He was found walking aimlessly down the road close by. He was admitted on Monday and refuses to stay. The sister has asked for stronger 'anxiety' medication and decided by herself to give him a pill from another patient, which I find disturbing. Our doctor phoned them this morning and gave a script for same or similar after the sister asked for it. I feel they are there to deal with these issues and should by now already have the experience in knowing how to handle patients who resist. I was shocked to hear that he could have slipped out and would have thought that they have the elderly monitored to an extent. They told us that men are more difficult than the women.
It is very difficult for us and we don't want him back possibly worse than when he went in, if they say they cant keep him. We are worried. Any similar experiences?
My cousin called me from her assisted living facility and told me she was at the mall and that I should meet her there. She then wheeled herself into the parking lot of the assisted living saying she was looking for her car to leave.(She didn't have a car there.) She later grew very agitated that day and with such delusions that she was taken to ER with a change of mental status. They thought it must be a UTI, but it wasn't.
The assisted living said they could not contain her. They are there to assist but unless they are a Secure facility, the residents are free to leave. They can encourage them to stay, but there are no locks to hold people in at the ones I am familiar with in NC.
I had to place my cousin in a Secure Memory Care facility. It was no longer safe for her to be free to leave, since she was wandering into traffic areas with no clue of the danger. That's where we went straight from the hospital. In the Secure unit, she is safe and cannot wander. She's also much calmer and is not being drugged. She takes an antidepressant, but that has made her happier and more engaged.
If he has Dementia, then I would read a lot about it. Normally, the symptoms grow worse and not better. There is no way the place can make him well. It's a progressive illness that will affect the mind and the body over time.
My mom had been in a skilled nursing unit that absolutely could not handle dementia behaviors like fighting, wandering, etc. Mom had a psychotic outburst, was in a geriatric psych unit for 5 days, and went straight into a memory care unit that she could not "escape" from, and where they could handle dementia.
That memory care unit is not 1:1. The residents are divided up into small groups and a nurse has them in her care for her shift, with a crew of personal care assistants & orderlies. There is a psych nurse on duty during daytime hours. The nurses report to a charge nurse around the clock.
If a facility told me I had to come sit with mom due to their lack of staffing, I'd be on the phone to the state DHS hotline making a complaint. That is a sign to me of bad/cheap management trying to be stingy or greedy by taking on more patients than they can safely support. I would also be very surprised if a facility like that would train people properly to deal with dementia specifics.
If this place is not able to handle your granddad and is calling you to handle things, that tells me they are not equipped, regardless of what they calling themselves. I'd make sure they are what they claim. They should be listed with the state.
I would be very disturbed if they gave someone medication that was not prescribed. That is very bad on so many levels.
OR, make sure he's in the right unit. If he wanders, he needs to be in a unit where they have no access to external doors.
My mom is in a secure unit where they wear ankle bracelets and no external entries/exits. If anyone is within 3 feet of the normal doors, they won't open. When she was in the independent unit, they could go out the front door at will. An assisted unit person could too if they wanted to & had the gumption. The skilled nursing & memory care units are secured with keypads on the elevators & doors, and have no direct access to the outside. (All units have emergency doors of course, but those would trip an alarm if somebody went through them. You couldn't sneak out through one.)
The point is that you must use the information you are really experiencing to decide if the facility is worth what they charge and is really living up to job or not. Keeping dad there seems extremely risky to me and I wouldn't let him stay a day longer than absolutely necessary. I'd be lining up something else. He may or may not have transition problems - we can't know but his present behaviors are not being handled safely or correctly which is definitely not good for his safety and wellbeing.
At any rate, a neighbor of mine has an uncle who has lived in assisted living for years. He's starting to show signs of dementia. But he's alone, no partner, and if the community doesn't say something, he's on his own. To me, assisted living is you pay money for a downpayment to get in then live there, paying a sort of 'rent'. They cook, clean, etc., for you, offer services to shop, etc.
A nursing home, on the other hand, should be a secure locked place. When my mom was in the geriatric psyche unit while they were tweaking her drugs, the door was locked, there was a chip in the hospital bracelet that didn't allow the patients to go near that door. The front desk was AT THAT DOOR. When people wanted to come in to visit, they had to knock, the person at the desk would usually know who you were, then buzz you in. If any of the patients were near that door, you were not allowed in until an aide came and changed their course of travel.
So, I don't know if he's in assisted living or a nursing home. I'd be really angry if I were you if you expected him to be secure and this happened! You say the sister, do you mean this is a Catholic based facility?
Also, not really liking the idea of him getting medicine from another patient's stash without her knowing his reaction. Couldn't the doctor be reached that evening?
Some lucky folks do adapt, and boy am I jealous! Some will eventually get there in time (many months). The period of adjustment can be very, very long, and the final adjusted stage may not be exactly what everybody had in mind, based on the infomercial in our brains!
I had to stop looking for happiness or signs of contentedness from my mom. Safety was the most important thing. Then making sure she was getting her meds and eating enough, reasonably clean, and that's it.
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