I’m starting to think caring for your parents never ends, once you start doing it. Will you ever get your life back? I just spent seven hours helping my mom get her finances in order. The entire time she was either peppering me with repetitive questions about basic stuff (how did anyone make it through their life without actually understanding what an ATM or credit card is, or where their social security and pension is getting paid to) or complaining about how hard they make everything for people (really, how hard is it, I’m taking care of it for you). I’m trying very hard to keep my patience, but I feel like this is never going to end!
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I had that feeling but Dad seems fine now. He has a caregiver who comes into his facility five days a week, as well as a bookkeeper who takes care of his finances. I’m not having to do anything at this point. I’m sure that will change, but it’s nice for now, especially since I’m always having to deal with issues for my son.
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LOL. I agree with your mom! I have no idea how anybody figures anything out these days. I’m trying to work on my dad’s estate and if he wasn’t the obsessive record keeper that he was we’d be dead in the water on getting anything done. And even then the hoop jumping is an olympic sport. Congrats on it only taking 7 hours.
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Oh no, @gouf78, I didn’t mean we were done. It was just one marathon session of things that would have been pretty easy for me, if I could do it without someone peering over my shoulder, asking questions and complaining! And I feel like explaining is futile. This is going to take a lot longer. But since she was either a joint account holder or beneficiary of everything, at least we don’t need a lawyer.
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@MaineLonghorn do you feel completely trusting of the bookkeeper? People who have financial access to an elderly person’s accounts could really take advantage. I don’t know anyone I’d trust enough to do that.
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Yes, I do. She creates a report every month that we review. She’s doing a great job.
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Well I go to the facility as caregiver and handle finances and I agree @busdriver11 river, it seems like it will never end (7 years so far). Then again, there is only one way it ends…
Those who live with the parent(s) are truly heroic. At least I can drive away.
ps ML dealing with kid with bp again 
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If there is a significant account, I would spot check. Created reports may be 100% good information.
Years ago, a specialty group had their business office manager set up dummy accounts for supplies or whatever and had stolen quite a lot of money from the group. It had gone on a while. I think they kept it quiet and didn’t press criminal charges.
I meant that it only took seven hours for the complaining session!
LOL. My dad would want me to do work on his computer and I’d tell him I’d start just as soon as he left the room because then it wouldn’t take as long
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We are almost at the end of the post-hospitalization doctor visits, tests, and set ups – and we realized we have to tackle their taxes. Preferred sibling will try to persuade our father, who still thinks he can do it but the rest of us are horrified at the thought. They are wealthy people with complicated retirement funding, I can’t imagine how hard it must be for those of you doing this with impaired parents…
Luckily my mother has forgotten about taxes.
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If one needs to forget about things, that seems like a good thing to forget!
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Spending so much time with my mom, I feel like her dementia has gotten worse. The forgetting things, repetitively asking the same questions, lack of understanding simple things. I don’t really want to outright say it to her, because she just saw my dad die of dementia.
But now I worry about her living situation. I was pressing her to go to assisted living, thought she’d do it, but now seems to want to stay in her home. She’s lived there for 62 years. She’s sitting in my dad’s chair, sleeping in his bed, I’m afraid she’s turning into what he was. Even said a weird mumbo jumbo phrase that he used to say. Don’t know if I should try harder to get her to leave, or help her make her place more livable. Inertia is a strong force. I had hopes she would travel, enjoy her life, but now I don’t know if that will happen.
If your mom is relatively safe at home, I’d let her be if possible. The rule of thumb was to not make any major life changes the first year following a major loss. Obviously if she’s unsafe and help can’t be brought in, that’s a different conversation.
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Is she driving? If so does she get lost? (Hope she is not driving.)
Is she cooking? Is there a danger of her leaving the stove on?
Any chance of wandering? Serious falls?
Does she have an emergency button around her neck? Is she able to use the phone?
Once my mother got to the point you describe, she forgot where she lived within 3 days of being in the hospital. That said, moves are hard and dementia worsens with a change.
If I had to do it over again I would use a facility that is ONLY memory care. The staff, building layout, and programs are all geared to dementia and there is a higher functioning crowd than in the memory cares attached to assisted livings.
My mother’s assisted living is full of folks with dementia but they don’t get the same services as the freestanding memory care places I have since looked at.
Again, early is better than late. It is good to make the move when they are still able to establish routines and make connections. But it’s hard.
If you can afford in-home care of could house a nursing student she might be safe longer, but the former can be very expensive unless on Medicaid. Like 18k/month expensive for 24 hour care.
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Sometimes the death of one parent causes us to spend more time with the surviving parent. Only then do we maybe notice behaviors that actually may have been going on for awhile.
It’s easy to sort of freeze our parents in one spot - say age 75. But then when we really take notice, they are in their 80’s and not as quick or able in whatever capacity as they were before. It’s been there, but we might not have had cause to notice it.
@busdriver11 your dad’s death was fairly sudden. I don’t doubt that your mom has been thrown for a loop. Again, she may not be able to bounce back emotionally as quick as she might have 10-15 years ago.
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Wow, I didn’t think 18K/month care even existed!
Yes, she drives (only to the same places) and has never had a problem. Doesn’t get lost walking, she is still very fit and always takes her cellphone, which is a lifeline. I took away her stove (she was fine with that), but she has a hotplate that she puts on a ceramic surface. That worries me, and she says she will microwave things instead, and then doesn’t. Habits are hard to break.
I’m not sure about a memory care place only. I wonder if going to assisted living first, when you don’t really need much, would be more comfortable, and then transition. It’s a little alarming going into the memory care and seeing how people are acting. My mom walked into my Dad’s place and said she hoped she wouldn’t be ready for that for a long time. I’m afraid that would really discourage her from leaving.
It sure depends on the parent, personality, and illnesses.
Both mother and mother-in-law wanted to die at home. Mother was able to achieve that (age 77, Dementia). MIL went to skilled care just weeks before her death (age 92, Hypertensive Heart Disease). MIL should have gone sooner to skilled care (and join her husband there), but Covid delayed; then her husband died Dec 2020 from Covid/his request for ‘comfort care’ - which MD asked him w/o family present; she had a good caretaker (which wasn’t enough but allowed her to delay more). Finally DH was her FT 24/7 caretaker until it could get put off no longer. Of course her solution was DH continuing to be her caretaker…
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Ah, @busdriver11, yah, it’s so tough.
Her weird place this week could be the result of all the stresses of Dad dying and she might bounce back to be more herself. Or it could be that you are spending more time with her and seeing what she has been able to keep hidden, not that she is necessarily hiding from you, as much as I think all of us try to put our best foot forward and hide the negative from the outside world.
Also, it could be that she is overall better than you are seeing, but the stress of Dad dying is showing you where she will be in a year or two. We took my mother on a trip and she was so bizarre in so many way, for example, we had a side trip planned with weekender bags, she obsessively unpacked and repacked her weekender bag, which she should not have touched at all. It was so weird/bizarre. Upon returning from this trip, she was much better, but over the next few years the slope down was steep.
When seniors are moved, that stress often reveals them at their worst.
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Even a short hospital stay can reveal a lot about where they are in terms of dementia. My mother seemed as if she wasn’t too bad but in a hospital room she kept asking why we moved her from that nice room with the couch" and insisted she could take the elevator there (it was her assisted living room she was thinking of). When I took her back to the ALF on the 4th day she asked about the {“new place”) and for a few days kept packing and asking me to “take her home.” She had been there 5 years.
@busdriver11 I wonder if a CCRC would work best for your mom. You can go in as an independent and move to AL, MC or Skilled Nursing as needed. You pay up front for the apartment and usually get 90%+ back if you die or move, then pay a monthly fee. You never have to worry about increased costs at a nursing home.
She may not be ready and may be reacting to the change without your Dad.Time will tell.
For people a little further along, the point I was trying to make is that people with even moderate dementia seem happier in a facility entirely dedicated to memory care. At MC’s that are part of AL’s you have to “fail” AL to land in MC so people in MC are pretty advanced. Not so in the dedicated MC’s,in what I have seen.
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