<p>Esobay, I call my mom the problem kid I never had!</p>
<p>Eso, this is different than the housekeeper situation in that there’s another party involved, the AL staff who have formed their own opinion. </p>
<p>I just finished a wonderful book. It’s a graphic memoir by Roz Chast, cartoonist at the New Yorker. I believe an excerpt of this book was linked here a few months ago. There is plenty of hand-inked text in addition to the amazing pictures so it’s not like “reading” a comic book.</p>
<p>Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? is the name, and I am sure we have all heard that in one way or another from our parents/inlaws/old people we’re taking care of.</p>
<p>She is an amazingly brave woman to put out there for all of us to share the very natural but kind of shameful feelings she had (and (I certainly had!) supporting the burdens of the end of life of her very old parents.</p>
<p>I am buying a copy for my close-in-age-to-me aunt and another for my stepmother’s son.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.amazon.com/Cant-Talk-about-Something-Pleasant/dp/1608198065”>http://www.amazon.com/Cant-Talk-about-Something-Pleasant/dp/1608198065</a></p>
<p>Wish me luck, I have a meeting scheduled with the RN on staff tomorrow and she wants me there to talk with Mom about safe sex…GAAAAAAH. Lol
But she says if the old guy is out in the community and is in bed with Mom then they need to try to be aware of the rampant STDs in the over 70 population. Image is EVERYTHING to Mom, she doesn’t want to admit to me she was …ER ah, in bed with the guy, but she let several things slip. She says she is mad because he slept over without her permission. However, the RN days that she doesn’t have that on record (that he slept over) and they give Mom a pill at 6 or 6:30, so I doubt he would have slipped out by then. He also called her cell phone today, which if she told him she never wanted to see him again, I doubt he would have done.
It is so hard to seperate the fantasy, the lie, and the kernel of truth with her,. That isn’t anything new either, except the fantasies don’t hold together like they used to do.</p>
<p>Yikes! 
Good luck. </p>
<p>Glad that the AL is pro active with sex education. I was concerned that your mom and her “friend” may have been engaging in unprotected sex. Who would have thought that this would be a concern we would have for our parents? LOL. Good luck with your meeting.</p>
<p>How have you dealt with promiscuous children? A friend is having a conflict and my daughter has never been promiscuous, so I’m not sure how to help.</p>
<p>AnnieBeats, you might do better posting your question on a different thread. This thread is about dealing with our aging parents. </p>
<p>Which reminds me, thanks, @3togo, for starting this thread. It’s impossible to overstate how comforting it is to see that others are dealing with the same difficult issues and problems of helping parents that I am dealing with. And sometimes when I see someone who has the same problem I have, it’s so obvious what they should do-- and then I realize, oh, yeah, that’s what I should do, too.</p>
<p>@"Cardinal Fang" Oh! I thought it was parents caring for other parents, meaning each other lol. Sorry</p>
<p>Got 2 questions- if anyone has experience with this:
My mother is 25 hours drive time away from me. She is physically very healthy and 92. She really has very few relatives in her home town and is the last of her family. She has mild to soon moderate dementia and is living at her home with daily caregivers. I am thinking (personal pay) assisted living memory care is coming really soon. </p>
<p>I do not think I can have her in my home for a while to look, way too stressful for me. Staying in her home town would be of no benefit to her and be really hard for me to visit due to travel time and expense. She was in one for a month over a year ago and it was of no benefit to be in the same town as her home. One sibling of mine is minimally involved and lives 9 hours away and I cannot not rely on for various reasons. I have POA of person and finances.</p>
<p>1.How do I get an assisted living lined up in my area without them interviewing her or she seeing it? I would screen.
2.And if all goes well, what is the best way for us to move her to here- plane, car, etc? </p>
<p>rockymtnhigh, my dad and stepmother were in their home until my dad died a few months ago. My stepmother was pretty far down the dementia road, and they had a live-in aide through an agency. Not cheap but I am sure it was cheaper than assisted-living, at least in NYS where we live. Her aides were really wonderful, devoted women who doted on her. Their last aide had taken care of patients whose families were far far away. Of course they had me an hour away, but it’s not completely impossible to manage at-home care from far away. Just a thought. The agency gives you the protection of always having someone there–whoever is there will not leave until her replacement shows up. And, for a price, an agency can offer many different services.</p>
<p>rockymtnhigh, we were in that situation, moving the parents from far away to be near me. It just wasn’t practical for them to come down here and “shop.”</p>
<p>Three words: [Senior</a> Move Manager](<a href=“https://www.nasmm.org/]Senior”>https://www.nasmm.org/). I literally don’t know how we would have managed this complicated, emotionally fraught, long-distance move without ours.</p>
<p>Once I found my SMM, she showed me at A BUNCH of ALs around here, I think it was 9 total over 3 or 4 weekends. I recommend that, because it gives you an idea of what to look for, and you start to get a feel for what might be better for your mom. (Take notes, they will quickly all start to blur together.) I narrowed it down to the best 4, and my brother came for the weekend and looked at those with me. From that, he and I chose the one. Do you have another sibling who would be willing to look at the finalists with your? If not, bring a trusted friend to serve as a second set of eyes.</p>
<p>The SMM was invaluable in many other ways too. She contacted a colleague in my parents’ area and that person coordinated packing, moving and selling what needed to be sold. My SMM also contacted a realtor to deal with selling the house. She helped with shopping and furnishing the new apartment. She referred us to a lawyer and an accountant. She did a thousand little and big things that I couldn’t possibly have done.</p>
<p>In terms of moving Mom & Dad, there was never a possibility of driving them; that would have been too difficult and exhausting, and not what any of us needed at that point. My brother and I flew up and then the 4 of us flew back down here first-class (something we NEVER do), partly for their comfort and partly to bring a party atmosphere to the event. It’s difficult and scary to be moving at that age, and I wanted the actual journey to be a treat. That was money well spent. If you do fly, don’t make the reservations online. Call the airline and let them know your mom’s age and any special needs. And get to the airport ridiculously early.</p>
<p>eso, how did the sex talk go?</p>
<p>My experience, in upstate NY, was the opposite of oldmom’s. Full-time aides would have been more expensive than the monthly rent at memory care/assisted living. And once Mom was moved, then we were able to have an estate sale (whopping $400 profit) but more importantly sell the house. The funds from that should cover about 2.5 years of ‘rent.’ So a little research on costs is a good idea. </p>
<p>That Senior Move Manager sounds like a wonderful service. We were only handling a 3 mile move,but it would have been nice to have professional help with everything. There are some things I would do differently, if I could have a do-over. </p>
<p>We’re now in the process of moving my mom as well. Her place is sold and we found her an apartment. Now the fun begins with everything that goes on with downsizing. My sister wants us to just be all about it every second. We’re hiring movers to pack and move. Then we need to dispose of everything else. The problem is mom and my sis to an extent think everything is precious. I’ll go up with my hubby to help set up and help get rid of everything extra. But I have no interest in talking, discussing, thinking, reminiscing over every single object. Take it, don’t take it, if anyone wants it they can have it, if not let’s either throw it out or sell it. I’m guessing since I have never lived nearby as an adult I’m not emotionally attached to the knick knacks.</p>
<p>For what it’s worth, having a live-in was considerably cheaper than having someone 12 hours a day. The way they are paid is different. The family does have to provide food for the aide. At least that’s how it was in suburban NYC.</p>
<p>rockymtnhigh, one way to move your mom closer would be see if a local facility would take your mom on a temporary one month stay. Many places do offer a kind of respite or try out stay. Some can even arrange furniture. Of course it would be wonderful if the place she stayed temporarily was her eventual home, so you may want to do a thorough search on your own, then offer it as a try out or a place from which she can look further.</p>
<p>As far as the evaluation, some places will allow a Skype evaluation or a nurse to nurse evaluation if someone where she lives now is willing to speak for your mom.</p>
<p>I think a flight would be less stressful than several days of driving.</p>
<p>Best wishes</p>
<p>The Senior Move Manager sounds like a great idea. I wish that had been available to me 19 years ago when I had to move my mother to AL closer to me. I had to vet all the ALs I could find myself(there were fewer of them then), deal with coordinating the packing and moving of her stuff, deal with stuff that wasn’t being moved, and sell her co-op. She lived 3 hours away at the time, so not as inconvenient as 25 hours away, but, at the time, my kids were only 8 and 5yo, so I was being pulled in all directions. A Senior Move Manager would’ve been a life-saver.</p>
<p>That makes sense about the live-in, oldmom. Unfortunately I didn’t even consider it, just priced memory care rent vs. full-time aides at an hourly rate.</p>
<p>eyemamom, the sorting and clearing out was ‘how I spent last summer.’ While at times I was furious at my sister and her adult sons for not showing up to help, in retrospect I am glad they left it all to my husband and me. When I started getting sentimental about things, he would say ‘ok, you sit here and go through these things, the kids and I will keep working.’ It would have only complicated things to have more adults trying to find the ‘precious’ items. </p>
<p>We paid my teen kids $10/hour to bag and haul clothes to the donation bins, bag and haul glass and cardboard to the recycling bins and so on. When I eventually had collected all the mementos I wanted, we called in the estate sale/clean out service. And even with all the work we did all summer, the cleanout service needed 2 dumpsters.</p>
<p>There’s not much value in knick knacks. What did bring in $$ at the estate sale was my 60s vintage toys. Someone drove 2 hours and paid $170 for a metal Fred Flintstone toy. </p>
<p>My stepbrother took the same approach as LasMa. He tried to talk her aide into flying with her but the aide didn’t want to. The three of them went to the airport together and the aide stayed there until they left (flight from JFK in NYC to Denver). He bought first class bulkhead seats. Halfway there, she wanted to get off the plane, but they got there, then direct to the AL/Memory facility. It turns out that the agency the aide worked for in NY is part of the same network as the AL in Colorado and she helped my stepbrother fill out a multipage report and was available for consultation.</p>