@travelnut All good questions. Yes, I am going up to see the place and check out who is there. I am considering if I should do the big move now and be done. The big move would be to skilled nursing and would involve out of town move. There are no decent places in her small town for long term skilled nursing. They have a place that is used that way, but it is more for rehab and what I saw there while Mom was actually IN rehab there after her knee replacement made me not accept that as a solution. I have some fear that I will move her, then she will need skilled care and get kicked out right away meaning ANOTHER move. That is one of the questions I’ll get an answer for before I move her. She is at the limit of the AL place pretty much and the hospice people do things like the showers.
You are right that the more the staff thought I had private care, the less they did, but they didn’t adjust the costs!
It is the hospice nurse pushing this move, more than the AL place. The AL nurse originally (8 months ago) said to keep Mom out of the memory care unit. But now the AL nurse is having issues with the private care … who are babysitters basically. And Mom has dropped down in capability.
I would like to go back to a single solution since I am trying to manage it all from a distance and have a husband who doesn’t like me to travel up there often. And Mom’s wandering is scary when there is no one to watch her and she could possibly get outside. The Memory care is locked in.
Eso- my folks lived 2 1/2 hours away until they needed AL. They had lived in the same area all their lives and sought local AL. My DH was wise - he suggested that since we were the sole caregivers, they move near us. Best decision ever. Half an hour away is so manageable and as my mother was immediately diagnosed with terminal cancer within a month of arrival, I felt I won the elder care lottery. We had a great 16 months together.
There is huge peace of mind in being a few degrees ahead of the curve and having your parent situated for the duration. When my father’s nurse told me at move in that they could tend anything that came up and he’d never have to move again, I was beyond relieved for both of us. I could be his visiting daughter, attend care meetings and medical appointments as indicated, and vacation knowing he had trained eyes on him 24/7. He was not a wanderer; if he was I would have moved him even sooner to a secure location.
You know your mother best and are considering all the variables. Everyone I have known in this situation tended to resist the “big move” (myself, too); all, in hindsight, wish they hadn’t. This presumes a confidence in the quality of care. YMMV; just coincidentally saw 5 close friends go through this in the last 2 years and the consensus was remarkable.
So, Dad wants the car back, he’s been fighting for the car since last fall. Yesterday he called and yelled at DH, then he called the police. And he called his accountant to talk about getting an attorney.
The police were great & DH has people calling to ask where they can visit him in prison
@somemom- I may be asking things you already covered. But, is there a primary care doctor that takes care of your dad and has that doctor already said not to drive?
No one is giving back the car, no one is telling him where it is.
He admits, at times, that he cannot find his way around, cannot see the signs well enough, etc. But then his pride and control issues have him trying to be the boss again
The police were great, he told them he was incarcerated! He also could not provide basic info, like address. After talking to us, she told him he should not be driving. He did not want to hear that.
The AL place has an in house physician, FIL has decided he does not like him. The AL place has told him he should not drive, but cannot legally prevent him.
The DMV forms are in process, but this started before Christmas and is way to slow for us! We’d like to sell the car, stop storing it, and cancel the insurance, but this seems to be his hill to die on, so we thought in December, that we would wait for the DMV, we just thought it might be done much sooner.
The AL doctor does not seem to want to confront FIL who is argumentative and aggressive with him.
I found doctors won’t address the driving. The one helpful thing my mom’s doctor said was that no one taking pain meds should drive, so mom was not cleared to drive. The true key is having transportation of some sort available. I get it, without a car your dependence on others sky rockets.
Well…my dad made it easy for us. He died.
This is not a tragedy. He lived until he was 88. He was a happy man. His last week was rough on him. Right after I wrote those posts about the costs, I revceived a phone call from a hospice nurse. I needed to go to my dad’s house. The caregiver did not show up. I was told my dad was dying. A little over a day later he died.
I knew he was weak but I did not think he was going to die this soon.
During my dad’s last 24 hours, My dad was in pain for the first 12 hours because he had to pee. Once my dad got a catheter in him, he relaxed and died 12 hours later. In retrospect, I would have liked a hospice nurse to get a catheter in my dad as soon as he started complaining that he had to pee.
The death process is an ugly thing. We put dogs to sleep but we can’t put people to sleep. I find this bizarre and not humanitarian. I can’t believe baby boomers are going to put up with this crap when they start dying en masse.
Related to your post I just read the sample of Diane Rheem’s book , “On my Own” which addresses end of life issues and grief after her husband’s passing.
Actually we do kind of put people to sleep. They gave my mom a bunch of morphine right at the end as we were removing life support. It helped suppress the need to fight to breathe. I don’t think I ever want to see someone die again. I don’t know how health care workers do it.
Sometimes it’s very hard to realize the downturn while it’s happening; almost two years after my father died, I am still coming to grips with the increasingly difficult turns his physical and mental life took during the last two years or so. I was very lucky that when he had his wits about him, he expressed his end-of-life wishes explicitly in his living will so that when he was in the hospital after a massive hemorrhagic stroke, it was easier (but certainly not easy!) to say no to life-sustaining measures. But the longer-term pattern of deterioration was only visible in retrospect.
When dad was alive, I worked with the case manager long distance. The first one I found was absolutely fabulous, and she worked well with my dad and the caregivers (we had live in for dad, who was pretty helpless in that he was depressed and wouldn’t do much for himself). That case manager sadly passed away, and the replacement was nowhere near as good. She didn’t oversee wh things as well, allowed the weekend person to rip off my father stealing his credit card on the weekends and having her husband run up groceries . This went on for months to the tune of thousands of dollars, and it wasn’t caught.Then when it was, she wanted ME to fire that caregiver long distance. Um, no, that was her job, though I was on the phone when she did it and I supported her.
There were frequent problems with caregivers having transportation or medical or family issues, and it was always a source of stress. To this day when I hear of weather issues in his area I have an immediate “oh no, can the caregivers get there” response, and dad passed away 5 years ago!
eso, it’s a really difficult decision, but I agree, if you spend some time on the higher level unit and get a feel for whether they have their act together now, that might help. And is is clean? Smell ok? Staff seem caring? Is your mom still as aware of her word finding and pride issues? Hang in there-- do what feels right for you.
condolences, @dstark. That seems very shocking from your last posts. Not a lot of warning, so hard to process.
There are many things that go into all these decisions. One of which is that for the first time, Mom’s apartment has started to smell bad from her. Don’t know why.
In lots of ways, it would be so much easier if Mom were closer, but in one way and the way it counts, it wouldn’t be. DH is not OK with her being closer and we’ll just leave it at that and her in the town she is in. There are always trade-offs to every situation. At least my brother trys to help and is supportive.
