they were doing, giving her my classroom number. She never called. If I called her, she would answer, however. I discovered she had great difficulty making a call. She could do it sometimes, and sometimes not. I practiced dialing 911 with her, and was satisfied she could do it. But still I wondered if under stress she would be able to call for help. She asked if the neighbors were home if she needed help during the day while we were at work. They were not. Everyone worked.

The doctors told Marjorie to keep her feet up during the day. She was on her feet much of the time we were home, running water and wiping at the kitchen sink after dinner for an hour, pacing back and forth to look out the window, in her room fooling with this or that. I asked her to sit down but she would not except to eat dinner and until about an hour before bedtime to watch television.

The doctors also told Marjorie not to disturb her bandages. She complained that they were too tight.

For all these reasons and more, I wondered if Marjorie was getting what she needed at our house. I had to work for an income to meet our expenses. I asked Lawrence and his brother to consider nursing home care for Marjorie, just until her wounds were healed. They would not.

And that is what led up to what happened next, when Lawrence took Marjorie for her scheduled appointment in the first week of April, and the doctor sent her to the hospital. Her toes had become gangrene. They said the bandages had been re-wrapped and had cut off her already poor circulation. Lawrence called his brother and asked him to come to Lexington immediately. He did. Both sons were with Marjorie at the hospital. I was at work.

At the hospital they told Marjorie, Lawrence and John that they wanted to amputate that day to preserve her life. Marjorie would not hear of it. She wanted to go to her home town in New York for a second opinion. She said the doctors in Kentucky were a bunch of hillbillies and didn’t know what they were doing. The doctors told her that there wasn’t time for that. John left the hospital, alone, without telling anyone where he was going. Lawrence and Marjorie were left there wondering what to do next.

Marjorie decided that she was getting out of there. She began to leave, with the nurses chasing after her, asking her to sign a release of liability form. She signed and Lawrence brought her back to our house. After four hours, John reappeared and said he was taking her to see a doctor in Indianapolis. We helped her pack in a rush, and they were off. It was about 9:00 pm.

The next day they took Marjorie to a doctor in Indianapolis, and he scheduled the amputation for the next day.

After the amputation, Marjorie went to a nursing home near Indianapolis for rehabilitation. She was fitted with a prosthetic leg after a time, and stayed in the nursing home for five months. John was unaware of the mounting nursing home bills. He was totally ignorant of how Medicare works and the cost of skilled nursing care. When he began to be billed, Marjorie came to his house to live. She lived there for almost two years, and then she came to live with us again.

Of course, during the time that Marjorie was in Indianapolis, we stayed in touch, visiting there and once she came to stay with us for a week and once Lawrence took her to New York to visit her sister. I thought she would be back to live with us someday.

During those two years that Marjorie lived in Indianapolis, I earned a master’s degree at the University of Kentucky in Health Administration. Two months and one week after graduation, Marjorie appeared on our doorstep. John and his wife said it was our turn.

While finishing my degree I obtained a fellowship position for six months at a medical model adult day center in town. I loved the concept of an adult day center and wanted to use what I learned at the University to make an adult day center into what I would like for myself….somewhere I would want to go and be willing to pay for, not somewhere I had to go and had to pay for.

That was three and a half years ago. I have spent the last five and a half years, including the time spent earning my degree, living a frugal existence. I borrowed money to pay for my education. My husband is a school teacher in a low paying county, and we need my income just to pay expenses. It has been a sacrifice, financially, but God has provided. I have worked at low paying jobs in the  senior services and financial services industry. We still have our house, although with a larger mortgage than before, and we have not gone hungry, although I have had to be very frugal with our grocery shopping. I clip coupons and make a big purchase on senior discount day at Kroger. Which is now going to be every Thursday for a 5% discount instead of the first Wednesday of the month for a 10% discount, by the way.

Yes, it is true that I drive a Corvette. But it is an old Corvette, and it needs new tires that I can’t afford. I did not go out and buy a Corvette. The only reason I have it is because my son bought it with a bonus he received from re-enlisting in the Navy about eight years ago. When he married,  his wife was jealous of the car and so he asked me to buy it. It costed $10,000 and about $5,000 more in repairs during the two years that I have owned it. I want to trade it in on a minivan for transporting members of the health club as soon as my husband Lawrence patches up a bit of body work on it this weekend.

I have worked hard and am still working hard to learn everything there is to learn about options for seniors and how to promote the best health and quality of life. I have found that health and wealth are necessary to age well, so my mission in life is to help people age well, with grace, and all my education and research shows that is best done by aging in place.

Next week: What I learned about Medicaid and the Home and Community Based Services Program.