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Thought I'd give this thread a bump, in case it's of interest to anyone looking for information (see my post above).
Also, I am currently at the beginning of getting a caregiver involved with my Mom who turns 100 next month......and is still living in her own home. We had an initial meeting with the caregiver a month ago that I thought went real well...but a couple days later it was apparent that Mom wasn't happy (for reasons I thought weren't pertinent to our goal) so put things on hold. Then tried a re-start this morning with a more careful approach and it went much better and we will be moving forward with at least 2 visits per week. Mom does have some Demetia so for those who know about this, you have to be very careful how to proceed with any assistance with the client. Luckily, my caregiver has been doing this for a while, loves doing this work, and thus far has demonstrated a remarkable ability to adapt to Mom's personality and demeanor. All of us live within' 15 minutes of each other so that's very helpful. Mom wants to continue living at home and I want her to as well. I'm hoping the caregiver program will help us to make that happen. I applaud everyone here who has put the work in to help their elderly parent(s). It can really be a tough situation to deal with, but has to be done.... |
Thanks Baz, I don't look forward to using this but I'm sure there's great advice to be had here. Hope thinks keep workign out for ya.
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Good on ya for doing this. I went through this with my father and now mom is all by herself. At 84, she don't drive so my sister and I along with my wife are always around giving her a helping hand especially driving her to the market and such. I am sure she like to get out and do normal things. Back then dad and her would do everything. Wife is now going through this with her mom. She came home from long term care after dealing with bed sores. She's learning to walk again after being bed ridden for a few months. Knees are shot but getting healthier and stronger again after eating normal foods once home. Her poor dad is a real trooper having to take care of her. They have some outside help that come twice a week.
The one thing I learned is that we have to patient with them. My mother started to repeat herself more and more. I realized that she's been busy as a house wife taking care of my sister, myself and dad then suddenly she lost that responsibility, pretty much like someone retires with nothing to do. I learn to let her question me as often as she likes until I can't take it anymore. I walk and come back 10 min later. We also live about 15 min away. We also request food from her. Most people thinks its horrible request food from a bunch of able bodies like us. Mom loves it, and allows her to have some type of self worth cooking for her grand sons and us of course. They need some forms of responsibilities. When the gardener miss his day and comes the next, you bet I will get that phone call about it by 9am that day. My friends are going through the same thing. That's very nice to hear that you are taking care of your mother. it is our duty to do so, no if or buts. |
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We are going through this now with my mother. She is just about to turn 85 and has dementia. My father passed in November. She is with my sister and brother-in-law who have been caring for her since after Thanksgiving.
My mom thinks she is OK and does not need help but that is not the case. My sister realizes it is too much to care for my mom so the family has been researching care facilities. My brother, who has been handling estate issues, is going to Vegas tomorrow. They will be taking my mom to have lunch and visit a care facility. My mom has also said she wants to go home, which adds complexity. |
A piece of advice I got from a contractor friend when I was installing toilet and shower hand rails for mom is to make sure there are some grab points no more than 15" above the ground in case of a fall.
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I took care of my Dad, by myself for the last 6 months of his life. He was 93 when he passed, I was 29 (had me late in life). By the end he couldn't do anything for himself. One of the hardest things I ever had to do. But glad that I was able to do it and he could be with family not in a nursing home.
I will probably end up doing the same for my Mom. Not because I want to, but I don't think I could live with myself if I didn't try to take care of her myself instead of putting her in a nursing home. Older I get the more life seems way too short and much more bittersweet. |
Thanks, Baz. I'll make sure my kids get those links for...me! :cool:
A few things. My MIL lives in a senior facility with onset of dementia...she refuses any in room care at all. We tried. She is 87. My wife has complete control of her estate and affairs. We will work to keep her out of assisted living for as long as possible. I am working to get a friend of mine in a VA facility (a really nice one here in Southern Maryland that he wants to get into) because his health is on a steep decline after a fall and broken hip last year. He laid on the floor for over 24 hours. He also doesn't like in home care giver presence (he lives alone) but I told him unless he has the folks come three times a week for at least two hours I won't help him in any capacity. He sees them three times a week for two hours. I also had him put a life alert button around his neck that has the agency call his daughter first then me. He hates it but he is like a lot of folks facing this: He is in a bite of denial. Best of luck to all. |
my grandmother lived by herself in a 55+ neighborhood for the past 15 years. Everyone in the family was worried about the cost of a nursing home. They ended up renting out her house and it more than covers the cost of her new place. Its a nice place they check up on her every day and she has people to talk to. She is happier there.
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My wife and I have her 97-year-old father living with us. He is 100% mentally intact and his only real disability is using a walker to get around and he is hard of hearing even with hearing aides. Been with us for 2.5 years now and all indicators point to him living to at least 100. Fortunately, we have a big home and he has a bedroom/bathroom all to himself at the other end of the house. We do have a hospital bed in his room so he can watch TV at night comfortably. 65" on the wall. He knows he is lucky to be living with us and we all hope he dies in his sleep in his room and never has to transition to Assisted Care.
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We've been going through this for several years with my Mom. She has been alone since my Dad passed in 2006. In 2016 she had a heart attack that has either brought on or accelerated her dementia. Progressed from independent to assisted living and is now in memory care. Neither my home or my sister's was set up for her to live with us and she never wanted to. Her dementia is now pretty bad. No short term memory at all. You literally have the same conversation with her over and over and she hallucinates pretty frequently. She still knows me and my sister but that's about it. Her 5 grandkids and 4 great grandkids are just an idea even though she sees them on holidays, etc. She is 86.
Her big issues were nutrition and taking her fairly complex meds on schedule. She was not eating well and could never remember her meds which impacted her physical health. That lead to the placement in assisted living. We got control of her finances pretty early. Seniors are a big target for scams. My well off ex father in law ended up destitute the last several years of his life after refusing financial oversight many times. His paid off nice home on 20 acres and all possessions were auctioned off when he died to pay his debts. |
Thanks, Baz. This is helpful and timely. We are currently dealing with a MIL/FIL situation.
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Thanks, guys!
My heart goes out to you and those you are trying to help. Sharing our situations and stories is very helpful. I'm still trying to figure a lot of this out...... |
THANKS for putting this reference together, quite relevant information as my sister and I deal with our rapidly declining 95 year old mother.
Dad at 97 is doing quite well in comparison. |
Mom has been acting a little crazy the past couple weeks or so and it finally dawned on me today she may have another UTI.
She had one back in October and we treated it with an antibiotic and got it cleared up and her personality seemed to return for the most part. I will get another urine sample to her doctor tomorrow for diagnostics so we can get her back on a treatment. I called our prospective caregiver this afternoon and she brought up the same thing. I wish I had thought of this earlier, like a week ago at least so we could have gotten to it quicker. She has a home health nurse who visits Mom every Thursday and I'm surprised she didn't bring this up. But it is what it is. I saw an ad for a company who offers pro-active management for urinary health and will look into this too: https://uqora.com/ |
Also, I know there are quite a few forums out there, but this is one I ran across I found helpful:
https://www.agingcare.com/caregiver-forum |
Thanks for posting this. My dad passed a couple years ago. My mom is 86 and refusing help...
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My experience with nursing homes with elder family members was that the many we tried were uniformly horrible (if the person was not pretty much able to care for themselves). Of course, I am only familiar with 6 or 7. I plan to live frugally enough while healthy that I can afford to buy my way out of them when the time comes so my wife and I can both die at home.
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My mom will be moving to a private apartment at a facility with memory care. Cost is beyond $7k/mo, yikes. She will have many things from home there, bed, dresser, pictures etc. The transition is not expected to be easy. The facility says no family contact for the first 2-3 weeks. That is going to be a very difficult time for all.
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FWIW My mom went through all of this and just passed peacefully in her sleep last week at 89. She was a bright strong woman all of her life but started showing signs of dementia in 2008 with compulsive sorting and losing track of her belongings. A few years later she was getting lost while driving and after putting her car in a planter at Target we retired her keys. We made regular visits and took her shopping and to appointments. She did have friends in the area who helped a lot and over time added in-home care for a while. Over time she became anxious living alone with a lot of stories about strangers and phantom bugs in her kitchen. Time for a move to a memory care facility. This was a very nice place with private apartments, elegant dining room with restaurant quality food from a menu, and a staff who created good relationships with her. It was expensive but fortunately my dad left behind a sound financial estate so money was not a problem. This kept her in good spirits for 5 years but covid lockdowns were really hard on her. We were not allowed to visit for nearly a year in 2020 and when we finally got in it was clear that she had lost a lot. We moved her to a small residential care home nearby with 5 elderly patients and full time care staff. It did feel like a home but over time she simply lost her ability to communicate, lost her ability to walk on her own, lost her ability to recognize faces, and eventually lost her ability to swallow food. She survived the covid pandemic but dementia/alz finally took her after 15 years of a downward spiral. Looking back I think we did the best we could for her and kept her in her home and socially active as long as possible. Dementia/alz is tough to watch and was a long slow decline for her. She was very loved and surrounded by lifelong friends and family until the end. She is in a better place now. |
No family contact would be a deal breaker for me.
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I’m going to get clarification.
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Just trying to make the right decisions is hard enough. I also don't understand the "no family contact for the first 2-3 week period" so would appreciate any clarification. Maybe it's just this particular facility's process they feel works best for all involved. All the best for you and Mom going forward.....SmileWavy |
standard places with good operations do not make the local NEWS
but some sure do and are very bad so their no contact is a BIG NO my wife's mom died in hurricane ANDREW's power loss in a care home they had generator back up but ran out of fuel later my mom was cared for in her own home until a bad stroke and avoided the post hospital thing by dying days later kind of the best way walking and talking then boom gone hope I am as lucky with several huge adult home complexes near by and others wanting to build more also it looks to be a growing trend locally |
Doing math on the monthly apartment cost works out to ~$10/hr for 24/7.
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Paul - maybe you don't need 24/7 - maybe just 12/7 (?)
The one place I toured here was at $4,100 per month for the basics....housing, meals, utilities, staff, etc. Did not include any medical stuff or personal care. The caregiver I'm trying to implement is approx. $30-35/hour. |
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(having spent a few years with dad in a memory-care facility, and thereafter more than that volunteering because the staff was 100% dedicated) The major stressors in life are death of close ones followed closely by major changes in living arraingments. For someone with their world already upside down that could be catastophic....Thinking they have been abandoned by family. It would be a major blow to someone already so weak. I hope you re-consider that place...and notify authorities in writing. Who knows what contracts are being signed or what care the resident is being given in the meantime. There are places that get themselves legally assigned 'Guardianship' by local courts and then all kinds of trouble begins while bills pile up and accounts disappear. |
astrochex- The very first thing to do is get all next-of-kin on the same page. And all in aggreement on paper.
One other idea is to have her live at home and get 24/7 nursing. This would probably work of to be less expensive and less stressful for her at least. It would require more oversight for ebveryone else. A bank or trust could set up paying bills automatically with a small cash account, re-filled for such purpose. It would require the parent declared 'not able' by the court first. |
Thanks for the advice all. I’ve reached out to the facility to discuss that issue.
My sister clarified the issue by saying no-contact is a recommendation not a mandate. I still want to talk to the facility to further understand why they would say this. |
We moved my Mom to memory care from assisted living a bit over a year ago. I don't understand the no contact bit but they must have their reasons. I'd want to make sure those make sense with your Mom's doctor. The monthly costs are in line for a small studio unit at my Mom's place with not much in add on services. Best of luck!
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Interesting about the no contact for 2-3 weeks. My mother is not in Memory care at this point.
My mother is 90 and has a bit of dementia. She does tire quickly, but is mostly able to function on her own but cannot handle her finances any more. She moved to Assisted living this year. The 2 Assisted Living near me are quite expensive. My mother is demanding and insisted on the more expensive at $8,300 a month. Image is very important to her. Includes meals, laundry, housekeeping, entertainment , and activities. It's like staying in a top Hotel. Medical and Memory care section are extra. The other one next door is very similar to the my mothers, $7,300 a month including Memory care and medical. Very nice, and many residents came from the more expensive one when their needs increased. I hope to convince her to switch soon, but she is strong willed and while I could, I don't want to force her. It's a difficult balancing game, especially with the hit to her IRA this past year. If she lives as long or longer than her mother, she will run out of money. |
For Women its really important to take care of hygiene due to the possibility of UTI's.
Hopefully bathing is something she still enjoys, make sure its often for her sake. |
Cranberry juice is good for UTI so I've heard.
Grapefruit juice will interfer with some medicines. |
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Thanks for the info. My Pop is 96 and lives alone at his home. He has morning care givers that
make sure he gets up and dressed, fed breakfast and make him a lunch before they leave. It is getting more difficult as time goes on. I promised him he will close his eyes for the last time in his home. |
Hadn't thought about this thread until I saw Shaun's thread just now, so thought an update was in order.
I ended up moving Mom into a local assisted living facility here in April of last year (2023). To her credit she has adapted and despite her age of 101, is still doing relatively good. I have Hospice involved to provide medical and hygiene care. She also gets that from the facility staff as needed. I also have a caregiver who stops in once or twice a week to help with Mom's feminine stuff like hair, nails, clothing....and then I visit also every week. The cost is $5,200/month. It's a 6 bed converted house in a golf course subdivision about 10 minutes away. I took over all Mom's financial affairs years ago as her POA. She has all her documents in place which I had reviewed again last year with a new estate attorney, so at least that stuff is done. Look forward to updates from fellow forum members on what their situation is and what they are doing..... |
I wish the prices were like yours Baz, mine are double that up here near NYC. They increased a lot since my last post. In the past 6 months she has gotten very weak, can barely get out of bed and I have gotten aids to help her.
While my mother set up a Trust in 2019, I was not really involved till 2 1/2 years ago. With the dementia starting to set in I had to contact and get permissions with the POA's to handle her health care proxy, car and insurance, pensions, IRA, bank accounts, credit cards, income taxes, selling her condo, schedule Dr. visits, and making arrangements for the assisted living. |
My parents are in their 80s. My mom has dementia and Parkinson's. My dad has refused to move from their house, so any attempts to get them to move to a retirement community, elder living, assisted living, etc. have been fruitless. Last fall my dad got to the point where he could no longer take care of my mom, so he tried hiring live-in caregivers. However, he cheaped out and tried to find them via word-of-mouth/under-the-table. But, unless you're super lucky, you tend to get what you pay for. So those live-in caregivers (I think he tried about 3 of them) all backfired. They simply didn't have any skills. But what do you expect for $500/week? He refused to go through a proper agency to get CNA care--mainly due to cost.
So Mrs. Noah & I did our homework (because no one else in the family was motivated to do so) and found my mom a memory care unit. That's just fancy speak for nursing home. They run from $6000-14,000 per month in our neck of the woods. Mrs. Noah works at one of those places on the pricier end of the spectrum. It was explained to her that most residents pay out of pocket for the first month, then use that time to apply for Medicaid (called MediCal in California). Medicaid then picks up the tab. MediCal eligibility is dependent upon income. My parents have too much income (even in retirement) to qualify for MediCal, so they'd be stuck with paying for the $12-14K/month tab. So we picked a more economical location. My mom lasted there 2 weeks. It was not an unpleasant place. The staff were all so nice. But my dad and sister couldn't bear to see my mom like that--living amongst strangers. My sister vowed to get my mom out of there. While she volunteered to take my mom in, that wasn't practical, which is how my mom wound up moving in with me come Thanksgiving. Remember in cartoons and comedies where they'd ask for volunteers to step forward, and instead all but one person would step back? My dad relented to hiring a proper caregiver. She'd come to our house during the weekdays, and Mrs. Noah and I would care for my mom during nights and weekends. That was about $1000/week. It wasn't hard work, to care for my mom. We have medical backgrounds, and Mrs. Noah's a saint. But it was really difficult to balance that with having a household that includes full-time jobs, kids (with their extracurriculars), and pets. First world concerns for sure, but for 8 months, I don't think Mrs. Noah and I went out for dinner, attended a kid's athletic or musical event, or even walked the dog around the block *together*. It was always one of us or the other, as someone always had to be home to watch my mom. And even with a caregiver it could still be stressful, as caregivers have lives, too, and they'd call in sick or have other commitments preventing them from working. What do you do at 9 pm when the caregiver calls and says she can't come the next morning? We tried both under-the-table (but skilled) caregivers and agencies alike. We found some women we *loved,* and others that were just so-so. But it was really wearing on my wife, and she was getting to her wit's end. We signed my mom up for hospice. That was helpful. They provided medications more easily than insurance did. They provided a hospital bed. They have a CNA come a couple times per week to assist with hygiene/bathing, and a social worker for whatever that's worth. But hospice was free (included in cost of insurance), so my dad was OK with that. He was just paying $1000/week for a caregiver. Actually, the cost was about $2000/week, but my parents have some unusual health insurance policy that reimburses for half the cost of formal (not under-the-table) elder care. Of course, it took Mrs. Noah about a month (and several hours' worth of telephone calls) to get that reimbursement process set up. A month ago, we had a summer vacation planned. So Mrs. Noah moved my mom back to my parents' house (15 minutes away), and my dad agreed to keep the caregiver, but as a live-in. Fortunately, both my parents seem to be happy (as is Mrs. Noah). Now we're up to $2000/week (actually $4000/week, but only $2000/week with reimbursement), but that's the price you pay for the luxury of living in your own house and not being relegated to a nursing home. |
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