I am afraid that soon after mom moves in to memory care she willl drive them nuts and they will ignore her. She constantly needs a tissue, her pillow adjusted, to go to the bathroom, a cracker, a tooth pick…it never ends. She is in AL but she is forgetting steps in simple routines and they think it is beyond MCI and now dementia; so do I. I have been propping her up but can no longer. How do caregivers in MC deal if one person needs too much? She is just starting on Seroquel so maybe that will help?
They put the residents on a toileting routing, normally, in MC. So they'll ask your mother every 2 hours if she needs to use the bathroom? They will establish their OWN routine with her, as they have with my difficult mother, and that is a lot of what the HUGE monthly cost is for! Don't worry too much; they put up with A LOT in MC, trust me. My mother is the equivalent of 3 residents with her nonsense and they put up with her willingly! I always thank the staff PROFUSELY whenever I go over there, too, b/c I know what they have to deal with. ((((Eyeroll))) The staff does not ignore my mother, either........what they do with the residents is they get them up and dressed by 9:30 am and into the activity room for the majority of the day; that's where they eat, socialize, watch movies, do activities, etc. The aides help all the residents (23 in total, for the most part) and it's easier that way. If a resident is on hospice, then they can stay in bed all day, o/w, they stay in the activity room.
BTW, toothpicks are a no-no in my mother's MC. Nothing pointed, sharp or potentially dangerous is allowed in MC. My mother had a meltdown over that rule, too, b/c she loooooooves her toothpicks. She got over it. You'll get a list of what they CANNOT have in their rooms once she moves in.
Wishing you the best of luck letting go of your worries and letting the staff deal with your mother!
We currently have one client who has to use a stand-aid to get up from her riser-recliner and even then has great difficulty, needs two people to assist, but the one thing that really does make me want to tear my hair out is that every single time she reaches first for a tissue and clutches it in her palm. We gently remind her that she needs both hands free to grip the rail. She won't let us hold it for her, but has to tuck it in to her watch strap, where it doesn't fit because the strap is already too tight (she won't let us alter that, either). IT TAKES ALL FLIPPING NIGHT!!! Aaaaaarrrrggghhhh..!
When my mother was still at home, she went through about four boxes of tissues a week. At night, she'd grab one from the bedside table, dab her nose once, then squirrel it under the pillow. My dad would find 20-30 of them under the pillow every morning, and I found at least 200 of them under the bed at one time.
When I moved Mom to MC in 2019, I brought along a Costco size package of a dozen boxes of Kleenex hoping it'd last two weeks or so. I didn't spend much time in Mom's room, so I kind of forgot about it or figured they were supplying her Kleenex habit.
When we were cleaning out her things after she died, there was the unopened package of twelve boxes right there in her closet where I'd left them. They simply didn't have them available, so the obsession with tissues was broken.
Ideally MC will keep your mom occupied with other things so she too will break those habits. She'll be in different surroundings which also tends to stop some of that OCD behavior, so don't worry that she'll be too high maintenance -- they've seen it ALL.
That's pretty sad that your mother's tissues were found unopened in the closet.
What did they do for her nose in MC? Just let her have snot all over the place? Or sit picking her nose all day because there's no tissues?
That's bad.