One more thing, are you and your sister on the same side when it comes to mom's needs? Have you thought about a placement where she can easily move from AL to Memory care when needed and have a van service on site to take her to appointments. You can hire an aide to go with her and do other things.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, there are services that can take her to an appointment.Has she signed a medical release so you can speak with Drs? If so, you could face time into session or see if you can set up a 5 minute debrief with a nurse. you can also pay extra for a nurse instead of an aide to take her to appointment.

The biggest mistake I made was sacrifice my health to please an aging, angry and explosive mother. It wasn't fair to my children or spouse either.

Is she on meds for outbursts and anxiety? If not, that may make it hard to keep anyone willing to work for her.

Yes. She is on meds. Frankly, she’s always been a screamer so it’s not just the dementia. She’s only screamed at me once in two years and that is pretty good. Her eyes glaze over and she seems to be having an out of body experience and doesn’t appear to know what she is saying or recall it later.

My therapist thought she was borderline as in a personality disorder.

I got her to a psych and meds are amazing!

She is usually ok unless my sister upsets her. My sister upsets and causes anxiety for everyone in the family…they might have the same mental illness.

After reading all of your posts, I am not going to participate in this knee surgery.

My mother had PT a while ago and said it helped and then said it did not. She probably stopped doing the exercises and this is why her knees hurt.

I can’t imagine her in rehab actually doing anything like exercise, which she claims to dislike.

I am going to take a post above to heart. I’m not letting a dementia patient ruin my health and life any more than she has already.

Not the person you are responding to, but sounds like my mom right down the glazed look in her eye when she loses it and hurls an anger bomb and not sticking with PT. Do you have a geriatric social worker or case manger checking on her who can coordinate services? My mother has always been a screamer too, but when she was younger she had some self-awareness and remorse. With aging decline she lost that and the abusive behavior got worse and worse. The problem with that is some will lose the ability to care about your welfare. The motherhood instinct sometimes declines or vanishes so they can eat you alive without remorse. My mother may have always been difficult, but she definitely used to care about my wellbeing and had the mothering instincts. With age and dementia she was livid at me for getting a needed surgery that could have been a cancer situation of avoided too long. She did not care about my health at all and was calling me at the hospital with orders. Once released she wanted me to do x, y and z. It was eye opening. I was no longer human to her, but simply a servant to meet her needs.

It's great your mom was willing to get meds. That is huge. Hopefully she will stay on them. A friend of mine and I both had the issue of our moms taking themselves off meds and going back on without following doctor's orders which created really bad behavior, side effects and withdrawal. Definitely detach and let professionals take over. Treat her as challenging client. Stay professional and polite, but make an excuse to get off the phone when she gets challenging and assign her to other team members (hired professionals as much as possible.)

Also Pp here. My
Mother was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder years ago and the attention seeking for illnesses is a huge part of how this has manifested for years. Stupid me to keep falling for it.

Naborforce or similar independent person. My mom has cognitive decline and health anxiety. She moved to anssiated living near me last year. Every month it’s a new emergency and she would call and call complaining to me something is terribly wrong. So at first I put my life on hold.trying to get in to see the dermatologist (cancer!); gastro (cancer) cardio (heart failure!) and gp (brain tumor) and orthopedics (terrible neck pain). This culminated in multiple trips to urgent care and finally hospital. She had everything checked out. Doctor pulled me aside and said it was cognitive decline exacerbating anxiety and that was exacerbating vague feelings of Illness, dizziness, nerve pain etc.

I stopped caring for myself kids or jobs while all this was happening and it was not good. I now have hired a caregiver (even though she is in expensive assisted living) to listen to her, take her out etc. I still take her ton necessary appointments but don’t drop everything because of her anxiety over her health. I also got her into concierge practice which helps me by coordinating things.

I can’t speak to the knee issue except to say that if she can do PT , brace, cortisone shots it would be better than surgery at her age if she has cognitive issues. My MIL who has no cognitive issues had horrible reaction from anathesia and didn’t recognize us for 6 weeks. Recovered but it was awful (her surgery was necessary).

Anonymous wrote:The stress of caring for my mom, moving her, dealing with her outbursts from mental illness / anxiety, and now dealing with all the smelly junk that needs to be cleared from her house has caused me stress.

Now she wants a medical procedure. I’m busy dealing with my own medical stuff, which increased due to stress.

She won’t rest until she sees a doctor about this medical thing, which is something she never bothered to do before now when she was on her own. (Knee surgery)

I just can’t do this for her now. My own health has take a nosedive and I have to take care of that.

Are there services that will drive her to an appointment AND take notes on what the doctor says?

She has a way of raising some huge issue to get attention so I can’t tell if this desire for surgery is really needed or more of the same with seeking attention.

OP, you have agency in this situation. Tell her…no. Say, not now mom. I have some medical needs of my own that I have to attend to first. Leave it at that. Refuse to engage in further conversation about it.

Get a geriatrician.

I am glad you decided not to organize the surgery!
Ok this is going to sound harsh but at this age and state I would ignore anything that doesn’t hurt or can be treated with painkillers.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, there are services that can take her to an appointment.Has she signed a medical release so you can speak with Drs? If so, you could face time into session or see if you can set up a 5 minute debrief with a nurse. you can also pay extra for a nurse instead of an aide to take her to appointment.

The biggest mistake I made was sacrifice my health to please an aging, angry and explosive mother. It wasn't fair to my children or spouse either.

Is she on meds for outbursts and anxiety? If not, that may make it hard to keep anyone willing to work for her.

Yes. She is on meds. Frankly, she’s always been a screamer so it’s not just the dementia. She’s only screamed at me once in two years and that is pretty good. Her eyes glaze over and she seems to be having an out of body experience and doesn’t appear to know what she is saying or recall it later.

My therapist thought she was borderline as in a personality disorder.

I got her to a psych and meds are amazing!

She is usually ok unless my sister upsets her. My sister upsets and causes anxiety for everyone in the family…they might have the same mental illness.

After reading all of your posts, I am not going to participate in this knee surgery.

My mother had PT a while ago and said it helped and then said it did not. She probably stopped doing the exercises and this is why her knees hurt.

I can’t imagine her in rehab actually doing anything like exercise, which she claims to dislike.

I am going to take a post above to heart. I’m not letting a dementia patient ruin my health and life any more than she has already.

You may see if the doctor can give her cortisone injections to help with the knee pain if you’re not going to do surgery. I think she even had rooster crown injections also. Those helped my mom for awhile.

Anonymous wrote:Yes, there are services that can take her to an appointment.Has she signed a medical release so you can speak with Drs? If so, you could face time into session or see if you can set up a 5 minute debrief with a nurse. you can also pay extra for a nurse instead of an aide to take her to appointment.

The biggest mistake I made was sacrifice my health to please an aging, angry and explosive mother. It wasn't fair to my children or spouse either.

Is she on meds for outbursts and anxiety? If not, that may make it hard to keep anyone willing to work for her.

Yes. She is on meds. Frankly, she’s always been a screamer so it’s not just the dementia. She’s only screamed at me once in two years and that is pretty good. Her eyes glaze over and she seems to be having an out of body experience and doesn’t appear to know what she is saying or recall it later.

My therapist thought she was borderline as in a personality disorder.

I got her to a psych and meds are amazing!

She is usually ok unless my sister upsets her. My sister upsets and causes anxiety for everyone in the family…they might have the same mental illness.

After reading all of your posts, I am not going to participate in this knee surgery.

My mother had PT a while ago and said it helped and then said it did not. She probably stopped doing the exercises and this is why her knees hurt.

I can’t imagine her in rehab actually doing anything like exercise, which she claims to dislike.

I am going to take a post above to heart. I’m not letting a dementia patient ruin my health and life any more than she has already.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How old is she OP and does she have any cognitive decline, even minor? One of my biggest regrets is getting my mom knee surgery last fall. Search for my disaster on this forum- she got hospital delirium and hasn’t been the same since. And the impacted knee still causes her issues.

I am so sorry to hear that your mother got hospital delirium. Thank you for sharing you had a thread about this. I’ll do a search.

Yes, my mother has cognitive decline. I have wondered if a doctor would even do the surgery at her age. I thought I might be able to take her to a doctor and have the doctor tell her it’s a bad idea, but who knows what they’d say?

I’m the PP with the mom who had a bad outcome with knee surgery. Please research the effects of anesthesia on the elderly who have cognitive decline. That was the only box I didn’t check when preparing for her surgery because I assumed it would be safe. And just an FYI- in preparation for the actual knee surgery my mom had to have appointments with all of her doctors so they could sign off on it. In addition to the surgeon we had to go to her primary care doctor, her cardiologist, her dentist, we had a CT scan and we had blood work. All required within 30 days of the surgery. In my moms case after the surgery she ended up in the hospital for almost a week, followed by rehab for another week followed by home health care (nurse, occupational therapist and physical therapist). The delirium was terrifying and I had to have my brother fly in to help at one point. Over six months later and she still has the physical therapist weekly and still complains about that knee (and the surgery itself was a success) and her cognitive decline has gotten exponentially worse. The ONLY saving grace was that all the therapies come to her and I haven’t had to take off work to get her to those appointments.

Yes, there are services that can take her to an appointment.Has she signed a medical release so you can speak with Drs? If so, you could face time into session or see if you can set up a 5 minute debrief with a nurse. you can also pay extra for a nurse instead of an aide to take her to appointment.

The biggest mistake I made was sacrifice my health to please an aging, angry and explosive mother. It wasn't fair to my children or spouse either.

Is she on meds for outbursts and anxiety? If not, that may make it hard to keep anyone willing to work for her.

Anonymous wrote:How old is she OP and does she have any cognitive decline, even minor? One of my biggest regrets is getting my mom knee surgery last fall. Search for my disaster on this forum- she got hospital delirium and hasn’t been the same since. And the impacted knee still causes her issues.

I am so sorry to hear that your mother got hospital delirium. Thank you for sharing you had a thread about this. I’ll do a search.

Yes, my mother has cognitive decline. I have wondered if a doctor would even do the surgery at her age. I thought I might be able to take her to a doctor and have the doctor tell her it’s a bad idea, but who knows what they’d say?

How old is she OP and does she have any cognitive decline, even minor? One of my biggest regrets is getting my mom knee surgery last fall. Search for my disaster on this forum- she got hospital delirium and hasn’t been the same since. And the impacted knee still causes her issues.

Look into Naborforce. Good luck. I’m there too.

The stress of caring for my mom, moving her, dealing with her outbursts from mental illness / anxiety, and now dealing with all the smelly junk that needs to be cleared from her house has caused me stress.

Now she wants a medical procedure. I’m busy dealing with my own medical stuff, which increased due to stress.

She won’t rest until she sees a doctor about this medical thing, which is something she never bothered to do before now when she was on her own. (Knee surgery)

I just can’t do this for her now. My own health has take a nosedive and I have to take care of that.

Are there services that will drive her to an appointment AND take notes on what the doctor says?

She has a way of raising some huge issue to get attention so I can’t tell if this desire for surgery is really needed or more of the same with seeking attention.