PITA factor

I was listening to a podcast and the speaker was a woman who was/is a foster & adopting mom and she was reflecting on one of her special needs kids. The school system was supposed to have all these programs for kids like hers however she said had to aggressively advocate for her kid to get those programs and helpers and whatnot.

Yeah.

Ditto for old people in your care.

So quick recap. Sister in law (SIL) Sonya stole money from my mother in law (MIL/ mom) Carole, gutted the investment accounts and almost wiped the checking accounts clean for her own use leaving just enough to cover 1 month of residential care for mom. My DH has been going from crisis to crisis trying to care for his mom from 3000 miles away.

DH has had to try to advocate for his mom from institutions that are supposed to help her on her behalf, but those institutions have been less than helpful in some ways. We suspect SIL sucked up mom’s monthly pension payment and the pension people have been mind-numbingly stupid, unhelpful, slow, difficult to reach, and somewhat unresponsive. He’s been trying to work with the bank and the contacts he’s had seem to have made him a low priority so are slow to respond. Kaiser Permanente, normally they are super awesome with their service, have proven themselves woefully incompetent in certain other areas.

My DH default is to believe that everything will work out, sadly that’s been his undoing, because it doesn’t work out and creates a new mess that he is not skilled to deal with. The situation is forcing him to be the advocate for his mother and well he sucks at it. Not because he is a bad person, he is a very good person. He is a sweet man. But he is horrible at being his mother’s advocate because he expects Kaiser and the pension people and the bank people to be her advocate too.