What’s the wait to process a lift chair through Medicare? My mother’s wheelchair was taking months, with no end point in sight. She finally bought her own, used, through a local company that refurbishes and offers discounting.
I realize you wouldn’t buy a used lift chair, just wonder what the wait is.
Thanks for the sympathy. I here with mom now, she’s asleep in her chair. The aide says more fighting and hitting this morning. No real comprehension.
We are immediately relaxing the visit schedule. @LasMa, I appreciate the advice. It makes so much sense to hear it from outside the situation.
It’s kind of like 2 people told me this week about work and my boss telling me about things that have to be done, that it is a management problem…that I have to let it go. It doesn’t mean that I don’t care, rather someone else has to deal.
Hospice. The caregiver says that it is something to consider after we get the reads from the dr and nurse on Monday.
It’s so much easier when you can tag team with a sibling. LasMa, how great that your brother could be there.
I used to go to the gym, run half marathons, and I let work and then Mom stop it all. My husband tells me I have to take care of myself. Hoping these days help me to restart in even a little way
Hugs and peace to you all.
Zeeba, those two people are right, about letting go, but so much easier said than done. Still, it’s worth trying to keep in mind as something to work toward. I think there are a lot of us perfectionists on this thread who can relate. 
The reason I made the comment about wheelchair is a friend’s husband had ALS, and they were very careful on getting the right wheelchair. Also knowing about handicapped kids and needing the right kind of wheelchair.
The right kind of wheelchair can be a luxury not a necessity. It depends on the situation.
We ended up getting a portable lightweight wheelchair for a friend; it wasn’t the most comfortable thing but it was mostly used for transfers and uneven terrain a walker wouldn’t work well on.
There are gads of used wheelchairs out there, and if any special is needed, a local rehab hospital might be able to help with assessing what the best chair to get is.
LasMa- Yay for a supportive brother. I really miss my brother (died last fall) who lived on the other coast but very supportive when visiting. As to wounds on the lower leg, they don’t heal well even with good circulation and typically the lower leg needs to be wrapped with a compression dressing. I suspect this is what the HHN was trying to get an order for.
zeebamom- Working full time, plus doing 12 hour shifts with your mom, just isn’t humanly possible. I agree with the others, you know your mom is getting good care, it’s time for you to focus on other things and people. Your mom will be OK. Maybe an advantage to being the only surviving child is that I know I can’t always be there and available.
eyeamom, are you sure you want to aggressively treat the pneumonia? I wouldn’t if my Mom got it right now.
But everyone has to follow their own path, however rocky.
zeebs, you know you have to put on your own oxygen mask first, right? and my mom did the same “No one calls or visits” because she can’t remember them being there once they leave or hangup. I’ve defaulted to frequent (2x daily) short, really short phone calls, if she is lonesome and I have time, I let her talk about the weather and get it four or five times in 20 minutes; she still has a connection. And I subtly check who else has called, but that is just to reassure myself. She has been there 3 years now, took me a full year to get over myself. … as much as I have. DH says I am still nearly obsessed, but it is all a balance.
hospice has been a real boon for Mom with this arm break. They have an actual RN visit every day where the AL place would just have a med aid “as needed”. The on-staff RN mostly is a manager for the med and tech aids. I am going to ask them about a hospital bed instead of Mom’s regular bed. Without hospice there, Mom would have been sent to skilled nursing which is so much less pleasant for her. This way, Mom is still some times eating meals at her normal table and feeling a part of things. I hope she never has to move.
Venting ensues, not much else to do.
So Mom fell and broke her arm way up near the shoulder two weeks ago. I was in Germany, then came home with a husband who had bronchitis. So I just made the trip to come see her.
She is in a great deal of pain, she can’t figure out why her arm hurts and she fights the sling all the time. It chafes. I came and took her to the doctor, but I couldn’t get it through to him that this isn’t working and isn’t going to work! She needs to have the arm near immobilized for it to heal. It isn’t.
Then on top of that, the care staff at the AL place doesn’t recognize how much this impacts her day to day life. They have her on every two hour pain pills, so lots of water. They come in and quickly give her pills and water, every two hours. about 2 or 3 am she needs to pee. She can’t get out of bed easily because she can’t use one arm and uses the other to hold it so she has nothing to push up with. And when she has to go, she has to GO. So for the past two nights, a minute after they leave, I can hear her calling for help and go help her, but I am only here two days. I put a note on the door and on her bed saying. did you ask her if you can help her pee? Of course when she is first woken up, she doesn’t know or hasn’t felt it yet!!!
Second vent, private care givers are not doing much. They left the peed depends stack up and complain that the AL staff didn’t empty them. I have to tell them to empty them every day, they shouldn’t let moms apartment smell like pee!!! And why do I have to tell them that? Honestly! Mom is operating at between a three and two year old, and the private care givers are operating like surly teens, will do what you ask, but never look for so,etching to do!
I hate hate hate leaving her in this environment, even though it is fairly good as these things go. It tears me up. But I also know that my husband would not tolerate her nearer to us with me spending more time on her. He complains subtly, but it is there. His family never saw elder care. My brother has my dad in his home.
And mom begged to go home with me, she is scared and knows she needs more help. She will not ask " strangers" for help, though and with her memory, they are all strangers.
Tough times. All I can do is think that I am doing my best and leave emails and. Notes to try to get her more help. I have hospice watching the caregivers, the Al place watching hospice, the caregivers letting me know what is going on, at least a little.
Eso- sorry to hear all of this. Any chance she is more a skilled nursing home patient now than a workable AL candidate? I ask because with private help, AL staff tends to back way off. If private care isn’t pro-active or available all night, you wind up with big gaps.
I have walked this walk. You and DH might be pleasantly surprised at how much more manageable having her near to you, in quality skilled nursing care could be. Orchestrating 3 agencies can be a full time job. From a distance, even harder. NH is set up for round the clock care. Just don’t know how temporary her level of need is secondary to this injury.
Hang in there.
Esobay, my stepmother broke her arm at age 90. She was living at home with my dad with no outside help and one day he woke up to see that she had found a scissors and cut herself out of the hard cast. Fortunately she had worn the cast long enough that the bone was set.
I am so sorry. Sometimes there just isn’t a good solution. Is there any way she could afford full-time help for a while, until the bone is set in her arm? Or nursing home care, as suggested by travelnut, where they would be sure to keep her clean and dry?
If she is only in a sling, perhaps an orthopedic who deals with the elderly can try to figure out a better solution. I’ve seen elderly patients with bubble wrap around their arm, or plastic guards (less constrictive than a cast).
Or even a physiatrist might have ideas on whether bracing or some PT might help.
And remember that pain medication can make dementia worse. Pain pills every two hours seems odd, at least for opiates which at worst are every 3 hours (after shoulder surgery to avoid breakthrough pain), and usually can last 4 - 6 hours.
Does she have a pain management specialist?
(my dad is at my house due to the impending hurricane/current nor’easter in our area, and I can see how it would really help him to live with us, but none of us are ready to go there now.)
What is the pain medication that is ordered? Are they compensating for possible side effects of constipation. Are there safety precautions in place? Talk with the orthopedic office, see if they can prescribe a duragesic patch. So sorry that she and you are going through this.
Vent away!
That seems like a lot of pain pills. We were fortunate that mom’s broken hip wasn’t that bad and they were able to wean her off of the opiates relatively soon. They really do a number on the elderly.
It can be a blessing and a curse to have an ailing parent nearby. You can still feel like your best isn’t enough, but it is easier to coordinate care when you are right there (esp. a reminder to sullen caregivers to shape up or ship out).
I’m sitting with my mom today. She alternates between seemingly normal and total confusion. She was telling me yesterday that the caregivers are evil and that I have no idea what they do to her. They do nothing untoward to her.
I was able to get her to say why she was so frightened of the bathroom. Turns out that she wants to sit on the toilet, but they are using a commode which hits her back in the wrong spot. She needs to be a bit more mobile before she can consistently use the toilet. I asked if she’d said anything. Well, no, but wasn’t screaming at the top of her lungs enough?
I’m going along with her to see the PCP this afternoon. A long list to talk over in a 30-minute appt. Biggest is how to keep the UTIs at bay. And constipation. It’s seemingly all about the bathroom these days.
@zeebamom, we finally convinced my mother’s MD to order Trimethorpin for her to take every day. We also have her on probiotics, metamucil and enulose.
eso, oh goodness, so sorry this is happening. Don’t be too hard on yourself about living far away because zeeba is right. Seems like it should make things easier to work out, but not always. My mom has been told by 2 doctors, a PA, and an RN, in the past week, that she must wear compression hose. But she refuses to put them on in the morning, and the caregivers won’t force her. I live 5 minutes away but there’s not a darn thing I can do about it. Even if I went over there at 7:00 a.m. every day to personally supervise the donning of the hose, I KNOW as soon as I left, she’d start fussing at the caregivers until they relented and took them off. You can only do what you can do.
I like oldmom’s idea of temporary live-in help. I don’t know that she could go into skilled nursing, since (I think) that requires a 3-night hospital stay, unless you want to pay out of pocket.
zeeba, I had to laugh at this:
So true.
So sorry eso, what a lot to deal with. Rather than moving her up a level permanently, how about a “rehab” center, which is basically a temporary stay in a SNF. Perhaps until her arm heals? This would give her more and perhaps better care than the cobbled together approach. I agree, it’s too much pain medication for an elderly person at assisted living.
LasMa - the compression hose that most doctors prescribe is thigh high TED hose which is very uncomfortable and actually only appropriate for the hospital setting while a patient is in bed all day. Studies show that knee high hose (graduated compression which TED hose is not) is as (perhaps more?) effective and more comfortable. This can be ordered by the primary (better yet the wound clinic as they know what to write) or bought at a local pharmacy or medical supply. She might be in knee highs already, but if per chance it is thigh high she is wearing, the switch may prove better compliance.
zeebamom - Hope your visit went well. Perhaps some foam padding from the home improvement store you can tape to the back of the cammode?
Thanks GT. It is the knee high and it’s only one leg at this point that she has venous insufficiency. All the med professionals have told her to wear it except at night.
This may be a dumb question, but I’ve worn compression hose (after an injury) and they are a pain. Not just the tightness but also the tops where they grab tighter. Is there any alternative using something like an ace bandage or is that not tight enough? Could that be a compromise or is it so completely ineffective?
Ace bandages are better than nothing. But you have to pull them to a certain stretch while wrapping. With large legs, wraps similar to aces are sometimes used. Before wound clinics, I used to wrap legs with a wound in a Una boot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unna%27s_boot and it takes some skill and difficult to do on your own. If the tops are a problem, perhaps another brand? Also, varying compression levels could be used. Typically, 20-30 mmHg is used at the ankle.