New challenges in mother in law care!

[chrisinhouston]

Just an update of sorts. My M in L got out of rehab and is home in her independent living apartment and really doing pretty well after her shoulder replacement. I took her to her orthopedic doctor for her 4 week post op check up and he said she can start physical therapy and liked what he saw. I saw the xray and the new shoulder joint looks like a big gear shift knob! Her spirits are good and that is big +!

We recently found out about a little known US veterans benefit. She may be eligible for VA assistance for rent since she lives off of social security and a small pension that her husband had from Xerox and has no other property and runs out of money each month so we help out. He was a WWII vet so she is elligible. We started the application process but his war records and discharge papers were burned in the big fire in 1973 at the National Archives. We do have a letter and certificate that they got a few years back from them saying as such and certifying his service dates and discharge but it isn't he official thing so it may cause problems, we just don't know yet. Also, she has misplaced her marriage certificate from 1947 so I am in the process of getting a certified copy from the county in Tennessee where they married.

And I started the process for getting a delayed birth certificate from Virginia. Mom lost her original and only has a copy of a certificate from the hospital complete with her foot prints but they say that does not count. Virginia seems to have lost or misplaced her paper copy when the digitized their archives. We know she had one because she used it about 20 years ago to get a US passport, sadly that got thrown out after it expired. So I am writing them for a certified copy and also Social Security for original records. We could also get certified Census records from the 1930 census but she has no idea where she lived as she was only 3 and her parents were out of town when they did the 1940 census so they are not listed on it!

The whole reason for getting her finding the birth certificate came up when we wanted to get a handicap sticker or card for our car for when we take her to doctors and shopping. Texas will not accept her expired AZ driver's license to give her a Texas state ID. We can thank our politicians in Washington who have made state ID and license laws much more strict. Yet they tell us that it should be no burden for a elderly person to get the ID! Fuckers!

But I guess we would not want to extend the handicap sticker program to include anyone who is not a US citizen. Then the Mexicans would really flock here to get free parking spaces!