Sam and I have been friends for over 30 years.  About 20 years ago my company moved from the beautiful Sierra foothills to San Diego, and I asked him if he wanted to tag along as shoveling snow isn’t fun when you’re over 50.  Sam agreed, found us an apartment, and packed.  We agreed to help each other get established in our new city for a year before committing to continue this arrangement.

Sam did most of the unpacking as my office closed one Thursday in the mountains and opened the next Monday in San Diego.  Once things were organized, he set about job hunting.

After six weeks I came home one day to find his bedroom door shut, a note saying he didn’t want dinner, and he didn’t want to talk.  After a few days he emerged and tearfully confessed that there was something horribly wrong with his eyes and he felt awful.  As a mechanic, not being able to focus meant he couldn’t work; and driving was almost impossible as he had to use periphery vision to read street and highway off-ramp signs.

By the time our trial year ended, $70,000 worth of tests later, he was diagnosed with Sjodren’s disease, and had three cancer scares (all of which turned out to be false alarms). It never occurred to me that I should tell my frightened friend that not only was he ill and unemployable, but homeless too.

Sjodren’s disease has developed into Parkinsons disease (PD), and although I worked for 17 of those 20 years, Sam’s condition now makes that impossible.  He fights hard to be independent, funny and optimistic, but confusion, fear and falling are his daily challenges.

Without the help of the IHSS program (Social workers, Union reps, and a monthly stipend for my services) Sam would have been hospitalized three or four years ago.  Financially, California has saved several hundreds of thousands of tax-payers’ dollars by having him live with me, and I have been able to pay my mortgage and contribute taxes while morally doing the right thing.

At some point I know home care will become too much for me, and I’ll have to tell my ill friend that he must go.  When that happens, I pity the nurses; Sam loves to get in and out of bed, and while he knows he is missing brain cells, he wants to know which of them is missing and how to grow them back.  Most of all he wants his driver’s license back, and argues the point for hours.  Friends and family have time for this; nurses in state intensive care facilities don’t.

So long as I can, I’ll argue vigorously against reapplying for his driver’s license, and daily thank God for the IHSS program which is keeping Sam safe and both of us at home.

Everyone should ask themselves two questions:
1. What do you want to pay for as a tax-payer?
2. What do you want to experience when your turn comes?

The answers are either:
A. Family and friends for as long as possible.
B. Institutional care for as long as possible.

For once, in both cases I think the cheaper alternative is morally and financially the best.

Now how do we explain that to the politicians, since my logic is currently failing them?

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