Life After Mother: Prying Out Power of Attorney

After my mother locked her caregiver out of the house, I entered a twilight zone, looking after her long-distance. This was no dispute that could be settled easily — my mother just stubbornly refused to let me move in, hire someone or move into a facility. No alternatives loomed.

“Just give the caregiver a key,” a guy mansplained.

I didn’t need that explained. The explanation was, I didn’t have a key and I couldn’t get one — if my mother wouldn’t let me move in, and she would lock a caregiver out, she wasn’t about to hand over a key. Without access to my mother’s funds, I couldn’t afford a caregiver, anyway. 

Control over finances and healthcare is complicated enough for a person of sound mind and body. Once dementia or a life-threatening disease sets in, the patient can’t be expected to understand such needs as power of attorney for health care, durable power of attorney for property, a living will, a do-not-resuscitate order, and physician orders for life-sustaining treatment.

There were many possible ways for my mother to put her final wishes on record. Getting her to stop procrastinating, and sign her name — to anything — was the roadblock. I discussed with her an account of a family’s novel solution to the dilemma of life-sustaining treatment. If the person didn’t want to be revived when unconscious or in a coma, at the potential cost of broken ribs and the like, then leave the signed DNR paper in plain view. If the person had a change of heart, stick the paper in a drawer.

My mother finally agreed to sign a paper granting me power of attorney for her healthcare, at least, I think because she finally understood the alternative was worse. She signed a printout from the Internet, an Advance Healthcare Directive California Power of Attorney, appointing me as agent for her healthcare decisions, but not “personal” or financial decisions.

After taking the precaution of making a photocopy, I put the original in a bright blue folder and instructed her to leave it on the kitchen table where it might be seen by emergency responders. She still balked at signing a physician order for life-sustaining treatment, but I put one in the folder, too, thinking we’d return to that subject later. Before I could bring the subject up again, the blue folder and contents disappeared. She denied knowing anything about it.

A year later I found her collapsed on the floor. This time I told the hospital to send her to a dementia-care facility that accepted difficult patients. The care facility insisted on having a power of attorney for healthcare. Figuratively I crossed my fingers and handed over the photocopy. It was accepted. If it hadn’t been, or hadn’t existed, I don’t even want to think of the alternative.