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Always Best Care Senior Services
QUESTION: Some of you know that I was gone for several weeks, on vacation
watching that Lance guy climb mountains too fast on a bike.
Of course, Murphy was at play: my mother went in the hospital
the night before I left. She had an asthma attack and a panic
attack, and her houseguest drove her to the emergency room, where
they dosed her with Prednisone to help open her airway, in spite
of the fact that her chart said it would make her manic.
So my sister arranged for hired caregivers to come in and help
with bathing, housekeeping and got meals on wheels started. A
good idea, but not enough. My sister, who works in Glacier Bay
National Park, flew in on weekends while I was gone to try to
help keep things together and worked with our local Senior
Services care coordinator to keep things on track.
I think Mom may already have stopped her meds before this
happened, but in spite of their best efforts to help her keep her
meds organized, she wasn't taking them, as her swollen legs,
congested lungs, and skyrocketing blood sodium level showed, and
as her mania and very low blood depakote level showed.
She was only sleeping a couple of hours a day, not good for a 79
year old emphysema patient. She was calling neighbors and
friends at all hours of the day and night when she had panic
attacks, decided to bathe in the wee hours and couldn't get out
of the tub, or when she was scared because she couldn't remember
how to do things.
At first I thought that if I moved into the vacant upstairs
apartment in her duplex (which I had deliberately not rented
before I left on vacation just in case), cooked some of her
meals, and was there at night to dispense meds and put her to
bed, that she would be fine. My siblings opposed the idea on the
grounds that she has always nagged me, and that I've always
nattered disagreeably back, and that I occasionally yelled at her
(almost always when she was so manic she just couldn't stop
yammering, and the only way to get through to her and make her
shut up was to yell).
I thought the excuse was bogus, especially since their solution
was to hire more paid helpers that Mom couldn't really afford,
and our first family meeting was pretty strident. Of course none
of my siblings have spent very much time taking care of her over
the past 10 years --- I'm single, I live nearby, and I have
always understood that it was my duty to take care of her, as she
did for my grandmother and 2 aunts.
My sisters don't live here, although one has spent weekends doing
respite care when I was at rope's end. My brother lives here but
is purser on a ship every other week (7 on/7 off), and his wife
doesn't want to have anything to do with Mom's health problems.
Nevertheless, we finally agreed today, after a couple of weeks
where things were getting worse and worse, to move Mom to an
assisted living group home about a block from my house while we
wait for an assisted living bed to open at our local Pioneers'
Home, a state facility. She had signed up on their waiting list
ten years ago, not long after it opened. I'm grateful for that,
because the list is very long now, it's a well run facility, and
she's near the top of the list.
It broke my heart to agree that's what she needed, but I'm glad
that she'll be safe now. I won't have any more weird phone calls
at 4 a.m., or have to retrieve a salmon burger patty that she
thought was a waffle from the toaster, or worry when I find a
half melted plastic bottle of cooking oil in the garbage. I
won't have to worry about her going off her meds or waking the
neighbors in the middle of the night.
At least she's agreed to go there, because she wants to feel
safe. She was sometimes cognizant that she was in danger; she
told the doctor that it would be a relief for someone else to
dispense her meds, because she was scared of taking the wrong
thing.
It's going to be very hard for me to rent out the downstairs
apartment, which has always been occupied by family, either my
grandparents, grandma & her sister, or my mother. My grandfather
built the house in '39, and I'm trying to figure out how I can
buy it if we have to sell it to pay for her long term care.
She's always tried so hard to be independent the past few years,
and it really is hard to see her give up, but none of us had any
choice. The group home has been neighbors to me for 4 years, and
I've known the owner much longer than that. It's very nice and
very well run.
Well not a vent, but just a sigh of relief. Finally, I won't
have to worry.
ANSWER: It may be for the best, and you will finally be able to rest knowing that
she is cared for and off your list of firsthand responsibilities. It is a
relief, no doubt about it.
I can tell you without any reservation that if you had asked me several
years ago if I had the personality or the temperament to be a caregiver, the
answer would have been a resounding "NO!"..... and yet somehow I managed.
If it hadn't have been for the fact there were two of us to do this job, it
would have been way beyond my emotional capabilities.
Rest assured, that the day she goes into the assisted living will be a
strange one, but the SECOND day you will feel better than you have in years,
since your life will be your own again. You can go and see her when you are
at your best, and be able to relate with her with greater attention and
kindness and focus. But the biggest thing is that you will sleep better at
night knowing she is cared for. We slept with one eye open for three years
and never knew what we would find each time she got up.
Best of luck and may it all go as smoothly as possible.
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