Memory Care for Mom

Hello. My name is Cindy and I am fundraising for my mom, Mel (or Miss Mel as everyone knew her growing up) who has rapidly advancing Moderate Dementia.

I moved my mom to Colorado in Oct 2021 after we started noticing increased behavior and memory issues. My sister and I decided it was not ideal for her to live alone any longer and she relocated from the Mississippi Gulf Coast, where I grew up, to Longmont, Colorado.

Just a week after arriving in Colorado, mom had a small stroke that put her in ICU for two days, and several months after that she developed an infection that put her back in the hospital due to manic behavior and hallucinations. Just prior to her being hospitalized for the infection, mom received a formal moderate dementia diagnosis.

After treatment for the infection the dementia just seemed to exacerbate and she came home from the hospital with a more advanced baseline. She now lives in constatant confusion and is no longer grounded in the reality that you and I know.

It has been really hard over the last year watching her mental state decline to the point that she needs full-time daily care. Unfortunately, due to this, I had to reduce my work schedule to part-time a year ago which has been a huge financial struggle for us.

In addition, I separated from my husband two years ago and while we remain great business partners and are always there for each other; our business is hanging on by a thread trying to recover from COVID closures; which is why I took another job in 2021. I had to stop working full-time in Jan 2022. My company has been wonderful in giving me the flexibility to come back to work part-time in Sept 2022. In addition to helping mom; I desperately need to go back to work full-time.

My mom, unfortunately, came to live with me with no assets and no savings. Her only income is $1,700 a month and unfortunately because she lives with me and I have part-time income our household has been denied several Medicaid programs, like SNAP, so that we can put more funds towards her daily care. We are currently awaiting review for other programs to help with part-time in-home care until I can get her back on the coast. We were told in our interview that due to staffing issues 1-2 days a week is all they will likely be able to provide, if she is approved at all.

I have found a lovely and affordable assisted living facility, The Homestead in D'Iberville, MS that has space available now; however, they do not accept insurance and she does not make enough to cover the monthly cost of living there. Once I am back to a full-time I will have funds to contribute to her housing, but that is still not enough to get her the full-time daily assistance she needs.

I hope to get her back down to the coast where she is much more comfortable (she's hating Colorado winters for sure!) and where she has more friends around her to interact with regularly. It will take 6-months to re-establish her Mississippi residency so we can apply for Medicaid there. The donations we are raising are to cover the difference in the cost of assisted living care for 7 months until we can get her transferred to nursing care.

The good news! The Homestead has a sister nursing home, Greenbriar, on the same property that is a Medicaid-approved facility. Once she has established residency again it is expected to be a relatively smooth transition to move her into that facility.

If you can not assist I understand, things are hard on everyone right now and I love you nonetheless. If you can help, thank you SO much and I will be forever grateful!