u/JillYogi

Two years ago, my father-in-law from New Jersey moved into live with us in Florida because he could no longer really take care of himself. He was diagnosed with dementia, has congestive heart failure, and cancer. Somehow, the last two years, he has been able to roughly take care of himself with us being in and out. Meaning he can go to the bathroom change his clothes take a shower and make his breakfast. Over the last couple of years he has been hospitalized several times for a fall. Somehow, miraculously, he bounces right back and ended up coming back home.

My husband and I have one daughter. She is 11 1/2 and has witnessed a lot of of these incidents which have not been pretty. About four nights ago he has some sort of seizure of which my daughter and I and my husband witnessed. I whisk her into the other room and put on some music. He was not breathing and my husband had to do CPR for five minutes as we heard his ribs breaking. His left arm was covered in blood and lacerations and so we’ve been working with a lawyer to get him into a home.

As you know, there are many complications with Medicare and Medicaid and the best way to handle. It is with a lawyer, which is not cheap. We finally got approval from the insurance company to have him moved from the hospital to a rehab facility and then transitioned into the nursing home side.

We don’t have power of attorney and he won’t give it to us. He refuses to go to this rehab center, even though he literally cannot walk, has a catheter, and cannot move his legs from side to side. He’s very combative and we are completely unable to take care of him. He has been in the hospital three times for two weeks in the last two months. My husband said I’m not coming to get you. You need to go to rehab and he told us all to fuck off. Has anyone been through any of this? If he doesn’t go to rehab, they’ll just keep him in the hospital and bill his insurance.