Life Changes

At times in our lives, there will be occasions that something comes up that will alter our life from the moment it happens. I'm in the midst of two of these moments.

Yesterday, my grandfather went to be with the Lord. As I wrote last week, he was suffering from complications of a fall and had emergency brain surgery. We thought he was showing signs of improvement Saturday, but Sunday he was completely healed. In Grandpa's 86 years, he taught his children and grandchildren how to serve and love the Lord.

For the first time since he returned from the Korean War, grandma spent the day without her husband of nearly 64 years. Grandpa was always there to help his family, and they covered numerous times when a nurse cancelled on us. Grandpa will be missed by all those who knew him, but we are glad to see him free of earthly burdens that troubled him greatly. The coming days, weeks, and years will be used to remember and live with the void we now feel.

The second change has been briefly mentioned in earlier posts, but not fully explained. Due to the Affordable Care Act, the insurance plan I'm currently on is being ended. I get it through my father's employer, who has been working on getting a new plan for the company.

What they started with, was a plan that would only allow me eight hours a week of assistance, I currently get about nineteen hours a day. My family worked with dad's employer and found a solution that we could keep the same provider. The provider then said we could even get the same coverage we already had, but we didn't have it writing yet. A short time later, the insurance provider changed their mind and said we would no longer be able to hire our own caregivers.

Hiring our own caregivers is what allows my family to keep my costs below what it would be to live in a nursing home. Without that being the, I would lose some of my state funding that also allows me to stay home. As I write this, insurance is keeping us in limbo as to which way they will decide to go.

My current plan expires on March 31, two weeks from now. At that time, I will either have no choice other than a care facility, or I will be on a new plan that allows everything to stay as is. In all things, trusting that God's plan will prevail, but it will remain to be seen what direction that plan takes us.