Corrupt Courts' Assault Hits Home

Families struggle to aid elders at home
THE JOURNAL NEWS by Leah Rae - JULY 13, 2008

Catherine Wilson sits down to work as a bookkeeper every night at 9, after her 80-year-old mother has settled into bed. She does her grocery shopping after midnight, no longer surprised to see others in the aisles at 2 a.m.

A 50-year-old mother of two teenagers, Wilson says she can instantly spot her fellow "caregivers," as they are known in the social-service pamphlets. They are struggling to meet the needs of an elder at home - medical appointments, prescriptions, and mental confusion, in her mother's case - while raising kids and trying to hold down a job. "I've had unbelievable conversations in supermarkets," she said. "We have children, we have households, we have work responsibilities. We're still paying mortgages, and we're faced with a situation where we have to quit work."

Last week, Wilson and others felt they had spotted another struggling caregiver in the news reports about a man who wouldn't normally receive sympathy. The man, Theodore Pressman, was accused of leaving his parents in a car in Peekskill while he went to work, even though his parents suffered from dementia. His father died after three hours in the hot, enclosed space, according to police. Pressman used to set his parents up in a cafe with a newspaper and cup of tea, according to the cafe owner, while he worked his shift as a bus driver. He was charged with second-degree reckless endangerment and given an order that limits contact with his mother.

To Wilson and others, the story pointed to the strains of elder care. A home health aide costs about $20 an hour, and adult day care typically costs about $100 a day. Respite services are available for a few hours at a time, but full-time care is costly. When Wilson left to tour colleges with her son, she said, she spent $4,000 on her mother's care. A grant from the Alzheimer's Association helped defray the cost. "Unless you're rich, there are no full-time solutions," Wilson said. "You have to be either very rich or very poor. So for the majority of us in the middle, there's only partial solutions." June Molof, director of the Rockland Office for the Aging, agreed that the options are limited. "There's not a lot available, unfortunately, and what usually happens, of course, is that they wind up in nursing homes," she said.

Others believe the problem is primarily one of awareness: how to find the services and how to patch them together. Men in particular are less informed on what's available, said Diane Aparisio, deputy commissioner of the Westchester County Department of Senior Programs and Services. "Caregivers really should not feel overburdened or alone," Aparisio said. On the department's Web site are reams of information on services, support groups and long-term care insurance, which can pay for things like adult day care. The department offers one-on-one meetings to help families put a plan together.

Services range from small-scale help with housekeeping or transportation to full day programs run by organizations like the Wartburg Adult Care Community in Mount Vernon or Meals on Wheels in Rockland. My Second Home in Mount Kisco, another example, offers intergenerational activities and specialized help for dementia patients. But in a poor economy, families are holding out as long as they can, said Donna Sangi-Vallario, director of the day program at Wartburg Adult Care Community. Rates there are $75 a day for those with basic needs and $128 for those with medical needs. "It's stressful, they're losing a lot of time from work, but they can't afford to put mom and dad in a day program," Donna Sangi-Vallario said. "So there's a growing need, it's just, sometimes it's not economically feasible."

Not only that, but elder care is an exhausting foray into the health care bureaucracy. Wilson said she has seen many caregivers, in support groups, succumb to depression at even a slight setback. She has relied on her accounting, business and Internet skills to help her plow through. Wilson works part time from her Thornwood ranch house doing bookkeeping and free-lance writing when she can find the time. Her mother, Mollie Wilson, suffers from vascular dementia and needs steady supervision. Catherine Wilson's father died 12 years ago. She is divorced and has a brother who is disabled, but no extended family nearby. Wilson sums up her situation this way: "You juggle a lot of balls, and to be honest, you drop them." The other day she was fixing tea at home with her mother, an Irish-born immigrant who always celebrated her culture in song. Her mother had returned from lunch at the local senior center. "It's nice to get out. I don't like to be in the house all day," Mollie Wilson said in her lasting lilt. "I like people."

At 80, she can still tell the story of when she rescued her baby brother during a bombing in Dublin when she was 14 years old. But her narrative now mixes in images of New Year's Eve in Times Square and the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center. Real memories often mix with images from television, as when she tells of golfing with Tiger Woods and scoring a hole-in-one. Her condition requires trained supervision, people who can sort the truth from the confusion, Catherine Wilson said. Getting an adult to cooperate is different from working with a toddler, because "a child you can pick up and move them out of danger," she said. Wilson admits to relying on the television to keep her mother entertained, namely with Oprah Winfrey's show and old movies. Among her bits of real-life advice for other caregivers: Pay your bills online, so that all your records are in one place. Take advantage of the 24-hour Alzheimer's Association hotline: 800-272-3900. Befriend your local pharmacist. Don't regret the anger and stress that come up. Find ways to remember the better times.

Her mother is in the middle stages of dementia, which was brought on by a stroke. "If this runs full course, by the time she dies, she will never even know she lived at all," Catherine Wilson said. Mindful of that, she created a CD of her mother singing 11 of her favorite songs. It was given out at her 80th birthday in May, titled "Mollie Wilson: T'is Herself!" Once a social butterfly, Mollie Wilson used to perform the Irish national anthem for the Gaelic-American Club of Fairfield, Conn. Now she sings for others at the senior center, and she takes requests. "They always want 'Danny Boy,' you know," she said, smiling. But when asked to choose a song herself, she sings a hymn that prays for peace and safety and another life to come: "Bless This House."  Reach Leah Rae at lrae@lohud.com or 914-694-3526.

In Your Voice
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AstoriaMom wrote:
I know Catherine. She has more problems than caring for her mom. She also has to deal with her ex husband Ray a lawyer in the White Plains courthouse. The court told her she could earn $70000 a year and based her child support on that so they won't give her the full child support her children are entitled to. Catherine doesn't make that kind of money and she has no benefits. Ray makes a fortune and he has free benefits in the courts. But all he has to pay for college is 60 percent and Catherine has to pay 40. And the courts said Ray doens't have to give her a dime for all the SAT exams and application fees and Ray won't pay for his own kid's expenses for this. Ray is now fighting to take her money to use it for their son's college. They set up a college savings account when they were married so Catherine put in half of that money and now Ray won't ler her touch this to pay her share of college. He'll get away with this because his friends in the court support him. Ray still owns half of their house but he doesn't have to pay any of the bills like taxes and insurance but he gets half of the profits when it's sold. And he took a loan on the house to pay his credit card bills for his dating expenses and then got the court to make Catherine pay this loan since she's living in the house. Catherine told the court they were making her finance Ray's adultery but they didn't care. Ray took the inheritance from his mother she gave their kids and when Catherine went to court to sue to get her kids money they fined her $750 because she dared to sue one of their own. I don't know how set gets up each morning. Catherine is the most incredible person I know and a fantastic friend. Whenever anyone has a problem she's there to help. She doesn't deserve what Ray and the courts are doing to her. 7/13/2008 9:52:33 PM