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| Diane The Pink House On The Corner |
It's been a week since Mediation, and the reality of what happened is finally sinking in. It's weird. I feel like I'm standing with one foot in two very different worlds. The first "world" is life as we know it, i.e. barely squeaking by on Bob's SSD check. The second, a promise of a whole different lifestyle, that's hard to even imagine.
Right now, we have two settlement consultants and a Trusts & Estate attorney, along with our trial attorney all wrapping up the paperwork. I've already agreed to let The Hospital take the bulk of the settlement and invest it into a "life annuity" for Bob, which will guarantee him a set amount of money as a monthly income for the rest of his life or 15 years (which ever is greater). This way, the money will be handled by a trust fund and reserved strictly for the purchase of things directly related to Bob's needs or comfort. Outside of that, there will be a certain amount of "start up" money set aside, to buy the things we need up front, i.e. wheelchair transport van and a larger, wheelchair accessible home and also smaller things like a new hospital bed (Bob hates the one he has, totally uncomfortable) and a new wheelchair.
Meanwhile, the attorneys have to prepare a Medicare "set aside" which basically means that Medicare will, at the time of Bob's death, want to be paid back for any medical expenses they covered that are directly related to the stroke. And we have to estimate and "set aside" money for that.
And then we have United Health Care which is demanding to be paid around $165,000 for the cost of Bob's hospitalization after the stroke... of course, we hope we can negotiate that number down a bit....
And our trial attorney's expenses have yet to be tallied up but will be probably hit around $100,000.
All this talk of this kind of money is enough to make one dizzy. I honestly can't even imagine these amounts -- all those zeros! yikes
This past week, our attorney hooked me up with a real estate agent who specializes in working with wheelchair accessibility issues and she's been e-mailing me listings of gorgeous homes with some pretty high price tags. (My biggest hurdle here will be trying to find a house on the corner which I can paint pink-- ha! Otherwise, I'll have to rename this blog!)
In the midst of all this, we receive, in the mail, our six month notification that it's time to re-apply for food stamps. Talk about lurching back into reality. I called our attorney's assistant and asked her how I should handle this, she told me to call the settlement consultant, who advised me to go ahead and re-apply, as, truth be told, we are still poor, all we have is a signed piece of paper, and who knows how long it will take to get our first check in hand. So that paperwork will keep me busy (tearing out my hair, as always) this weekend, but hopefully it will be the last time I have to do it! And I don't know if you ever filled out one of these forms, but here, in our state, it's a 20+ page form and you've got to outline all your monthly medical expenses for the last six months. It's a 2-3 hour job, digging up receipts, etc. And I hate it, and do so much want to get off this welfare treadmill....
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