My 87 year old mom who lives with us has moderate dementia, afib, decreased kidney function, and compression fractures. She has been in the hospital 28 days (in and out) since March 5th, 2015. The first time she went in for anemia, but also twice because the hospital doctors could NOT get her afib meds right. This last time she went to a different hospital with hospital-acquired pneumonia and is coming home today with a different dosage for her afib. Let's hope the meds are right this time - at least for longer than a week.
She is already depressed from the multiple hospital stays (who wouldn't be) and the pain she suffers from the compression fractures, so my fear is that if we placed her in a NH for medical management, she would just give up. A hospital psychiatrist is going to see her today to try and get a read on her as well since she keeps saying she wants to die. At her age and with the afib issues over the last 45 days, I can understand. But I hate to see her in this mental state of despair and discouragement. Am I doing her a disservice keeping her home with us? We do have caretakers every weekday since my husband and I work full time. I'm now beginning to feel that maybe her medical conditions are becoming more than I can manage. I hate the idea of placing her in a NH, but at what point is it more appropriate for her?
Should we give it the "ol college try" with the caregivers and the new dosages and go from there? Any insights would be appreciated.
We do have lidocaine patches and a TENS unit for the pain, so it feels we are getting our arms around the compression fractures a bit. It's still challenging because Mom doesn't always let us know she is getting the pain until it's in full swing.
If we can manage the depression and the pain, I think we'll see what the next phase brings and go from there!
She is now, clean, safe, fed and there is an RN on duty. She had a stroke 2 months ago and the staff was right there. I know that Mother likes the attention.