Marcella Myer was sitting on her bed in the nursing home when I visited her Wednesday. She looked exactly as she looked when I saw her in September. In fact, she was sitting in the same bed. Nothing had changed.

How could that be?

Marcella is 53. (That has changed. She had a birthday in November.) She is in the Woodland Manor Nursing Center in Arnold, which seems like a nice nursing home. But even a nice nursing home is not a great place for a 53-year-old woman. Truth is, it’s more appropriate for her mother.

That would be Delorse Knehans, who is 85 and lives down the hall.

Marcella has always lived with her mother. She never married. After graduating from Lutheran High School South, she got a job at a gas station and then worked as an aide in nursing homes. Finally, she got a job in the warehouse at Famous-Barr, which, of course, became Macy’s. She lost that job in 2008. She told me she just couldn’t keep up anymore.

Something was wrong. Her niece, Lisa Volner, had noticed a slurring of her speech. Her gait was increasingly unsteady. She went to a doctor who said she had a form of cerebral palsy.

By this time, she was also having problems keeping up at home. She and her mother were renting a second-story condo, and taking care of her mother just got to be too much. So in the summer of 2008, Delorse moved into the nursing home.

Marcella applied for disability. She was turned down. She had a hearing on that denial last March. By that time, she had suffered a series of strokes. She walked with a cane. She could hardly talk.

Attorney Jeffrey Swaney was at the Social Security office with another client when Marcella’s case was called.

“I knew it was an appeal, and I remember thinking, ‘How could this woman have been denied?’ You could see that she was profoundly disabled,” he told me in September when I first wrote about this case.

At any rate, he ended up with the case. A new hearing was scheduled for August.

But in July of last year, on Delorse’s birthday, Marcella and Lisa decided to take Delorse out to dinner. They stopped at a grocery store to buy flowers. Marcella fell. She ended up in the hospital.

After a few days, the hospital decided she should go to a nursing home to recuperate. She went to Woodland Manor to be with her mother.

In August, the administrative law judge said there was not enough information upon which to base a decision. Lisa gathered doctors’ reports and gave them to Swaney. He gave them to the judge.

When I visited in September, everybody seemed confident that a decision would be rendered soon.

I had no question what the decision would be. Marcella could hardly talk. She could hardly walk.

But in November, she was ordered to go to an office on Brentwood Boulevard for a psychological evaluation. The psychologist noted that the medical records indicated “a history of cerebral palsy, spastic paraparesis, and degenerative arthritis with lumbar stenosis, gait disorder/ataxia, stroke, hypertension” and various other maladies.

That’s not enough?

By the way, the psych evaluation said Marcella functions within the “borderline range” of intelligence and has verbal comprehension in the “low average” range.

“Her knowledge of current events was adequate as evidenced by her ability to name the current President and Mayor, but not the Governor.”

The governor? Who can name the governor? We haven’t seen or heard from him in two years. And what does that have to do with disability, anyway?

Obviously, the administrative judge is in no rush to make a decision.

Perhaps you’re thinking that because these decisions are retroactive, time is not of the essence.

But when Marcella went into the hospital and then the nursing home, she put all her furniture – a lifetime’s worth of stuff – in storage. She has gone through her savings. She has maxed out her credit card. Lisa has helped as much as she can. But the storage unit was locked for lack of payments. If it’s not paid by the middle of next month, the contents will be sold at auction.

Furthermore, if Marcella’s disability claim is approved, she is eligible for Medicare. She needs it.

Perhaps most importantly, a nursing home is not an appropriate place for a 53-year-old woman. Michelle Pannier, the director of Social Service at Woodland Manor Nursing Center, told me that she is hopeful of helping Marcella get into some kind of assisted-living arrangement.

Before I left, I went back to say goodbye to Marcella. She was sitting on the bed.

NOTE: Marcella was later approved for Social Security Disabilty benefits.