After 3 years of allowing Mom to live independently with some in-home care and LOTS of care from me (daughter) and her neighbors she has moved into a lovely assisted living facility. She has adjusted well but still thinks she will return to her house when she is "better." Her dementia has progressed markedly over the past 6 months. She still knows that her house is HER HOUSE and she missed it and her neighborhood (she lived there 13 years) though she is only 3 miles away.
It is necesary for us to sell her house to pay for the assisted living facility. In the same conversation she tells me the realtor she would like to handle the sale and five minutes later says she will "get better" and come home to live there "soon."
Any suggestions on how to handle her once the house is actually sold? Guilt-ridden daughter looking for any help at all.
Peace love tranquility education clean air pure water and strong coffee.
Then her husband suddenly got sick, 6 months later he's dead and the beginnings of her dementia at that time were thrown into full tilt. Her memory suffered first (short term is gone) and because of the macular degeneration, she couldn't take care of herself anymore. We found out that he had been covering for her for years with the memory decline and eye sight. At that time my sister-in-law started looking around for asst living places. We did not tell her, but we had money on two places to hold them open for mil. She and I knew it was only a matter of time, but m-i-l was determined to stay independent. BUT we had to dispense her pills, take her everywhere, I washed her hair, sis-in-law washed her feet, it was on going. Plus I felt terrible that she'd sit there day in and day out by herself with nothing to do but watch TV, so I started a regime of visits/trips/movies etc. When she fell (again) and this time broke her hip, we seized the moment and she never went home after rehab. What saved us being the 'bad guys' was that all the doctors at the NH that evaluated her, said she could no long live alone. Anyway, making a long story longer Nan, she has been there for 6 months at least now, and has NEVER stopped saying she wants to go home. But after us repeating that she can't go home again, maybe 10,000 times or so, she does remember THAT, it just doesn't make a difference. She wants to go HOME!! period. nothing can be done about how she feels, but it doesn't change the fact that she can't go home.
This week I took her to her beach house about 2 hours away thinking she would have happy memories and enjoy a change of location. IT WAS HORRIBLE. She was angry, hostile, even threw things around. She was verbally abusive to me and my husband about "putting her away." We only stayed 24 hours rather than the 4 days we planned to stay. She did not even eat for the 24 hours!! Yet...she tells friends that it was HER decision to move to the ALF and she "loves" it.
Selling her car and her not being able to drive is even more contentious. I try being truthful but she gets so angry and aggressive at me when I do that. I know that being independent for 28 years after my father passed away makes the loss of that independence more difficult to bear.
I have been counseled to not even visit her for a couple of weeks now. I hope I can do that. I am more callused to her verbal abuse now after about 3 years of it; but it still hurts not to be able to make her happy.
Still dealing with selling the house and dreading the day I have to tell her it has been sold.
Wow - me too! My uncle wants to move back to his apartment of 42 years which he adores. He is an 88 year old bachelor and somehow out of the blue, after a heart attack and two strokes, I have become his health care proxy and power of attorney. He has been through extensive testing and his doctors recommend that he stay in assisted living. His remaining brothers and sisters agree and believe that letting him go back to his apartment (500 miles from all of us) is a death sentence. His landlord sent me a letter that says he can’t come back without medical clearance because they don’t want the other families in the building to be at risk. I called his medical team and they assure me that based on the cognitive testing that has been done - he should not go back. The two social workers that care for him agree. Everybody agrees that I am doing the right thing, against his wishes, but on his behalf. None-the-less I can’t help feeling that I am betraying him. I am taking a week’s vacation and am going to clean out his apartment and move his belongings into storage. I think I will take the “sell don’t tell” route. He changes the subject whenever I try to talk about it so I guess I can start doing the same thing. Even after four months of seeing example after example that prove he is incapable of independent living, I fear he will have a miraculous recovery and I will have ruined his life. GUILTY I AM.
She was so angry she pinched my husband and called us and her other children sometimes 10 times a day and demanded to go home. She ranted and raved and cursed and threatened suicide. We did not give in. Was it pleasant? No, but we knew it was the only decision for her. She was 87 and her macular degeneration has left her nearly blind. We finally got her into a good geriatric specialist and her diagnosis was demntia. It was like living in Hades for about 3 months, but we knew that we had to exercise tough love. We still have to do many of the common things for her, take her shopping, do her laundry, but she is getting three nutritious meals a day and the most important, daily activities and ALL of her medications on time.
All of her children still work full time and lead active lives. Even when she would live with us, she complained of being alone and bored. Finally, after nearly 6 months, she is happy. Yes, it was tough but we did not give in and take her home. She still talks about moving back home-300+miles away, but we just change the subject. We tell her that because we love her and care about her, she cannot go back and live alone. She fianlly feels like the staff are nice and the people she lives with are nice. She thinks the place is a "dump", but she cannot really see.
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