We sold my mothers house with POA and they did require the original POA like with kpmom06. It also was in PA and we did it by mail. No problems.
Good to hear about using the POA. Now I need to make sure I can find the original. Many copies have been sent out in the last few years.
Thank you, guys. I found the original POA and am now feeling confident. Pour hate on me if you will, but we did the POA ourselves. So far no problems and this is the last hurdle. I will be sure to post on here if we have any problems with the form. I would like to hear from others if they have DIY forms also. My mother is not a wealthy woman and her affairs are fairly uncomplicated so we chose to go this route.
@preironic, I hope you had it notarized.
We have had an adventure in FIL declining for the last month, each thing that happened, week by week, seemed possibly temporary. Finally the AL had had enough and called me to move him. I moved him to a B&C, and FIL qualified for hospice. He was a mess when I got there, but much of that was fretting himself sick. After he got moved, his old feisty self came out & he is getting the caregivers trained to do what he wants 
Weirdly, he is in a lot of random pain, his joints hurt, his legs & feet & arms hurt, this is newly reported and appears to have no specific cause. He is taking Tylenol and Tramadol and now has hydrocodone as needed. Today they cannot wake him. We don’t know if it is too much medication or something else
The odd thing to me and the reason I am sharing is that, he has had six months of weakness and such, six months of complaints, but nothing that felt terminal. He had edema, was cleared of CHF.
As far as I can tell, his body is worn out & leaving his long time home started his loss of controlling and losing his wife has escalated the downhill slide.
It’s strange to see him unable to respond and not knowing, is this physical, is he really dying or is this the medication and he could live months longer?
@somemon , it is tough not knowing and not being able to fix anything. hugs. hugs hugs.
In my Mom news, she has apparently mostly forgotten how to walk although still strong enough. Keeps falling out of bed or falling when she tries to get out of bed. The AL place recommended (insisted really) that I hire someone to sit with her all night until they can find a high/low bed. There are such things as beds that can sit 8 inches from the floor and then be raised to 30 inches. But not found in her small town. So I will pay someone to watch her sleep for two weeks. But she has banged her head 2 times once with concussion. Just so … so.
Oh, my. Sending good thoughts to all who are navigating these complexities. This stuff is so hard.
Somemom- you have put much effort into your FIL. While those meds are potent and could leave him flat in combination, is it possible that it is his time? Hospice usually has a sense of that, as well as access to med expertise, but I found I had to ask for a review of the situation to get the meds accessed. They sent a sophisticated pharmacology doc in for a consult and we got to the “right” place. So many hard to track situations can create pain. My mother was the queen of not tolerating pain meds, with joint pain from fibromyalgia, arthritis, Lyme disease… Ultram (which I believe is tramadol) was the med with the least “snowing effect” for her, while controlling her pain (also had a terminal cancer).Perhaps looking at interaction potential will help.
Esobay- I hope that your mother gets the right bed. Sorry to hear of her concussion. It will help to have a bed lower to the floor in terms of falls and injuries, but if she gets up without the ability to know where she is going and stay on her feet, she will still be in trouble without assitance available all night. Is it possible that her AL has an attendant for alarms if she gets up alone? I have seen such situations drive the need for either skilled nursing care or considerable private duty hours.
I am at the point with my 91 year old plus father where I hope he doesn’t have to experience the worst of everything that might plague him. I keep thinking of the Jenga game and hoping the whole tower doesn’t have to fall.
Best to everyone.
@travelnut, Jenga tower is a good way to think of it!.
Yes, Mom has the alarm on her bed and on her chair. So at least they go check on her when they hear it go off and she doesn’t just lie there for long. At night, I think the problem is that she sets it off multiple times by moving around before she actually makes a move out of the bed. And so they are slightly desensitized to going in to check FAST. They recently moved her room from waaay down the hall to right beside the nurse’s station. Which should have helped, but didn’t last two falls. That is when they got serious about the lower bed and also had me get the night aid (private pay) to watch her. So far, since they have been watching, she has slept quietly. I have my suspicions about her getting up to go to the bathroom at 2am, but so far they don’t say that is what happens. She is strong and CAN get up and could walk, but she forgets how.
The alarm beeps, but it also is supposed to page the aid on duty. Last time she fell, they heard the beeping from her room, but the pager failed. That was when I was really glad they had moved her closer so they heard it.
You guys are such a supportive crowd. Thanks! My mom already had her neurologist appointment, and she is not doing quite as badly as her regular doc indicated, according to the first test she got for memory with the neurologist. He is aware of her meds, and he is doing other tests. It will likely be “down hill” from here, but overall she actually seems better than she has been for a couple of years. She is taking fewer painkillers, and is more coherent than she was when she was over medicating herself. She has a positive attitude, and wants to get better, which I see as good news.
^ super news @1214mom
And SIL has weaned FIL off all drugs but OTC, his pain seems ok, maybe he just needed a break. He is eating and visiting with people and feeling better. Hospice nurse says he is not going anywhere anytime soon
Sorry for being away and thank you for the advice! I have spoken with her attorney to let him know some of my concerns. And I spoke with the handyman to let him know about how brother tried to tell her only he could contact him, and handyman said that was ridiculous and of course she could call him any time!
@travelnut not he does not live with her but only about a block away. I know that he actually really fears being alone, so I think losing our dad and seeing our mom age is really tough for him. I think it could be at the root of his behavior. (That and I heard he went on a hard liquor drinking binge this last week. Usually he sticks to beer.)
@lookingforward as far as intimidation goes, it is very upsetting to my mother if he and I argue, so in her presence it is definitely best to avoid any kind of confrontation. That is what I mean. Plus, why sign myself up for verbal abuse? But, yes, for our mom it’s very upsetting. When he yells at her she sometimes goes into a panic attack and has even fainted! At the same time she describes him as “totally crazy” and would be unlikely to follow his financial “advice”.
The link below is to a booklet prepared by the American Bar Association Commission on Law and Aging, dealing with how to be a health care proxy (decision maker). I just read the booklet for my work, and I highly recommend it. My siblings and I helped our mother make decisions for our father when he was dying, and so I can vouch for the relevance of the information in the booklet.
The New Old Age
What Doctors Know About How Bad It Is, and Won’t Say
A prognosis, predicting the likely course of an illness, often makes physicians uneasy, fearful that delivering bad news will dash patients’ hopes.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/05/health/what-doctors-know-about-how-bad-it-is-and-wont-say.html
Thanks for sharing @oldmom4896. This dilemma of fostering hope vs. ignoring/minimizing what time it is is interesting to me. I think that a clearer picture is my preference. A very special connection is possible when everyone is on the same page and loved ones can walk the remaining time together, with appreciation for their meaning. I valued those months with my mother, as did she. I have seen patients who “got it” and relatives who denied it, with lonely wind downs. Sometimes inevitable due to who the players are; it’s a very personal thing. The other thing is, maybe hope is a more meaningful variable in outcome when patients are younger or otherwise healthy, etc. If one has exceeded the average life span by a decade, keeping it real has extra appeal. Some illnesses or cognitive states may make such understanding unlikely as well. It would be good if there was a differentiated approach to this phase of life. It’s obviously tough, even on the professionals.
FIL has settled in pretty well at the board and care, except he wakes in the middle of the night and wants someone to sit with him. He was on a pain med for a few days and that helped his sleep, but he was sleeping too much in the day time and is no longer in pain.
They tried Melatonin, no luck
They are trying Benadryl this week, we asked them to give him 2 pills at 10PM, he still awakened at 3-4AM
The nurse keeps suggesting Ambien or Restoril
Anyone have any good sleep aide stories?
@somemom, glad FIL is settling. I don’t have any help with sleep meds, sorry.
But I do have another hassle related to not sleeping and not being aware of time…
Mom has mostly forgotten how to walk. Since she is a fall risk, they popped her in a wheel chair and took away the walker. (Don’t know how she will remember how to walk or keep strength up, but that is another point). Anyway, she has been falling or getting out of bed and getting bruised and battered. SO after two falls in two weeks they decided that she should have the kind of hospital bed that lowers to the ground. That way, there is no risk of damage if she is off the bed, yet the bed can be raised to get her in and out.
Of course her small town had to have the bed delivered, which took a week. During which time i had to pay 1x1 night aides to sit with her awake while she slept. Two of the nights she was restless and wanted to get up. Once she got up at 4:30 and insisted on dressing and saying she needed to clean her room.
Just a heads’ up on hospital beds if you are renting or buying them. Thank goodness medicare covered the rental of this new bed. But the hospice RN said that she was recommending that the facility get them for ALL the rooms (and charge rent on them) because so many elderly/confused people are NOT good sleepers and ARE at risk of falls in the night.
hope this isn’t against terms of service, I am NOT promoting this bed, just showing what is a good idea for having ability to keep patient LOW to the ground:
The AFH my mom lives in has the hospital beds available. Before they were able to bring it from storage or the other house, they put thick padding (like what’s used at gyms) on the floor next to the bed and had the bed alarms set.
Mom would ‘forget’ to push her call button and try to get out of bed.
2esobay-so challenging. My increasingly frail father with advanced memory loss has a bed that can be lowered towards the floor. It makes good sense. Additionally, there are mattresses with raised sides, that when combined with bed rails work for some people. Once these kinds of risks are paramount, it can start to drive the type or level of care necessary.
@somemom- not sure about sleep aid, except that a bit of trial and error is common. I know that especially in elders, you want to use the lowest dose that gets the job done. Timing the dose well can help prevent being snowed in the morning. Remind me if he has confusion going on, which of course, is trickier. Also, does he have difficulties with breathing? Is his CHF still okay? I ask because people who have trouble getting a good breath may have anxiety/sleep issues accompanying that. My mother was on oxygen during her last 6 months and eventually, even with it, she started to be come anxious at night, secondary to her perception that her breathing was compromised.I was told this is common under those circumstances. She also had CHF, which can create fluid that impacts lung functioning. All the best with this.
My experience with Benadryl, with the kids, was it only has a 4 or 5 hour cycle. Make sure his room is as dark as possible, as light can interrupt. But I also had seen this, from a lengthy NYT article: “Insufficient exposure to light during the day, as occurs in some disabled elderly patients who rarely venture outside, may also be linked with sleep disturbances.” Or our elderly could be needing that overnight pee break.