Excessively dependent mother still completely helpless months after dad's death

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If your mom can spend 12,000 a month, I would have a serious talk with your sister if their is room in either of your houses. If their is, the person who takes your mother in gets 6,000 a month. With that money the sister who takes in your mom gets to hire a full time housekeeper not only for your mom but also for your household. You will no longer have to cook or clean in your house. For $72,000 a year you can hire a M-F housekeeper as well as a weekend one.

This. And mom wont' be lonely anymore. She does not have much time left.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Obviously there is a to of resentment from OP and sister towards mom. I get that though if mom was never able to be involved really in parenting given her inability to do anything independently, that is going to leave scars.

I think you have to be careful though to not take that resentment out on her now that she is vulnerable and OP and sister have control over her life and her finances. Since mom can't make decisions, OP and sister are making them all for her but through a lens of being very frustrated and hurt by having had a helpless parent.

I think you need a neutral party here - maybe an adult social worker who can help advocate for what mom needs, what her limits and abilities are, what reasonable expectations are, what supports she needs and that person can stay in regular contact to see how she is doing.

There is no way Op and sister can be that person given their anger and resentment and disappointment in their mother as a person, a wife, a mother etc. it would be better for them to step back from the decision making and just visit and be her daughters and have someone else who doesn't have financial interest or childhood hurt / pain be her advocate.

OMG. The woman has been there for TWO weeks and her dutiful daughters are in regular contact with Mom. Give the woman time to adjust to her new environment before you start berating the way Op and her sister are handling things. You sound just perfectly awful, tbh.

Op says (top of page 2)
"My sister is very angry as well. We just paid $1300 to move my mother to the new apartment, and my sister took two additional days off from work to help set the place up. I arrived a few days later, after shopping for all her new needs, and completed the job, including hanging up pictures."

They are both angry with their mother. They are resentful of having "helped" her (not based on moms wants) and are upset they gave time and energy to their mother. They are very resentful. It isn't clear if they are paying for moms accommodations or if mom has her own money.

You give someone something they don't want and then get mad they don't immediately like it and act appreciative. That isn't the sign of someone who can be an advocate. These two women have decades of anger and resentment. It may be justifiable if mom has always just been a helpless passive figure - but it doesn't make them good advocates.

What Op and her sister are going through right now is VERY frustrating. It is also VERY typical - especially in the first few weeks of placing an elderly parent in a new environment.

You do not seem to have much, if any, experience with this. All I can tell you is that your judgement is really harsh and uncalled for.

NP. As someone who is going through something similar with MIL (though to a much lesser degree), agree 100%. OP and her sister are doing a great job (and it's agree you two seem to be on the same page and working well together, that is not always the case). What they've proposed is very reasonable. What their mother has proposed (paying hundreds of thousands to be waited on hand and foot or for OP and her sister to drop their lives (jobs, kids) to wait on her hand and foot when she is capable) is not. GL, OP.

OP here, and thank you. And thank you to the other posters for their encouragement.

That poster upthread castigating me is clueless. She doesn't know the half of it. And as far as Mom needing an advocate, she talked to the hospice social worker last week, after she had been in the new apartment only one week, telling her that her daughters are neglecting her. How do I know this? Because the social worker called me on the phone and said that the three-day-weekend visits are not enough for my mother, and my sister and I need to alternate longer visits. When I said that is impossible given my own responsibilities, she told me that my that my mother's needs come first. She actually told me to do "whatever my mom wants." (Hospice is helping my mother because she feels she has someone to help her get her "neglectful" daughters to pay more attention, but it is adding more angst for me and my sister.)

And I agree. It makes no sense to move my mother back into assisted living, with people with strokes and who can't speak or walk or even use the bathroom on their own, because she can't wants someone to adjust the shower temperature an change the channel - and at a cost of well over $100,000 a year. The day will come one day, I suspect, when she DOES need assisted living, but not now.

Shoot, I was going to suggest you enlist the facility's social worker to help figure this out.

It's possible that you could get very lucky with an aide who manages somehow to engage your mother and get her to move towards independence. In college I worked part time as a CNA and we had a resident who was extremely demanding. Staff would get impatient with her--they would even take away her call button and then shut her door when she started hollering. When I worked with her--2nd shift and everyone was in bed--I went to her room and offered coffee. She looked at me like I was crazy, I pointed out that (what with the hollering) she wasn't sleeping anyway so why not? It became a ritual. When she'd get mean and demanding I'd chuckle, she'd look at me cross-eyed, and we'd get things done. Plus an aide is not family and the right kind of person would be able to ignore the abuse and stay focused on the task at hand.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, several of your posts have referenced hospice. If your mom has hospice services, some medical professional has assessed that she has less than 6 months left to live. In my experience (PP w/ father who had dementia) it's VERY hard to qualify for hospice without a clearly terminal condition - they don't give away hospice services just for old age. So either you're misstating things out of confusion or there's something else going on here...

Just checked back in for a sec.....

The hospice I am referencing is the hospice we had in connection with my father. He definitely qualified. The service continues, to an extent, after death - with the survivors. The social worker contacted my mother after Dad died to see how she could help her with grieving. They also have offered my mother a bereavement support group, which she has thus far declined. I will continue to encourage her.

Yeah, no, you need to find a different SW. I would think the independent living place has one.

Who ever said you could find someone for less that $25--b.s. I live in the Midwest and did home health care a long, long time ago. I called my old boss to see about an aide to relieve my sister, whose house mom lived in during her 80s and who needed respite I would not able to provide. It was more than $25/hr and did not involve any tasks that would require CNA certification. And you would want to use an agency to hire someone rather than dealing with that yourself--background checks, having backups, etc.

I'm guessing that when your dad was incapacitated the people who were supposed to be caring for him ended up doing things for your mom?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would pay someone to come in daily with the job of teaching her to do these basic things she refuses to do and also to talk to her and be her companion. I think if you do that for awhile, with the person understanding that their job is to gradually get her to do the normal stuff on her own, then you won't have to spend all that money forever, maybe just a few months. After that you could cut back on the aide's hours to maybe just a few hours a day.

If you don't like that idea you could consider what we did with my mother when she was in her 70s and started having heart issues where she would push her alert button in the middle of the night and we had to rush over to her place or the hospital. (Turned out she needed a pacemaker.) What we did was buy a house together with mom with room enough for all of us and we (me, sister, brothers, spouses, adult kids, minor kids) all took care of mom until she died at 90. It was a privilege. And BTW we paid an aide (out of mom's money) to sit with her 8-4 M-F while we were at work toward the end of her life but family took care of her the rest of the hours.

Yes, it would be our hope that the aide could teach mom about the TV and the shower, but my fear is that she will still refuse to learn, preferring that the aide just do it. I suspect that rather than pare down the hours, we would end up increasing them to where she is attended to full-time.

I didn't fully realize how bad it was. It was masked to a large extent by the attention she was getting from the AL aides all last year, but now, two weeks into this, I see how extensive this problem is. And, she isn't stupid. She was skipped twice in school and graduated HS at age 16, and college (yes, college!) at 20. She married my father a few months later, just one week after her 21st birthday.

So it sounds like "learned helplessness" and it works for a lot of people including elderly and kids. At 88 it might be tough to unlearn it, especially since she is clearly stubborn. As smart as she is she might be able to manipulate the aide into doing everything for her, or maybe you can find an aide who is stronger than that. Neither you or your sister want her to live with you? Do you enjoy her company or are you mostly just annoyed by her?

Just being picky--"learned helplessness" is not the same as dependency. It is an entirely different thing and often linked to trauma.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If your mom can spend 12,000 a month, I would have a serious talk with your sister if their is room in either of your houses. If their is, the person who takes your mother in gets 6,000 a month. With that money the sister who takes in your mom gets to hire a full time housekeeper not only for your mom but also for your household. You will no longer have to cook or clean in your house. For $72,000 a year you can hire a M-F housekeeper as well as a weekend one.

OP here. As appealing as that idea is to me in one level - wow, I wouldn't have to cook and clean anymore! - the fact remains that my mother CANNOT afford to spend $12,000. (She has minimal concept of money since my dad always handled all financial matters, and in fact does not even know how much she has, al though we've told her. If we were cheats, which we are not, we could steal from her account. Quite easily.) That's why there's the argument about her returning to assisted living - she is likely to deplete the account within a few years, and it is very possible she will live to her mid-90s.

But thank you anyway for the idea.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, several of your posts have referenced hospice. If your mom has hospice services, some medical professional has assessed that she has less than 6 months left to live. In my experience (PP w/ father who had dementia) it's VERY hard to qualify for hospice without a clearly terminal condition - they don't give away hospice services just for old age. So either you're misstating things out of confusion or there's something else going on here...

Just checked back in for a sec.....

The hospice I am referencing is the hospice we had in connection with my father. He definitely qualified. The service continues, to an extent, after death - with the survivors. The social worker contacted my mother after Dad died to see how she could help her with grieving. They also have offered my mother a bereavement support group, which she has thus far declined. I will continue to encourage her.

Yeah, no, you need to find a different SW. I would think the independent living place has one.

Who ever said you could find someone for less that $25--b.s. I live in the Midwest and did home health care a long, long time ago. I called my old boss to see about an aide to relieve my sister, whose house mom lived in during her 80s and who needed respite I would not able to provide. It was more than $25/hr and did not involve any tasks that would require CNA certification. And you would want to use an agency to hire someone rather than dealing with that yourself--background checks, having backups, etc.

I'm guessing that when your dad was incapacitated the people who were supposed to be caring for him ended up doing things for your mom?

Yes, that's exactly what happened. And, according to the AL agreement, she was entitled to that. We were paying for both of them to be in AL so they could stay together. So she would hit her pendant if she wanted a gingerale, to have the TV channel changed, to bring her up meals from the dining room, etc. She became very accustomed to having a pendant to ring whenever she wanted something,

My sister and I explained to her that the pendant she has now, in the new place, is for emergencies - if she falls or if she is sick - and NOT for help with the shower, etc. She understands that and has not used it, but she also understands that if she were to go back to AL, she could go back to using the pendant for whatever she wants.

I'm still sticking with the compromise of a PT aide. My sister likes the idea as well. (I am heading over there in a couple of hours to talk with the staff about the situation. My sister is already there since it's her weekend.)

[Anonymous]

Another complicating factor here is that she is 88 and distressed (regardless of the legitimacy of the reason).

Her status with regard to functions and dementia could changes any day now.

I think the best bet for all of you is to keep her where she is, hire the best aide you can fine who can come for the most amount of time for the cheapest, and heighten your monitoring via the staff and checking in with the aides. Things could and likely will change, and though it's natural to want her to change, she probably won't in a measurable way.

[Anonymous]

I would leave her there. Why does it matter to you if she depletes her savings? They're her savings.

[Anonymous]

Is the place a nursing home? It kind of sounds like it?

Some states have laws that say the nursing home can't kick out patients even after they've run through their savings. Look into what your state says or wherever she's located.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:She needs companionship. The cheaper solution is to hire an aide or elder companion for a few hours a day or every other day and save the big guns for when and if she needs it someday.

Oops. Our messages overlapped.

As far as companionship, she has lovely neighbors - I've met three of them - who have asked her to join them with various social activities (and in the dining room for meals). So she has opportunity for socializing, but it's not the "help" she needs. When my sister and I made the very suggestion you did - hire an aide for every other day - she said she needs an aide full-time if she doesn't go back to AL. (Not overnights....she has the pendant.) But it would still be for at let 12 hours a day, at $25 an hour, five days a week, which adds up to $300 a day, or $1500 a week in addition to the $3,600 for the apartment. We're back up to almost $10,000 a month.

She has been irate on the phone the last couple of days because she says she is being neglected.

Why don't you hire her full time maid? It seems that all she needs is a maid. You can ask around in the local hotel, many of those ladies will be happy to take up job like that. 300 a day is a lot more then a maid will cost.

She really needs someone who is used to working with elderly people and their deficiencies, including emotional ones. We couldn't expect the maid to encourage my mom to go to exercise class or to the dining room, and I think that's critical.

Also, wouldn't it be enabling my mom? It's like saying, "here, Mom. I know you can't change the channel on the TV, so you will get a full-time maid to sit there all day and then, if you decide you want a different channel, she will do that for you."

Plus, I don't think it's all that cheap. Merry Maids charges $50 an hour for a two-hour minimum. It's two women, so $25/hr each.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Another complicating factor here is that she is 88 and distressed (regardless of the legitimacy of the reason).

Her status with regard to functions and dementia could changes any day now.

I think the best bet for all of you is to keep her where she is, hire the best aide you can fine who can come for the most amount of time for the cheapest, and heighten your monitoring via the staff and checking in with the aides. Things could and likely will change, and though it's natural to want her to change, she probably won't in a measurable way.

Yes, all true.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I would leave her there. Why does it matter to you if she depletes her savings? They're her savings.

She doesn't want to be left there. She wants to move back to the assisted living place where my dad was, for legitimate need, because she had round-the-clock attention.

As far as her savings, the concern is that once she depletes them, she'd have to go on Medicaid. My sister and I are trying to see she spends down her money as slowly as possible (with her needs still met) to avoid that possibility in the future.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is the place a nursing home? It kind of sounds like it?

Some states have laws that say the nursing home can't kick out patients even after they've run through their savings. Look into what your state says or wherever she's located.

No, it was an assisted living place - not a nursing home. And they did kick out people when they ran out of money. I don't think nursing home laws apply.

[Anonymous]

Your sister is absolutely and completely nuts if she thinks you should spend your own retirement money.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, your mother sounds a lot like my MIL. My FIL is still alive and incredibly capable despite being in his late 80s. He does every.single.thing for her, even sleeps on the floor at her command because she won't have him in the same bed or in a separate room. But even he is (FINALLY!) starting to get fed up and it's not pretty.

Wait, what? Your FIL sleeps on the floor? WTF? Why the heck does he agree to that?? At the very least why not move two beds into the bedroom? I would LOVE you to start your own thread and talk more about what’s going on there and what the dynamics are!! You said he’s starting to get fed up? What’s happening and what’s he doing?? How do you and your spouse deal with it all?

OP, you can get aides for $25/hour or less. I’m curious, and sorry if you already said, but what’s your own life like? Partner, kids, friends, hobbies, etc.? You are in a very tough position and you have my sympathy. I posted before but I’ll say it again: you should NOT spend your own retirement money to support your mother. I’m surprised your sister thinks it’s reasonable for you to risk being in a crappy nursing home in sacrifice to your mother’s demands. And at some point the alternate weekends will be too burdensome. Do you all live in the same town?