I just received this email from Constance “Connie” Wade at Halifax Hospital:

Dear David.

I am sending you the information you requested. Your Mother’s height is recorded to be 67.99 inches and weight is 228.84. It is good you are working on a medicaid waiver. We do need to understand her funding. I have requested the team here to explore funding through medicaid. We will stay in touch with the planning. Marilyn will be working with your Mother on Tuesday and I will be back on Wednesday and the rest of the week.

Connie

I replied to her 1 with the following:

Dear Connie,

Thank you very much for sending me the information about my mother’s height and weight. I have forwarded that data to Delia Mcclain at Elder Source (mcclaind@elderaffairs.org, (888) 242-4464) who on Friday morning helped me to finalize my mother’s application to be on the waiting list for an “assisted living facility waiver”. I have also been working extensively with Linda at C.A.R.E.S. (386) 238-4946 to have my mother added to what I assumed is a completely separate waiver waiting list, but I am honestly not sure how that works or why there are two separate organizations responsible for having someone added to a single list.

In a phone call on December 21, 2011, Sophia Mas at Stewart-Marchman-Act told me that she had done the work necessary to have my mother added to that waiting list, but when I attempted to determine my mother’s “rank” on the list on January 17, 2012, representatives from Elder Source and C.A.R.E.S. both informed me that they had no record of my mother at all. At that point Sophia Mas admitted to me via email that she had not, in fact, done the work necessary to have my mother added to the waiting list and I would have to begin the entire process from the beginning on my own.

I can tell you that my mother receives approximately $[redacted] from Social Security on or about the fourth Wednesday of each month, and that she started receiving those funds on November 24, 2010. The money is direct-deposited into my sister [name redacted]’s checking account, from which she handles paying my mother’s rent, electric and cable bills, etc. My sister was also transferring a portion of this each month into a separate checking account which my mother accessed via debit card for purchasing her prescriptions. […] Unfortunately sometime near the end of August 2011, my mother lost her debit card and there is some confusion as to whether it was ever found and replaced.

My sister [name redacted] lives in Seattle, WA and can be reached at [redacted] or [redacted].

Please, please do not hesitate to contact me if there is any more information I can provide or anything I can do to help.

Thank you sincerely,

David Vincent Gagne


1 I sent it to both conniewade@halifax.org and to Constance.Wade@halifax.org because she told me that one of those was her email address on the phone, but then sent me an email with the other one as the return address.