Before Andrew even left Craig Hospital in December 2010, I had started looking for housing. At that point Andrew was confined to a wheelchair and only had 30 days (due to insurance) at Craig. Moving Andrew to Life Care Center of Littleton helped give me more time to look for a place to live.
Finding a place was not easy. I would call an apartment complex and the their ONE wheelchair accessible unit was already being rented, or because a unit was on the first floor it was considered handicapped accessible, but was not right for someone in a wheelchair besides having 36" doors. Other problems included not allowing children, not allowing pets, horrible neighborhood, and way way way too expensive.
I spent months looking at apartments from Denver to Fort Collins and everywhere in between. Finally I found the 'perfect' apartment in Loveland in December. I put a monetary hold on the apartment and waited for the paperwork to go through. There was a lot of paperwork since the apartments had an income qualification.
Problems with the paperwork: Had to get special permission to rent there since we own our condo in Denver. That went through because there was no way Andrew could get up 37 stairs.
Next I had to prove that we would have enough income to pay rent. That was tough because at the time our only income was $175.04 per month. That is not a typo $175.04 a month. This money came from Andrew's work for disability. The amount was a calculation based on a percent of the salary he received minus what was calculated he would receive from Social Security Disability. Andrew was not receiving SSD income yet. I did have a letter that showed how much we would have per month once Andrew started getting SSD payment... but I guess it was confusing to the people at the apartment complex.
Next they wanted bank statements to see how much money we had per month for the last 6 months. That drove me crazy because one month we had a good amount of money come in from built up vacations and sick pay Andrew had from work. Money that I had saved up an had been living off of... but to them it looked fishy.
And.... not only the mount of money in the bank account was enough... they also wanted to look at my purchases... to see what I was buying? They questioned money that was drawn from my account to paypal. They wanted to know if I had an online business. It was clear no money was coming into the account from paypal... so I what if I buy diapers for my kids from diapers.com... and use paypal!
Any way... I was sitting on the this apartment for months. The end of December, January AND February! I wanted to move into the apartment, get the kids settled and have Andrew come 'home'. But that did not happen.
Life Care wanted to have a meeting in February. Andrew's insurance days there were almost up. They said there was also no more they could do for him and his recovery and that he was doing great. Next they asked about the apartment and I had to tell them it was still not ready.
They asked us if there was a place Andrew could go if he had to. We both answered that he could go to his dads, even though there are stairs there too and the house is not handicapped accessible. Next we got a big shocking surprise. "Well then discharge date is set for Saturday to your dad's house." And that was that. Finally I got a call on that Friday about the apartment. They were ready for us to sign papers. So after Andrew left LCCL we drove to Loveland, signed the papers and I took him to his dad's house.
Andrew lived with his dad for a week while I finished packing our thing at the condo. March 5th we were totally in... And of course all the waiting for a wheelchair accessible apartment and Andrew was not in a wheelchair anymore, he now used a 4-wheeled-walker.
It was nice for Andrew to be home almost 10 months after the accident... but it does not end there.
