Miki and Arnina care for their mother
Donation protected
Dear friends,
The picture you are seeing is of our mother when she last left the US in 2014, just days before our youngest sister Inbal died.
You wouldn't know that at the time this picture was taken she was 85. It was the first time in her life that she used a wheelchair in an airport for ease.
She is now 91. And she is no longer as healthy. She has had a small stroke in 2015 which has left her with reduced balance and increased risk for falling. In the last two years she's fallen many times and broken bones twice. She is more confused and less able to make sound decision continually. Most recently she's been diagnosed with gall stones and cannot be operated because of narrowed arteries that make general anesthesia too risky.
Since January 2019, she's had near full time attendant care in support of stability and clarity. She can no longer function on her own. The government covers only small portions of it. She gets social security benefits which are small, since her earnings overall in her life were minimal. We get generous support from some family members. And we ourselves contribute significant amounts of money from our own limited resources. None of us have any assets, only our monthly income.
We have reached the end of the road in terms of being able to sustain the necessary care for her. This is why we are asking for your support, all our friends and the wider network of people who know us through our work.
Here's the context.
The current care system she has includes some windows every day during which she is alone and at some risk. We have been able to manage with those windows, and we are truly worried that any longer stretches than that will lead to accidents of various kinds.
Part of her care system is a woman who is her housemate and who has been caring for her in addition to contributing to the rent. We have been moved to tears, often, to see this. And she has now reached her limit and is scaling back some, which means we need to pay for more care than before.
At the current level of care that we have set up for her, we are short about $13,000 for this year. Increasing the care would require even more money than this, and we are in anxious acceptance of this reality to leave it as it is for at least a few more months.
Short of incurring debt, we have no other way to pay for the entire amount that this amount of private attendant care costs. This is just over a third of the actual cost of the current level of care. It's really devastating to grasp how poorly the current systems work to support older people.
This is just for care for her on the most basic material plane. In addition, Arnina is crumbling under the weight of all the phone calls, appointment setting, scheduling people, dealing with so many small fires to put out, and taking her to more and more medical appointments each month as her medical conditions gradually intensify. It's entirely unsustainable and, ideally, we would be able to hire someone to support Arnina with this, which would cost probably another $5,000 a year. We are not including this in the total amount, because we can continue to absorb this cost. It's just really really hard.
We are hopeful that the fact that many people know us and love us will be enough for the support to arrive. We are grateful for any amount you can give.
We will keep you updated every once in a while about how things are unfolding with her care. We are also aiming to try to create a major shift in her care system in April which may result in savings and would then allow us to stretch the contributions we get from our friends longer into the future as well as cover the administrative support that we would desperately wish to have for Arnina.
With gratitude,
Miki and Arnina
The picture you are seeing is of our mother when she last left the US in 2014, just days before our youngest sister Inbal died.
You wouldn't know that at the time this picture was taken she was 85. It was the first time in her life that she used a wheelchair in an airport for ease.
She is now 91. And she is no longer as healthy. She has had a small stroke in 2015 which has left her with reduced balance and increased risk for falling. In the last two years she's fallen many times and broken bones twice. She is more confused and less able to make sound decision continually. Most recently she's been diagnosed with gall stones and cannot be operated because of narrowed arteries that make general anesthesia too risky.
Since January 2019, she's had near full time attendant care in support of stability and clarity. She can no longer function on her own. The government covers only small portions of it. She gets social security benefits which are small, since her earnings overall in her life were minimal. We get generous support from some family members. And we ourselves contribute significant amounts of money from our own limited resources. None of us have any assets, only our monthly income.
We have reached the end of the road in terms of being able to sustain the necessary care for her. This is why we are asking for your support, all our friends and the wider network of people who know us through our work.
Here's the context.
The current care system she has includes some windows every day during which she is alone and at some risk. We have been able to manage with those windows, and we are truly worried that any longer stretches than that will lead to accidents of various kinds.
Part of her care system is a woman who is her housemate and who has been caring for her in addition to contributing to the rent. We have been moved to tears, often, to see this. And she has now reached her limit and is scaling back some, which means we need to pay for more care than before.
At the current level of care that we have set up for her, we are short about $13,000 for this year. Increasing the care would require even more money than this, and we are in anxious acceptance of this reality to leave it as it is for at least a few more months.
Short of incurring debt, we have no other way to pay for the entire amount that this amount of private attendant care costs. This is just over a third of the actual cost of the current level of care. It's really devastating to grasp how poorly the current systems work to support older people.
This is just for care for her on the most basic material plane. In addition, Arnina is crumbling under the weight of all the phone calls, appointment setting, scheduling people, dealing with so many small fires to put out, and taking her to more and more medical appointments each month as her medical conditions gradually intensify. It's entirely unsustainable and, ideally, we would be able to hire someone to support Arnina with this, which would cost probably another $5,000 a year. We are not including this in the total amount, because we can continue to absorb this cost. It's just really really hard.
We are hopeful that the fact that many people know us and love us will be enough for the support to arrive. We are grateful for any amount you can give.
We will keep you updated every once in a while about how things are unfolding with her care. We are also aiming to try to create a major shift in her care system in April which may result in savings and would then allow us to stretch the contributions we get from our friends longer into the future as well as cover the administrative support that we would desperately wish to have for Arnina.
With gratitude,
Miki and Arnina
Organizer
miki kashtan
Organizer
