A GENERAL BACKGROUND ON THE FAMILY

I probably should start with some general information about our family.

Denise and I have 2 children; Anna is 31 and lives with us, her older sister Eva is 35. Eva, her husband and our grandson live about 15 minutes from us and we see them very regularly. Eva is in the medical field and her husband is in law enforcement. We live in the western suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio, where we both were born and raised.

My career had two parts; the first half of my career I worked as an Engineer for GE in Aeronautics Research and Development in the defense field (stealth technology). My second career was business, after 18 years at GE I left corporate life and took over the family construction business. I say I retired in 2015 at the age of 57 but really I kept working but just stopped getting  a good, steady paycheck; my third work career has been caring for Anna full time.

Denise was a pediatric nurse and worked in a NeoNatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), she retired in July 2023.

We are both retired, currently in good health (except for the knee!), and secure financially, by the grace of God we are very, very blessed and don’t worry about day to day things very much.  Our current focus in life is maintaining our health as best as possible, enjoying our grandson and the long term care and support needs for Anna, which turns out to be much more of an effort to set up and put in place than we first realized.

We have a large century home that is unique in the sense that the whole second level of the home is a very comfortable separate apartment from the main level.  When we bought the home our dream was that the second floor would be a perfect setting for Anna and a caretaker to live in as we all aged. Since last fall I have personally been remodeling the upper bath, kitchen and laundry areas; as of mid August the bath/laundry is 99% complete; the kitchen is nothing but studs and dirt and I am scrambling as best I can to get complete what I can before my surgery.  When summer started I had hoped to have it (mostly) done but it just didn’t happen, we will have someone continue the work and I will pick up whatever is needed or left over as my recovery progresses.

Anna attends an adult day workshop during the week. She has transportation to and from the workshop provided by the county under her Medicaid Waiver. She also has her medical costs and needs covered under medicaid as well as her incontinent supplies, home modification needs (i.e. mostly grab bars in the bath areas) and some respite relief for us for “date nights”, stuff like that. Our respite budget is limited to 52 hour/month or 12 hours/week.

Medicaid waiver programs vary from state to state and we are fortunate to live in a state (Ohio) where both Denise and have have become certified to become paid care providers for Anna. The pay is low for the work done and this money is used to fund Anna’s ABLE and Special Needs Trust, something we have been lucky enough to have in place for years now. If you are reading this and do not know what those programs are I would advise you to talk with an attorney or money advisor for details. I only mentioned this because as part of the care “transition” between Denise and I we had to get Denise certified through the State to be a care provider, so that payments could continue while I recovered, or in case something happens to me.  Originally I was the only certified provider in the family and it is just good estate planning to have both parent's certified if you live in an area where these programs exist. 

That’s about it for the most part, who and where we are in life. More on Anna to follow.