Reply to no good deed goes unpunished

Forum Index » Eldercare

Reply to "no good deed goes unpunished"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote]OP just want to know if there are updates. Your mom is so much like mine and I am wondering if you found a residential place and how it worked out.[/quote]

OP here. Just checked this thread. Its been a very challenging few weeks. My mother had a sudden and significant decline, and is now squarely in 'severe cognitive decline'--with paranoia, agitation, confusion, and unsafe behaviors. She has had two full medical workups and unfortunately its just dementia progression. I have had to hire 24/7 caregivers to sit with her in her assisted living facility which is ruinously expensive, so we are moving her tomorrow to the memory care wing. Its not how I wanted to do things--there are a few memory cares that are closer to me and that I think are better staffed, but I dont think we can wait the 2-3 weeks before we can move into one. In addition to expense, finding caregiver coverage over the holidays is tough and my mother is extremely agitated and suspicious around them--hates having them in her room (we had to remove the phones because she was calling the police saying she was being abused, when they had to try to keep her in her room as she was wandering the halls and knocking on doors in the middle of the night).

So, wish me luck. This has been so shocking. She was in decline, and confused, but was showering, dressing, going to meals, and able to have a conversation up until the past few weeks. Now she has no recollection moment to moment, has no sense of where she is, major pieces of her life history are gone. and she is so distressed, she is convinced that the caregivers are abusing her, or that we are all colluding, she is so angry at me for abandoning her, and is so upset that I do not believe that they are hurting her, etc. (they are not, one incident she described as torture was them taking her blood pressure). Its unbearably awful.  I hope that she eventually settles down and does better in memory care, but its funny, just a month or two ago I was feeling like she wasn't ready for memory care yet, and wanted to ensure I could find one with "high functioning" people, now I'm just hoping to find one that can handle her challenging behaviors.

I have sent several long texts to my sibling about what's happening. No response from him. He has no kids, spouse, pets, etc. Meanwhile my husband's mother fell this past week and was in the hospital too (we have both mothers here) and our teen kids have been more or less neglected while we deal with it all. [/quote]

Thank you for coming back OP. That is so tough. I do wish you luck and we are cheering you on.

Is your mom on any medication? Sometimes anti-anxiety with an antipsychotic helps or just finding the right combo. At her age the worry about making sure she isn't kicked out of her facility and doesn't drive you insane is far more important than the worry about side effects of powerful meds.

I am sorry your brother ignores your communication. I will tell you my sibling would "help" by doing the absolute minimum and mom would light up, behave and make me out to be evil so it only made things worse and I felt even less appreciation and more misunderstood. I had to detach a lot and accept it sucked. The right medication combo helps with having fewer pseudo emergencies too.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics