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where to find Jobs In Assisted Living?
QUESTION: Hello everyone, I have been lurking awhile. My mom is 65 and is
suffering from dementia, we are days away from an official diagnosis
from a reputable big city clinic, but I am 90% certain it's AD. She
lives alone at home in a small town about 80 mins from me. I spend a
day at her house each week, paying all her bills, doing basic
housework, laundry, etc. Trying to catch up on all the many undone
things. Mom does nothing but watch TV, sleep, and go get fast food and
drive around (she still drives). Just in the past few weeks, she has
started to bathe and shampoo less and less frequently. Her memory is
in rapid decline. She has an older brother and sister in law who check
in on her a few times a week too, but they don't even go inside the
house, and don't yet grasp the seriousness of the situation despite
all the info I have shared with them. Mom's other siblings have way
too many problems of their own to deal with, and are friendly but
uninvolved. I have an older brother but he and his wife conveniently
decided it was time to take a job offer in Europe when I first told
him (almost 2 yrs ago now) that I thought Mom might have AD. At the
rate she is declining Mom will probably need to be in assisted living
within a year, but she is in denial and unable to grasp fully what is
happening to her. Mom told me years ago, while still healthy and
lucid, that if she ever became unable to care for herself, that I was
to place her in a good home and not try to care for her myself. I
can't move to Mom's town because I couldn't make a living, there are
no decent jobs there and my wife would refuse to go anyway, and I
would never bring Mom to the big city and put her in some third-world
home here in the crime capital of the U.S., away from her siblings. Do
most people at this point move their parent in with them and care for
them at home? I love my mom dearly, we have always been good friends,
and I want the best for her. But that idea is incomprehensible to me.
I guess I am trying to get a feel for what most people do at this
point? I frankly don't see how anyone does the caregiving themselves
past the intermediate stages of AD... I am completely exhausted and
depressed after just a few hours with her. Maybe i am just looking for
someone to tell me it's OK to start talking to assisted living centers
and trying to hatch a plan to get her to move into one. Or maybe I am
just looking for a sense of what the "average" loving and caring child
of an AD victim does at this point. Anyone have any feedback? Bless
you all, you are amazing folks.. Russell (by the way I am not a
reverend, I am an agnostic.. my email identity was set up on a lark
and the "rev" is stricly tongue-in-cheek). So please just call me
ANSWER: Seems to me that people like Evelyn and the others who care in their own
homes are in a small minority of siblings who are able to do that, for most
of us its just not an option, if only because a job is going to take you out
of the house, and come a certain stage they cant be left alone.
Russell, at the moment I am working on my mother to persuade her that she
should put my father in a home (Or to be more accurate, not retrieve him
from the one he's in at the moment for respite care, because its gotten too
much for her). he is going to have to go in one anyway, seems no point
wrecking her health for a few more months at home, and I left in above the
bit you wrote about stress/depression.
I'd say for nearly everyone in this situation, the time comes when they have
to go into a home, dont feel guilty about it, its just a fact, besides its
what your mother asked for when she was able to make rational decisions.
AS much as she is rational now, get the stuff done like Power OF Attorney
and see if you can get her to look at homes.
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