Must get our mother into a Medicaid facility now

Via this GoFundMe campaign, your generous donations will help our family provide the care she needs for our beloved mother and grandmother and dear friend Charlotte Mundee (Dunlap-Speake), who has advanced-dementia. Our aim is to raise the money our family lacks to cover the cost ($3,000) of an eldercare attorney greatly-experienced in Texas Medicaid law and procedure to help us qualify Charlotte for a room in a Medicaid-funded memory care facility and to cover the first three months there ($15,000).  (Our attorney says it usually takes about that long to qualify and she has to be living there before the application is filed). Each of us will donate to this relatively short-term “project” on this site, too.  We’ve set an upper limit of $20,000 to cover a few minor costs we can’t forecast.

Charlotte lived in an assisted living facility in Humble, TX, for a couple of years before her own funds (except for her modest Social Security pension) were exhausted in June of 2018.  Since then, she’s been living in Humble with her oldest daughter, Tess and husband Shawn Mustain (both public school teachers) and their two daughters, Katy and Sara, and son-in law Luis, who’ve all shared the in-home care chores not provided by Medicare.  But, all five family members in the home work full-time and our family can’t afford paid caregivers, so it’s been a struggle to provide the 24x7 care she now needs.  Tess and her family are also pretty spent from the demands of the care her mom now needs, on top of their full-time jobs and all other aspects of their normal lives.

Charlotte has survived five strokes in past decades, but suffered a concussion from a fall on the Mustain family driveway last September and has declined sharply ever since. She can no longer stand or walk without assistance or take care of dressing or feeding herself or handling normal bathroom functions like bathing or bodily discharges.  Her speech is garbled and confused so as to be virtually unintelligible and she no longer recognizes her caregivers, including members of her family, or to even know what day or time it is or where she lives.  She now requires care for virtually every aspect of her daily life, all day, every day.  Paid caregiving is expensive, averaging $20/hour with 4 hour minimum shifts, which our family can’t afford, so it’s unavoidable that she’s home alone part of the day when the Mustain family is all at work.

The Medicare hospice agency and our family have both concluded that it is longer viable for Charlotte to live anywhere without professional 24x7 care (which hospice doesn’t provide because of Medicare limits and our family no longer can provide either, for reasons stated above).  We are therefore seeking a local Medicaid home for her in a full-time memory care facility, with the expert help of a Houston elder care attorney who’s had great success with countless other clients the past forty years. There’s no guarantee that she’ll qualify, of course, but Charlotte’s only asset now is her small Social Security pension of around $1,000 a month and she clearly needs 24x7 care, with the advice of Medicare, so we’re hopeful she’ll qualify, after three months or so, living in a memory care facility.

Our need is urgent, since her condition has declined so rapidly, we all work full-time, and we no longer can provide enough care in-home, despite all of our best efforts, and can’t afford paid caregivers. Thank you in advance for supporting us in our efforts to provide safe, quality, round-the-clock care for our beloved Charlotte, who’s selflessly given so much of herself to us, to our children and grandchildren, and to so many others (including perhaps you), in many places, for her entire adult life.  She deserves nothing less than our best now.  Please help.