It’s been a rough couple of weeks for M0m and our family. She’s been struggling with a urinary tract infection for the past few months which is zapping her energy and making her confused. We’ve become pretty good at recognizing her UTI’s because she doesn’t get a fever or show any signs of infection. We notice a certain “stare” or “look” about her. She also gets very absent minded and confused.
Mom was finally admitted to the hospital last week to rehydrate her and to give her an IV antibiotic treatment. We try to get the doctor to admit her to the hospital when she reaches this stage so she can get the attention she needs but it’s a hard sell if she doesn’t have a fever or show obvious signs of distress.
They only kept her overnight and released her suddenly late in the day after telling me she would be staying for a few days. It was like they suddenly needed a bed so they released her. When I arrived to pick her up she was in the hallway in a wheelchair with her nightgown on. She had an IV in her, a catheter and a plug up her nose to stop a bloody nose. She didn’t look ready to be released!!
I took Mom back to her apartment at the senior home and helped her get settled. She was totally confused and kept getting out of bed. I asked where she was going and she kept saying “I don’t know”. I finally got her to stay in bed and sat with her until she fell asleep. It was like putting my kids to bed when they were infants. In fact Mom’s acting more and more like an infant every day.
Many times over the past few days I’ve had to dress and undress my mother. There’s nothing more humiliating than a 53 year old son changing his mother’s diaper and dressing her. I guess it would be more humiliating for her if she realized what was happening to her but that part of her mind doesn’t function anymore. It’s so, so hard to watch her fade away mentally.
The next day Mom went to the dining room for lunch and took a hard fall. She hit her head requiring 3 stitches and hurt her back. They took her to the ER in an ambulance and checked her out but sent her home despite our pleas to keep her in for evaluation. She’s now in severe pain and requires 24 care. The caretakers tell us every morning that she’s not sleeping at all at night and keeps getting up and wandering around her apartment.
Over the weekend she called me and my sister over and over. It seemed like she was confused and was searching for a familiar voice. She’s struggling so much right now and there’s nothing we can do to help her except comforting her. Watching your parents grow old sucks!
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When is it time to move your parents into assisted living? Mom is currently in “independent living” at her facility where she lives alone and cares for herself. Lately she’s been declining and we’re getting concerned for her well being. Her mental abilities are declining rapidly and she’s completely disorganized.
We have a caretaker coming in every day for a few hours to clean up her daily mess and keep her company. On weekends we visit her and take her to movies and dinner. It’s been working so far but as she declines more, we’re going to have to move her into assisted living. She’s going to need more care very soon so we’re starting the search for assisted living.
We’re exploring different facilities in the area and we’re considering hiring a consultant or a service to help us find the right assisted living facility. We’re considering using a company called A Place for Mom. It’s a free service and looks like they have a good reputation.
Have you used A Place for Mom or a similar service? If you’ve used a service please comment on this post and let me know the name of the company and your experience with using a service. We’re going to need to make a decision in the next month or two so your input is much appreciated.
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Yes Mom is hitting the road this weekend, flying to Cleveland to visit my sister…by herself. She made the trip alone last Thanksgiving but she’s not the same person she was last year. Mentally she’s slowed down and easily gets confused. It’s hard for her to keep her apartment organized and she’s not capable of handling the administrative part of her life. I pay all of her bills and handle all of her administrative issues.
The flight is non-stop so once we get her on the plane she should be fine. My biggest fear is that she’ll drive the flight attendants crazy. She’s so demanding and wants everything immediately, just like a small child. Maybe we can put one of those stickers on her so the flight attendants will know they have to pay extra attention to her!
Seriously, I am concerned about her going through the new security at the airport. We’re not allowed to accompany her past security so it will be up the the airline employee to get her through. We always get a wheelchair for Mom at the airport because she just can’t walk that far anymore so it’s out of her hands once she gets into the wheelchair. We jokingly told Mom that they’re probably going to feel her up while going through the new pat down search and she was excited! “It’s been a long time since someone felt me up” she joked.
We’ll see how it goes but I think this will be the last time we’ll put Mom on a flight alone. She’s been asking if someone is coming with her so I think she’s concerned but still wants to go. We checked into sending my daughter on the flight a few weeks ago and they wanted almost $2000 round trip from San Francisco to Cleveland. That was a definite “NO” since it wasn’t even first class.
I hope everything goes well on the flight for Mom. She’s excited to go and we want her to get away while she still can. It’s so hard watching the very slow decline.
Technorati Tags: pat down search, airport security, senior travel
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Do you parents call you constantly, often forgetting why they called? My mother calls me at least 3 times a day and she’s driving me crazy. She’ll call my cell phone then my home number if I don’t answer and finally my office number if I don’t answer. She’ll leave a message on all three voicemails saying “Call me when you get a chance. I have a question for you”. When I have time to call her back she doesn’t remember why she called. I ask her to ask her question when she leaves the message so I know why she called but she forgets. It’s so frustrating because I can’t drop everything at work to answer the phone and I want to help her.
Are your parents driving you crazy? I recently read a great book that’s helping me cope with my mother’s constant calls. The book is Are Your Parents Driving You Crazy? Expanded Second Edition: Getting to Yes with Competent, Aging Parents
by Joseph A. Ilardo and Carole R. Rothman and I highly recommend it if you’re getting frustrated with your aging parents.
Now in a newly revised and expanded second edition, the co-authors, therapists, and consultants Joseph A. Ilardo and Carole R. Rothman address the common problems of adult children dealing with their aging parents. Practical advice is provided for caregivers and family members having to deal with aging parents who refuse to stop driving when they can no longer safely do so; skimp on expenses when there is no need to do so; refuse to see and/or ignore their doctor; antagonize home health aides; avoid discussing end-of-life issues; as well as those who want to move in with their children. But more than this, this book has sound advice on dealing with family members who never offer to help, who resent the time the caregiving sibling spends on caring for the aging parent, actually discourages caregiving sibling involvement. There is even a section dealing with children who take undue advantage and even steal from the aging parent. Additionally, this new edition addresses the reality that assisted living is not a solution for everyone. If you have an aging parent requiring help and care, then give Joseph Ilardo and Carole Rothman’s book a careful reading. It could save time, energy, anxiety, all the while improving the quality of the relationship between an aging parent and their adult children.
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Mom called the other evening and she was very excited. She said she just got back from a great field trip with her assisted living facility and she had a fantastic time. I was so happy that she had a great time and I asked her where she went. Her response burst my bubble as I went from feeling very excited for her to very sad.
“I don’t remember what we did today but I had a great time. What did I do? Damn it I can’t remember where we went but it was a lot of fun” she said.
I asked her caretaker what they did that day and he said they didn’t leave her apartment. They stayed home and watched a playoff baseball game.
Unfortunately these memory lapses are happening every day now. They used to be occasional and slowly they became more frequent. Now the memory lapses are happening all the time. Mom’s memory is shot.
She still cares for herself and functions pretty well but we have to have someone keep an eye on her every day. She makes a total mess of her apartment every day with clothes and papers scattered everywhere. The caretaker cleans up the mess every day but within an hour it looks like a family of five came over and messes up her apartment.
It seems like Mom’s memory is getting events mixed up. She did go on a field trip to Angel Island on the ferry a few days before for a picnic. It was a beautiful day and everyone had a great day. I think she called me to tell me about the ferry ride and picnic but she called two days after it happened. In her mind the field trip happened the day she called me but it really happened 48 hours before.
It’s so hard watching Mom slowly fade away. It’s been years since I had a conversation with my real mother. The person is her body isn’t the mother that raised me. She’s just a shell of herself and struggles with remembering the simplest things. One good thing is her long term memory is still in pretty good shape. When we play trivia games she kicks our butt, quickly recalling facts from years ago. As for remembering what happened a few minutes ago, it’s so sad to watch. I pray she doesn’t live to the point where she forgets who we are. That will be so hard to deal with.
Share your stories in the Comments and tell me how you’re dealing with your fading parents.
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I read an interesting story the other day on www.cnn.com about Gary Coleman who passed away a few weeks ago. The story talked about his living will and how he wanted to be kept alive unless he was in an irreversible coma for at least 15 days. The problem is that Coleman’s ex-wife, whom he designated as his agent to make medical decisions for him, ordered the doctors to remove him from life support after just one day. You can read the entire story here.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/06/16/living.wills.coleman/index.html?eref=igoogle_cnn
It’s so important for you to decide now how you want to be treated when you’re unable to make medical decisions for yourself. You need to have an advanced medical directive that spells out every scenario and how you want to be treated. Do you want to be placed on life support if you’re in a coma? How long would you want to be placed on life support? Do you want a DNR (do not resuscitate) order if you have a stroke or heart attack? You need to think about it now and get it in writing.
We’re going through this now with my mother. She’s unable to make even simple decisions for herself. She can’t remember the simplest things these days which frustrates her to no end. Luckily my parents created a living will with an advanced directive many years ago when they were of sound mind and body. There is no way she could make medical decisions for herself today and she depends on us to make them for her. When the time comes that her health fails then we have the advanced directive to guide us.
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I was going through my mother’s bank statements the other day and I noticed a recurring charge for $29.95 from an online mall website. I logged into her email account to see if they’d been communicating with her and I almost fell out of my chair. She had subscribed to so many email lists that she had over 10,000 unread emails in her account.
She was getting investment tips from at least a dozen investment “gurus”. She was also receiving email from The Perfect Abs as well as numerous health “experts”. She was even learning how to cook organically even though she doesn’t cook anymore.
It took me over 2 hours to clear out her email account and unsubscribe her from the newsletters. I also discovered she was signed up for 3 credit monitoring services in addition to the online mall. She also receives a lot of junk mail that is targeted to seniors and many of the offers look very suspicious.
While I was unsubscribing Mom from the newsletters, I checked out some of the websites of these “gurus”. Many of the websites are very confusing and encourage you to click on links that will sign you up for recurring services. If you ever signed up for an account at GoDaddy.com you know what I mean. Their website is very confusing and they’re constantly upselling additional services to you.
It’s really sad to see these vultures preying on seniors who are on a fixed income and are struggling to survive financially. Even when you try to explain to your parents not to sign up for these services they just don’t understand. The websites, direct mail and telemarketers are designed to sell them services they don’t need and most of the time they don’t know they’re signing up for a recurring charge.
Keep an eye on your parents bank accounts and email accounts to make sure they aren’t being scammed!
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Mom was released from the hospital yesterday after 11 days. What a roller coaster ride it’s been! The doctors were stuck on the fact that one of her brain scans showed signs of a stroke and they were convinced that was the reason she could not swallow properly. They didn’t feed her for 10 days while they waited to see if she would get strong enough to eat. If she couldn’t eat she couldn’t get stronger so round and round we went. The strange thing is that she made a dramatic recovery in just 24 hours after barely hanging on a few days earlier.
We knew they were getting ready to release her because Medicare was about to stop paying for the pneumonia illness which was almost gone. Even though she was weak and hadn’t eaten in over a week, they were going to release her.
Finally they gave her some pudding to test her ability to swallow and she did fine except she sneezed 4 times in a row as soon as she swallowed it. We all looked at each other and said “Mom’s back!” because she’s been sneezing after every meal forever. Her Mother also sneezed after every meal so we assumed it was a family trait.
The doctor said it wasn’t good that she sneezed after she swallowed because that’s a sign she was aspirating. She’s been aspirating most of her life and it was never a problem until now. They stopped feeding her and said we may have to think about hospice since she didn’t want a feeding tube.
We were perplexed. Mom looked better than she’s looked in years despite being on just IV’s for more than a week but they were talking about putting her out to pasture. When she was at her weakest point she said she just wanted to die and didn’t ever want a feeding tube so they took that literally and gave up on her.
On Sunday morning we received a call from the hospital and they wanted permission to put in a feeding tube because she needed nutrition. Mom agreed it was okay so they were ready to put in the tube. Before they put in the tube they decided to try some soft food to see what would happen. Mom ate the food and wanted more. No sneezing, no coughing, no problem!
Finally we were heading in the right direction and Mom was on the road to recovery!!
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Mom has been in the hospital for 8 days now and her pneumonia is almost gone. She’s still having trouble swallowing so she hasn’t eaten since last Thursday, over 9 days ago. It looks like she had a minor stroke at some point which could have caused the swallowing problem, hence the pneumonia.
We have a meeting this afternoon with the hospital case worker and I know what it’s about. We went through a similar meeting with the hospital when Dad became ill. The hospital will say the initial illness has been cured so they have to discharge the patient even though there are other issues. In Mom’s case, she can’t eat anything but since the pneumonia is gone the hospital can’t bill Medicare any more. Of course they discharge the patient ASAP so they’re not on the hook for the bills. When the patient enters a new facility for rehab, Medicare kicks in again. You wonder why the hospital doesn’t keep the patient until all problems are resolved? I do see their point that the patient needs more attention then they get in the hospital and special care so a rehab facility is a better place for her.
In my Dad’s case, they just discharged him and said they were sending him to a rehab facility. We didn’t know anything about the procedures and the reasoning so went along with them. It turns out they put him in a horrible facility where they yelled at him when he tried to get out of bed. He was weak and disoriented and they treated him like a piece of meat. It was horrible.
After about 10 days they told us they were discharging him. In other terms, Medicare stopped paying for his care. We had to find another place for him in less than 48 hours and we didn’t know what to do. Here’s a man with stage 4 stomach cancer without a place to go to be cared for.
Later we discovered that a hospital or rehab facility can not discharge a patient without providing us 3 options. If we don’t like any of the options they have to keep the patient until they provide us an acceptable alternative. I’m sure they’re going to tell us today that Mom will soon be discharged and will be moving to a rehab facility before returning home.
Wish me luck!
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Mom usually calls us a few times a day if we don’t call her first. I usually call her every morning on my way to work but I didn’t call today because Friday morning is her “hair” day. She’s usually up and out the door by 9:30 to get her hair done and I don’t want to make her late.
On Friday none of us heard from her and she didn’t answer her home phone or cell phone. Since she didn’t answer we assumed she was just out on a field trip with her friends.
Finally her caretaker reached her at 4:30. Mom said she got her hair done and went to lunch. She’s had a cold and she said she was tired and didn’t feel well but we didn’t think there was any reason to worry. She’d be heading down for dinner at 5 followed by Bingo or poker after dinner.
We tried to call her at 8 for our nightly check in but she didn’t answer either phone. Finally my sister called the front desk to have them check on her. The night clerk went upstairs and said he thought he woke her and she was tired but fine.
I decided to go check on her in person because she’s never hard to reach. I had the night clerk open her door because she wasn’t answering the door. We went in and she was passed out on the bed partially clothed. We tried to revive her but she was very weak and dehydrated. There was a trail of clothes and jewelry on the floor and we couldn’t find her cell phone. I called 911 to get her to the hospital.
I was worried because she was wearing the top to the sweatsuit she wore on Thursday and never wears the same clothes two days in a row. Also the Friday morning paper was still outside her door so it looked like she never left her apartment.
Did she really get her hair done and have lunch in the dining room? Her hair was a mess and she was completely out of it. I asked the night clerk if she really did go down for lunch and dinner and he wasn’t sure. It looked like she’d been in bed since Thursday night and couldn’t get out of bed to call for help. Our worst nightmare was happening.
It turns out Mom has pneumonia and possibly congestive heart failure. She’s in the hospital now struggling to breathe and is very disoriented. She’s not responding to 2 1/2 days of treatment and we’re very concerned. This doesn’t look good.
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