When You Lose Your Wallet

I have had to replace the contents of my wallet. It went missing just before Easter. 

Now I have to tell you about that wallet. It was bright pink and officially in April it was the 14th anniversary present to me from my husband whose personal shopper (Carol) picked it out for a certain Carol married to my husband. 

Now I am thinking those what if questions:

What if that wallet fell out of my floppy purse I am now using?
What if I had not changed purses where it was safer in the old one?
What if someone uses the contents of that wallet for identity theft? 
What if my husband hid that wallet?  

I have read where Alzheimer's patients do hide things, although I have not seen my husband do that to date; however, he is going downhill and I will write about that decline in the next blog post most likely. 

Instead of panic, I thought of being calm.  

Losing my wallet, with all that valuable items in it,

 is not the end of the world. 

About the time I lost my wallet, I read this Scripture:

If I say, “My foot slips,”

Your mercy, O LORD, will hold me up.

In the multitude of my anxieties within me,

Your comforts delight my soul.

Psalm 94:18-19

Then my special Internet friend Georgene 
who writes a blog HERE sent me this verse:  

Who can speak and have it happen 

if the Lord has not decreed it? 

Is it not from the mouth of the Most High 

that both calamities and good things come?           

Lamentations 3:37-38

Just as the LORD allowed Alzheimer's and Vascular Dementia into our marriage in 2008, He has allowed my wallet to go missing and also some pretty amazing mercies. No one charged anything. I checked. With my missing Social Security card and driver's license, someone would be able in 2015 to get a tax refund off of us! Our refund has already come and been spent! I didn't panic, but just kept at replacing items and experiencing wonderful surprises. 

Two women named "Lisa" who work in Plant City.  Lisa at Bank of America helped me get immediate cash for gas and groceries and beyond that think through my credit cards and how I can pay them off quicker with help from Bank of America which I am doing. I met Lisa who processed my new driver's license, which I needed before I could get a new Bank of America debit card. Both Lisa's took pretty pictures of me for the driver's license and for the debit card. Why I even look younger than my last driver's license eight ears ago and I do not have to get it renewed in June when my 70th b. d. is next month. I found out in Florida you can renew up to eighteen months before it expires.  My new driver's license has eyebrows and is good until 2022! See HERE for that story of how I got tattooed eyebrows which saves me so much time. 

I met Paula of Plant City's Suncoast Federal Credit Union (for teachers). She helped me refinance our car just purchased a few months ago for a lower interest rate and shorter payments. See HERE for that story of my unexpected car payment and the story of how I also put my leg through the garage ceiling.   

I met Dee Dee of Plant City's Regions Bank where we have a second mortgage and a credit card. She helped me get $2500 for the refinance at Suncoast. (More is owed than the blue book values on that car, and so I had to kick in more money.) She also gave me a great packet for protecting identity theft with awesome information such as this link: 

http://www.socialsecurity.gov/online/ss-5.pdf

I printed out page five of this application to bring to the closest Social Security office. It is basically open Monday to Friday from 9 AM to 3 PM (it closes at noon on Wednesday). This week I will have worked six days after I teach this afternoon. For the next four weeks I am taking one weekday a week off, however, so I will be getting that new Social Security card next week and meeting someone else to help me with my journey to replace the contents of my wallet.  This time, however, I will keep that Social Security card and other items in our home safe where I also have Durable Power of Attorney and Health Care Surrogate documents for my husband. 

Hard for me to replace has been my State Farm insurance card. Every month I put aside money for  this payment. Somehow I don't have their number in my cell phone and can't find the policy. We pay them every six months automatically through Bank of America. Suncoast would like that information to add to my car payments, but it is hard to come by now until the June bill comes. By the way, State Farm was wonderful when we were hit by a DUI driver three years ago. See HERE. 

Speaking of cell phones, I am glad that if I lose mine the data in my iPhone is all on my iMac computer, as are the songs and podcasts still on my iMac should I lose my iPod. Putting those wonderful ladies in my iPhone, along with other numbers I have had to use. 

When you don't have much spare time, losing a wallet can be a bummer. However, I have met wonderful Plant City business women (Lisa, Lisa, Paula and Dee Dee) and thanked them and even rapped* for them. I brought a smile to these ladies when I did so and each of them helped me keep calm and brought a smile to me. 

*Yes, at almost 70 years of age, I rap!  Amusing to me as well.  See MC AC The Rap Lady on YouTube at the top of this page or copyrighted lyrics for "Carol's raps" in the label section at the right of this blog. 

Tampa Date

By this time I am an old hat at getting my husband to go to the doctors. Prepare him the day before, and the day before that, and the day of the appointment remind him in the morning, making sure he has time to get ready. This time it is a memory assessment--I didn't use that Alzheimer's word. He drove us to his 10 am appointment with Assistant Director Nancy. We walked up the winding path to the building and he did not see USF Johnny Byrd Alzheimer's Institute on the face of the six-story building on East Fletcher Avenue. He signed some forms. See his back--doesn't it remind you of my birthday card below (6/26)!

The entire appointment was actually fun. My husband felt that us two ladies were ganging up on him. I told Nancy stories of things he had lost and forgotten and the problem he has with thinking I don't wash clothes but brought them back to our bedroom unlaundered. Nancy heard the Full Moon story below (7/26) and the three of us laughed about it.

"Nancy, he thinks the clicker to his car door also opens the garage door."

"Does he help around the house?  Does he still drive?"  "Yes" to both I answered.

"Who makes sure he gets his medicine? Who cooks? Who takes care of the finances?" "I do" I told her.

She asked him lots of questions and he was comfortable answering or not answering them. Then I left the room and she gave him a more thorough test than the 30 question test he had been given in his doctor's office.

When his private interview was completed, I returned and she gave a preliminary assessment that his word fluency and word finding were somewhat lacking. He has difficulty with time and date (even though he has a watch which tells him the answers), and new learning is more difficult. All of what she said I could vouch for.

Next she said she would get his B12 reading if his primary care physician recently took that. If not, she gave me a script for it.  She would order his MRI from December 2008. The B12 reading is because B12 deficiency is the one easy-to-cure kind of dementia. Thursday morning he will have another MRI at USF's University Diagnostic Institute to compare with the December 2008 MRI. The final dementia diagnosis will be September 7th. At that time they will see if he fits into a research study. Then we will know if it is probably Alzheimer's or not.

We went to lunch at Panera Bread not far from the USF campus. My hubby always has me order his food these days. I ordered 1/2 beef sandwich and a salad for him (he had been so deserving of beef that I did not try to sneak a Mediterranean meal in on him). We drove by Busch Gardens and he remarked that we need to save money so we can go there or go to an Orlando attraction. Noted--embrace the moment while we can.

We went on other errands including visiting my father-in-law's grave in Tampa. I reflected today that my husband likes to watch WW II movies because his dad was in that war as you see on his grave marker.

Sunday at church my friend Sherry who works with an attorney bought us our wills which were witnessed after the worship service, notarized and signed. Another couple did theirs at the same time. Usually we don't do "work" on the Sabbath, but this was a wonderful gesture that saved us $500. I now have Non-Springing Durable Power of Attorney for my husband; later on if I had to get guardianship it would be at least $6000 with a yearly fee of maybe $1500 from then on.  All of this is unnecessary since now I have Durable Power of Attorney. I am also his Health Care Surrogate with my husband's son as the alternate and other alternates in the various other documents. We are making copies of our Living Wills for our automobiles in case of an accident. Other documents with their blue backs are going in the safe.

I got the silver alert phone number today on a refrigerator magnet. It is 877-404-SILVER or 877-404-7458. The silver alert is used when a car/person is missing. The family can call in the car description.

Hubby doesn't worry. He didn't think about wills and graves today. I plan to enjoy him and keep him as healthy as possible for as long as possible.
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