Yes. My (at that time) 88 y/o mother had it in 2014 (I think it was). It was wonderful. They usually go in through the groin, but in her case for some reason (don’t remember) it was done in a sub-clavicle manner. She only had what looked like a long scratch afterwards. Not too long afterwards my friend’s 97 or 98-y/o father had it done. He was the TAVR doctor’s oldest patient.
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@oldmom4896 w/o reading the article – IDK what various state standards are - but sometimes a skilled care resident or a rehab resident that will be going to skilled care has various issues with encephalopathy, specific forms of dementia with behaviors, etc. In our state, we cannot have full length bed rails (that is ‘a restraint’) - in rehab we have quarter rails so a patient can use it to help turn, pull up etc. In our state, drugging a patient w/o proper diagnosis or need is a ‘chemical restraint’ and is not allowed. IDK if they came to a conclusion that the antipsychotic was given unnecessarily, but when a patient comes in with medication orders, and the patient is combative and of harm to themselves or others, they often get sent to a psychiatric facility that stabilizes them with proper psych evaluation and care, and then they return under the prescribed medications.
We also handle respite care for Hospice. I helped with a gentleman Friday night who stood in his room doorway and complaining about the African American RN who was passing medications and providing care for his group of rooms. I got him to sit in the wheel chair. He has bad sundowners based on the report we received. He refused the crushed medication in apple sauce. I got them mixed in with chocolate ice cream and offered him the ice cream - success. I developed a relationship with him a short time, he trusted me. Within an hour the CNA could get him ready for bed. He needed the medications for anxiety/sleep/etc.
If a facility is inappropriately providing care, there is state oversight – and in our state, they do come an respond to specific complaints, no matter how lame. A patient’s daughter thought she should be on antibiotics all the time as she is susceptible for UTIs - so although the care was explained, MD and NP following standard of care (tested when UTI suspected, and appropriate antibiotic treatment given when having a UTI).
We recently had a new rehab admission with one daughter here and one daughter in NY. The NY daughter thought she could dictate by phone about having her mother treated at a hospital in another city (she was completed with hospital care and had rehab days, thus the transfer to our facility) and that the mother could get transferred based on this out of state daughter’s demands. Oh well - I have no idea what phone calls she made, but was quite overbearing on the daughter with the boots on the ground with her mother.
I’ll take a note.
oldmom4896 - enraging.
My dad entered a short-term rehab after release from a hospital - while being checked in (without any exam or further questions) the nurse suggested to me he should be on a psychiatric medication (he seemed frustrated and angry about being in the strange place).
I said “no way” (he calmed down in a few minutes). I’m pretty sure he was put on something during the nights while he was there, regardless (groggy and totally different when I saw him in the mornings).
Elders are so vulnerable.
And it takes seniors so long to recover, so much more treatment can be started before they have had an opportunity to get back to normal. I have read that for every day in the hospital, plan for a week of recovery for frail seniors.
@Jolynne_Smyth that admission nurse at rehab was WAY out of line on this suggestion/comment. I would talk to administrator after writing up details if it occurred recently. If she was a NP, she may have reviewed his chart (info sent over already from the hospital) - HOWEVER that is not ‘standard protocol’. The admission orders are from the hospital MD - and you can check with the medication nurse as to what he was given – it will be on their computer system MAR (Medication Administration Report). Nurses have to sign on medications given, and the medications need to be put on the system by MD or NP orders. The physician overseeing the care of rehab patients and the NPs follow the state guidelines and Standard of Care.
If your dad had surgery and still has effects of anesthesia, or was given pain medication or other prescribed medications.
Oversight before, during, after – I would not have a family member in the hospital w/o a ‘patient advocate’ – a family member at bedside or checking in regularly with patient and medical care. Of course Covid did limit a lot of this, but what can be done within the current limitations.
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Yep, that’s why we hired an RN to advocate for my parents. I’m convinced that’s why Dad is alive today. We are not using her much now and I guess we offended her when we told her Dad is set for now. We didn’t hear a word from her after we let her know that Mom had passed. Since she had helped Mom a lot, that surprised me. Sigh.
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SOSconcern - my dad passed several years ago but I will never forget how vulnerable he was and how lucky that he had someone advocating for him. So many do not - it’s sad and frightening, frankly.
MaineLonghorn - I didn’t know you could hire an advocate! Good to know. And all the more reason to save up extra funding for those end of life years when costs like that could make such a difference!
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MaineLonghorn - I’m sorry the nurse wasn’t more engaged with your family after you said she wasn’t needed. It must depend on the person.
Our experience with home health aides was something special. After my dad passed (my mom had passed the year before) - the aides sent a huge flower arrangement to his funeral, drove over an hour on a workday to attend the service in another state (dressed in their most formal clothes), and came with us to the cemetary.
I get tearful thinking of all that, years later. I’ll never forget it.
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It’s hard not to take it personally but I think how health care professionals react probably depends on lots of things, including the relationship they have with the patient and family and also how many other people they are caring for. A licensed doctor or nurse has issues about privacy of the patient. And they see many patients. My mother’s home health aide that we had for about 20 hours a week came to her service and to the luncheon afterward. She died unexpectedly about a year later and my sister (mostly my sister) and I contributed a few hundred dollars to her funeral expenses. She was a big help at the end.
No staff came to my MiL’s service when she died at 91. But, she had been in a memory care unit and had multiple caretakers, and they never got to see what a lovely woman she was before dementia. And her service was 3 months after her death and I’m sure many had moved on with other residents.
The hospice stuff was also very different at the end- my mother died in the middle of the night at home and the hospice nurse on call was very awkward and cold (at least in my opinion, and in comparison to the other hospice nurses we had dealt with). The on call hospice nurse we dealt with when MIL died around 8pm about a year later was wonderful - sat for a couple hours with us waiting for the funeral home to arrive for her body, facilitated us talking about her life and what she meant to us. It’s the luck of the draw sometimes with how things end with our beloved parents.
And it’s never easy.
You gave a very good summary of how things can work out.
I worked in skilled care and rehab for 4 1/2 years as a BSN/RN. I worked PRN (as needed) so I could tell them my availability and then scheduled accordingly - one year I worked fairly close to FT but not benefits (like holiday and vacation pay) - however did work enough hours for good insurance and also enough hours for 4% 401k matching. Our work place had no scheduled PT employees with prorated benefits.
In the current job market in my location I could work as a dishwasher at a pizza joint for only a few dollars less per hour and set hours. My last night of work I worked 10 hours because that was the work load.
Places that charge a lot for residents may have a little better pay for caretakers, but essentially they are ‘for profit’ and again supply/demand on labor. If census drops, may cut hours, freeze salaries. If low on workers, not approving any time off.
Unions may or may not be the answer. Our governor (AL) is providing millions to hospitals to hire contract workers to ‘fill’ the vacancies. Doesn’t do anything for all the nurses and other caretakers getting jacked around.
I finally got the doc to order an iron infusion.
The doc did a home visit, then ordered retests of CBC and a new test for iron (which was not done first time around argh). Hemoglobin and hematocrit were even lower and iron levels were terrible.
Infusion next week, if she can make it that long without ER. The breathlessness is terrible.
Clearly she needs to be checked periodically. It has been 6 months since her hospital blood transfusion and iron infusion.
We are not chasing cause- several possibilities. This is palliative treatment. We will have to decide if and when the trips for infusion become too much for her. Hospice discharged her in June.
In March, I was not yet allowed in and assisted living and PT told me her problem was “anxiety.” This time, noone noticed her worsening. The hard thing for me is always being the one to notice and advocate. What if I lived far away?
@compmom I’m so sorry. I hope your mom can find some relief from her discomfort right now. These things are so hard.
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@compmom, I think that is one of the scary things about the fragility of aging. If the people with your Mom don’t know her, really know her, well enough to catch something like that early, it can be too late to fix or cause other issues or just take them down a few steps in their QOL, permanently.
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Er…I wonder if anyone here’s run into something similar to this, and might have advice.
My dad’s well on in years and has some severe health conditions, but lives on his own. I live far away, no responsible sibs, and the town my dad lives in has changed enough over the years that I don’t really know it anymore.
Today, after a longish silence, he gets in touch to tell me he needs space because six of his very close friends died recently in a horrible car crash with a drunk driver, he’s been helping all the families get their affairs in order, and now he needs to take some time. I got a similar email a few years ago. Normally I’ll email him every other week or so with news, and if he hasn’t responded in a month or so I’ll poke him and tell him to reply so I know he’s still alive. He gets in touch most readily if he needs tech support or some other kind of home-hardware advice or recommendations.
In neither case have I been able to find any evidence of a car crash anything like the one he’s describing. In the first one, he said something about the victim, and I wasn’t able to find anything related to this person’s death. Also, not to put my dad down, but…friends are not really a thing he’s had. He’s spent many years treating people really badly, two wives left him and moved far away to start over, and while a few years back he went to therapy and really made some changes, I’ve never known him to be a social creature. The last time I was in his area I met an old prof who knew him and had been trying to get in touch, but my dad never returned his emails. Which is not unusual. I also, tbh, find it a little improbable that even if he did have all these close friends from multiple families, the families would have been turning to him for taking care of the financial/estate/funeral/what-have-you affairs. It’s not normally a thing and he’s a very old sick man who can barely walk.
When I did visit a few years ago, his house seemed to be in good order – cleaner than mine – and he seemed to be living and eating well, though he was very skinny and wouldn’t let us upstairs or downstairs and alluded to some weird experiment with rewiring upstairs that wasn’t going well and so the whole place was a mess. Actually as I think about it the main floor was a little show-homey, but I didn’t think anything of it at the time. Emails are limited but on-point and lucid, he remembers birthdays, etc.
I can’t tell what this is all about. My best guesses:
- He actually has real friends and they keep getting killed in terrible car accidents.
- His mind is going and he believes he has real, dear friends who keep getting killed etc.
- He’s making things up because he wants to be left alone – like, really alone.
- Something else.
Any ideas? I’m not in a position to go out and check up on him, and I don’t know anyone in the area anymore. If he’s okay, and I sent a cop or social-services person to do a welfare check, he probably wouldn’t talk to me for a year, which could be the rest of his life at this point. I’m in touch with his ex-wife, who’s also in touch with him periodically, but she’s not well either and lives a few states away.
@bennty — that’s a puzzler for sure. I wouldn’t know what to make of it either. My parents got more confused as they aged but never told me about car crashes and deaths that didn’t happen and weren’t reported in the news.
Yeah, it’s not a thing you really hear much about outside dementia diagnoses. His mother, in the years before she died, really had a bad time with imaginary things – she was sure someone was coming in and stealing her meds and moving things around, she believed she’d murdered her husband (she 100% had not done anything to harm him), it was pretty bad. But she’d always been a little off and believed weird things.
One of the things that weirds me out about this one is that if it’s an intentional lie, it’s not even a good lie. One person in a car crash, okay. But six adults from different families? All killed by one drunk driver? And he’s stepping in as their legal and financial advisor?
I’m reminded a little bit of what happened when he wanted me to be his POA/HPOA (I declined; I’m much too far away and busy, and what I need after a couple of decades of single-momming with (pointedly) no family help is some rest, not to turn around and take care of his affairs while he fights with me about it). He had some backup people named, people I’d never heard of, and when I declined and was going to send out a letter to all the people on the list, he asked me to wait until he could talk to them himself. At which point, given how he’d tried to fast-track me into the spot, I wondered if they even knew they’d been named. Never got an answer on that one. That was another one where there was a mystery car crash: I can’t quite remember details on that one, but as I recall, those people had a happy, successful 30something daughter who was in a terrible car accident and sustained a brain injury or was in a coma or something. Again, never was able to find anything about it. ETA: solved! That one was real. She’s fine now, apparently.
That is odd. My guess would be he’s losing touch a bit with reality, but he would have to be evaluated to determine it.
My husband’s sister, 65, is definitely in that boat. People have been breaking into her house, her toes are broken, and she’s pregnant.
It could also be hallucinations, my mother had Lewy Body Dementia, before she lost her mind and actually acted demented, she had auditory hallucinations for nearly a year. Her PCP and I chalked it up to losing her hearing, sometimes the brain will fill in sounds when it is not hearing anything. But in hindsight the music she heard was a hallucination. She went on the see people and even have whole conversations with groups of imaginary people in various chairs, turning her head, etc. It was rough.