Joyce's KP Adventure mikepasini.com headlines
Hat Trick
17 October 2025
They were hanging witches hats from the ceiling at Golden Heights today. No holiday goes uncelebrated there. I posed Joyce under one of the hats for a laugh. She laughed.
I wasn't in the mood, though.
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THE MAIL YESTERDAY had an ominous notice from the California Dept. of Health Care Services. It was headlined Important Changes About Medi-Cal Asset Limit Rules. My caps.
Starting in 2026 (which is not far off), Medi-Cal recipients will be limited to $130,000 in assets (not including your home, one depreciated car, the worthless stuff in your house and "certain" retirement accounts.
With no cheek to stick its tongue in, the Department suggested meeting the limit by giving your assets away.
For a while now I've been trying to get a revocable living trust set up for us. I didn't want to use my mother's attorney because I didn't want to confuse the two trusts. The attorney some friends recommended said she wasn't familiar with the Medi-Cal issues so she recommended a downtown firm that never responded to my inquiries.
Then I fell and ended up in the hospital with three brain bleeds and double vision, which made it hard to tackle this kind of thing.
But after my latest fall and hospitalization, Karla my Social Worker pointed me to a couple of organizations that help geezers set up trusts, wills, power of attorneys and advanced health care directives.
So I filled out the online form and today I was screened and put in the queue by a legal assistant. He told me they may not be able to do the trust but they can do everything else.
Naturally, the trust is what would protect Joyce's assets from California's new Medi-Cal policy. But, he said, who knows, they might be able to do it all.
Who knows. Please contact me.
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The other mood changer was a bit more positive, although it didn't start out that way.
I asked Binita the Wound Care Nurse if she knew if any lab orders had been sent for Joyce's surgery. It had been a while since we discussed all this with Dr. Holland, after all. She said she didn't know of any but contact Joyce's Kaiser team.
That night I logged in as Joyce to write a message to someone who might help when I saw she had two messages from the surgery team asking about her availability in November and reporting her lab orders had been sent to Kaiser so drop by any Kaiser lab.
Which is not how we left things with Dr. Holland. The lab work was going to be done at Golden Heights so Joyce (and me) doesn't have to run around just to give blood.
So I sent a message (I couldn't reply because the two messages were "too old," the system complained) last night informing them that Joyce has dementia (which is why they had no response from her) and is in Golden Heights and they can (and should) contact me but that we were expecting the labs to be done at Golden Heights.
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TODAY, as I arrived at Golden Heights, I thought to ask Raquel the Head Nurse if she wouldn't mind asking Joyce's Dr. Dimaano (Joyce's doctor who works for Kaiser at Golden Heights) to check on the lab orders, Raquel was unusually happy to see me.
She showed me her binder with pages and pages of lab orders for Joyce. They'd just got them.
Somehow, against all odds, my message on Joyce's Kaiser account had reached someone who leaped into action. Not the person I wrote to, of course, but someone covering for her. Amazing.
I couldn't tell Raquel how happy that made me. It was one less thing for my battered brain to try to remember.
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WHAT'S THIS MEAN? Who knows. It's unlikely she'll get the wound closed in November, spend a few weeks recuperating at Golden Heights and come home before Medi-Cal tries to take her assets.
That would be a treat.