Tag: veteran’s benefits

How Sweet it is!

This post contains:  1.  No Sweets!, 2.  “Progress”  on my continuing application process for veteran’s benefits, and 3.  a Peanut Poem…

Day 2 of 210 – No sweets! But what I did instead is:

1.  I found a potential SOLUTION TO SWEET ADDICTION:  “SUBSTITUTION FOODS”

Roasted salted peanuts in shell the kind you get at a ball game, almonds with sea salt, prunes, bananas, strawberries, and raspberries.  My anti-sweet arsenal for when sugar is CHASING ME AROUND THE KITCHEN and PURSUING ME in THE PANTRY.

Thinking of this sweets challenge makes me happy.  I once gave up sweets for two years.  That was in about 2006 and at the time I was working more than full time.  Now, I’m home hoping to make work of my writing career.  It could happen.  Anyhow, I so like the idea and dilemma of a task that is “biting off more than I can chew”.  The sheer size of the goal right now feeds (pun intended) my determination the bigger the goal.

Two times I went for these sweet substitutions.  After lunch I ate a few prunes because I was feeling a bit frustrated with all the paperwork (see #2 below).  Did the prunes help?    They were sweetly satisfying.  And then at around 9:30 pm I ate a few Blue Diamond Gourmet Almonds garlic herb and olive oil flavored.  They were very nice.  Crunchy and flavorful.  Was glad I had done a little pre-planning.  I am not messing with anything else I’m eating.  Just no sweets.  And, that isn’t hard to figure out.  No sweet tea, sweet soda, but I can drink diet soda.  I don’t ever drink sweet anyhow.  I never drink sugar or sweeteners in my coffee.  I prefer my coffee with milk only.  And, desserts , even if they are “sugar free” I stay away from because they are possibly a gateway sweet.

2.  APPLICATION FOR VETERAN’S BENEFITS

Now, the following is a great way to spend your first full day giving up sweets.  Today I am organizing my paperwork for applying to the veterans for benefits to be able to afford my husband’s assisted living center monthly fee.  I bought two large folders and have some acetate pages that I can easily slip in all those lovely government forms.  I bought some binders to help in this process.  It will be the most lovely veteran’s benefits file you’ve ever seen.  What have a learned about Veteran’s benefits.  I’ve learned there’s a lot… to learn.

No painting for me today.  Doing the paperwork does not put me in the painting mood.

Peanuts and paperwork

Never eat those Planter’s Peanuts

Concurrently

While pushing paper, No! Please

Those shells and salt and all that grease

That makes the fingers need a licking,

and those pages dirty turning

for this reason, I am warning

Snack and study time don’t mix.

~Julie Robinson

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When I’m off sweets, this is true. When I’m on, hello cupcakes! Please o please, some balance!

Come on y’all & join me giving up sweets.  Won’t you?  Give up sweets for one hour, one day, one week, one month, one year.  I’m doing 210 days – Halloween to Easter, the sweeting season.  Let me know in the comments how goes it…

by Categories: Giving up sweets, artist, paintings, caregiving, Christian,, poetryTags: , , 4 Comments
If Clouds Could Talk, Acrylic on Canvas … with poem at the end of this post.

We went for the Psych evaluation.

First off, the psychologist had at least 4″ high purple shag wall to wall carpeting in her office. I haven’t ever seen anything like it and I’m a child of the 70’s.

And her office was in an old building that didn’t have a “trust factor” for me.

As in the above painting of mine, clouds talk, and apparently, psychologists performing a psych eval do too. After the evaluation the psychologist gave her opinion that my husband probably wouldn’t get the disability because she didn’t think dementia is caused by PTSD and that he didn’t have any PTSD symptoms.

But the paperwork from the VA had said the psychologist evaluator only does the evaluation and won’t give an answer. I thought it a bit strange she’d give an opinion.

In my own reading on the matter I’ve learned that it does happen that a person can have a very stressful event happen such as my husband did in Vietnam that can cause dementia later in life.

Well, I am not worried about any of it. And I remind myself that I’m just carrying through on the application for disability that the VFW near us had helped my husband apply for a few years ago after he was no longer able to work, but had not as yet been diagnosed with dementia.

A little tiny bit of history on him case you were wondering…

He was a practicing attorney until 2012 when he wasn’t able any longer to concentrate or to properly function in his job.

Then in 2014 after he had been going to visit with the veterans at our local VFW, they helped him apply.

Then in 2015 he finally got a diagnosis of dementia.

Then… a few weeks ago (9/2018) I was looking for something in the file cabinet and I came across the PTSD disability application which he had filed. So I took it up to the VFW and they refiled it with the information they had said they were lacking. In about a week the psych eval had been ordered by the VA.

I don’t know how any of it will go. But that purple shag carpeting was very very strange. Just about as strange as clouds communicating.

If Clouds Could Talk

If clouds could talk

in puffed up words

Or heavy purple phrases

Misty morning melodies

To tornado laden crazies

They’d loftily quote

Or drastically deluge

If clouds could talk.

~Julie Robinson

by Categories: Acrylic painting, Dementia, Dementia Care, Paintings, PTSDTags: , , , , , 6 Comments
Melting Roses, Acrylic on canvas

The High Cost of Dementia Care:  The Process of Applying for Veteran’s Disability Benefits Part 1 of (Many?)

For “memory care” in our area the price tag is about $4,500.00 per month.

So, I am having to start thinking about how I’m going to be able to pay for the care my husband will be needing.

As I am finishing up this post, he walked out the door and I went to get him. He said he was planning to visit people. Good thing he was good about getting in the car. He isn’t always. It helped that our daughter ran down the street after him and I think I unnerved him with a big flirty smile “Hey, wanna ride?” Side note: a smile wins!

Being a Vietnam veteran, my husband began applying for disability after he began meeting with the veterans at our local VFW several years ago. It was before he was diagnosed with dementia.

So, he applied for it but because he was already mentally unable, he did not follow through with the complicated process.  I didn’t know what he was up to with all of it, he was busy busy with many things.

He was still driving.  He’d drive himself to the courthouse and ask to talk to the judges.  He was a retired lawyer, so he was used to being able to do such things.  You know, he even got himself appointed to the town council.  (I had to help him get out of that gracefully). If you didn’t know him well or didn’t spend too much time with him you’d perhaps think he was ok at that time.

After I finally took over the management of our family’s finances, I gathered up all his messy papers he had crammed in a cabinet and because they looked too important to toss I put them in a file.

I pulled it all out last week when I was looking for something else.  It was an application for disability.

We resubmitted the old application paperwork even though it was on an old form. The very kind man at our local VFW helping me said that he thought they might want to have it on the newer form but thought he’d give it a try.

While I was in there in my hour long meeting with the man, a line of veterans had been forming outside the door. One of them wished me “good luck” which I kinda think means it’s not going to be easy.

I was given a greater understanding of some of the magnitude of the Vietnam war after researching the disability application process. I found a very very … very long lists of our ships that were in Vietnam. And my husband was on one of them.

It is both humbling and surreal that I am following this process through that he had begun.

by Categories: Caregiver, Dementia Care, PaintingsTags: , , Leave a comment