Ailing Zsa Zsa Gabor forced to sell her $28m Bel-Air mansion to pay for medical treatment

(London) Daily Mail ^ | January 26, 2011

[DuncanWaring]

How severe is the dementia?

If she’s capable of understanding what’s going on around her, I’d do it if I could.

If not, I’d probably do what I could to keep her comfortable and let her go, but do nothing to “hurry it along”.

[Hildy]

Scott, you would go into debt? Possibly lose the home that you house your children in to make life a bit more comfortable for your 93 year old mother? Now, again...I want to clarify that I’m I’m not talking about a LIFE SAVING procedure...I’m talking about an elective procedure for quality of life...at age 93.

[Hildy]

My mother was perfectly aware of what was going around her. She had some moments and shuffled when she walked. That’s a sign of hydrocephalus. A lot of time it is misdiagnosed as dementia and even Alzheimer’s. I’ve seen miraculous things happen in younger healthy people who have had this procedure.

I bring this up because when I was approached with this was the moment I realized what a crisis we have in this Country. This Dr. would have operated on this sick woman. Again, this was not a life-saving procedure, this was a quality of life issue. I’m sure, based on all the other bills I saw that Medicare paid, it would have been exorbitant, after all IT’S BRAIN SURGERY. I didn’t want to put my Mother through that..and I know, for a fact, she did not want to be in hospitals...Older sick people rarely do. They want to be at home, with the ones they love. But when a Dr. tells you that he can help someone you love, your first instinct is to say, “go ahead, do it.” It is human nature. But everything costs money. And I guarantee, no matter what ScottinVA says, if it meant going broke to make his 93 year old mother’s life a bit more comfortable for whatever time she had left on this Earth, he probably wouldn’t do it.

And we have to talk about these issues. WE HAVE NO CHOICE. WE, AS A COUNTRY, ARE BROKE.