My Mom is in assisted living. I did not feel it was a good choice for her because unless you have family or someone close to you advocate for your health care and get you involved with activities and look after you , you are on your own. My Mom's health has declined since she has been in there and she was healthy with my one on one care before she went in. You have to be fairly independent to make out alright in assisted living. Her life outside of there was taken away. My heart was ripped out because I knew in my gut she wouldn't get what she needed there in terms of companionship and motivation and good health care. My three sisters are all against my feelings. They never came to visit her hardly and never took an interest in her health care.I kept them informed of all her care and she was being well taken care of in every aspect of her life. I want to find positives with assisted living and I have found one or two. But without being stimulated everyday and kept in the "real world" you can decline. She has one health issues after another since she has been there and I advocated for her to my sister's and the dr. and the nurses. The resent this and now have threatened to sue me if I get involved with her healthcare. She is currently in a rehab attached to where she lives for almost three weeks and was in the hospital a week before that with tremors which she never had in her life. She has been put on very high levels of lasix for chronic edema in her legs as a result of inactivity in assisted living and not elevating her legs. She got an infection in her leg for the edema pressing so hard on her legs with swelling an ulcer formed and split the skin. Compression stockings were cutting off her circulation and the dr had to order for them to never be worn again. I had to advocate with emails to my sister's every step of the way and they never listened because I disagreed with putting my mom into assisted living. She also has uti's now that she never had at home. She only gets washed twice a week and has developed rashes on her legs from rubbing of depends and not getting washed enough. My mother pays 9000.00 dollars a month to live there! And she is not rich that money will be gone in no time. And then medicade will take over and she will probably have to have a roommate. Her room is small already! she is 89 and still does very well. I pray for her to be alright and be able to walk and be strong and be able to go back to her apt again or she will have to go to a nursing home because they sold her house two blocks from me an hour and ten minutes from where she lives now and they would never let her live with me or themselves. I
I would suggest you look into finding another AL that has a NH unit adjacent to the AL. It sounds like your mom will be able to be placed into the NH sooner than later and this way you do not have to move her again. Based on your descriptions, your mom cannot really do her ADL's (activities of daily life) that AL needs their residents to do. She should be able to bathe herself and have basic bathroom hygiene. It sounds like she doesn't and so might need NH level of care. I think you should expect to get a letter from the AL soon that your mom needs a higher level of care....which means she will need to be moved. if you don't seem to be doing anything about this, the next step is they send you a "30 day notice". you want to avoid that happening as other facilites will be told about it and you all will be look at as being non-compliant in care.
If you go and find the places, I think you will be more relaxed about where mom is and find a place or two that works for mom;s care and your worries. Then have a family meeting and say here are 3 choices for moving mom to. Then everybody agree on 1 and on how payment is going to be done and who is going todeal with the Medicaid application. Personally I'd make whomever did the real estate sale be saddled with all this. you will have your hands full in dealing with the move and getting her settled. My gut feeling is that you & your mom are very interdependent and she can feel your concern and worry about the AL and in turn makes her worry and be fearful. A new place and new start for both of you, should be good.
Now unless she is terrifically wealthy, your mom is going to run out of funds and so will need to apply for Medicaid. What happened with the $ - the proceeds - from the sale of her home? Medicaid is required to do a full 5 year look back on where her $ went. So if all this $ has been going to pay for AL, you all should be OK. But if your sisters diverted any of the $ to things for themselves or anything not specific to mom and her care, there will be a transfer penalty in which family will have to private pay for mom;s stay in the NH. Please look into this so no big surprises later on for you and mom & your family when you eventually apply for Medicaid for her. Good luck and realize that none of this is every easy!
My take on assisted living places: they are a BUSINESS first and foremost and exploit the elderly and families - all they really want is MONEY.
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