Caring for an Aging Parent [oversharing text wall]

[Kavik]

Pre-emptive: Please don't turn this into "eat m0ar veggies" since I can see this devolving into that. Any tales of similar experiences or whatever are welcome. This isn't a post for sympathy; I just needed to express it.

What I have feared for at least the past year and a half is finally coming to pass but not as I expected it would. I should have taken a stronger stand ealier, but it may not have made a difference anyway.

At the beginning of last year, I decided to clean my mom's house once and for all.  Her house is almost like one you'd see on the show Hoarders, but not quite as bad. She began to trust me to clean since I understand the propensity to keep things and feel sentimental towards things unlike my brothers who had been much less discriminate when cleaning her place before; although, I have been scolded for throwing away stupid things like used plastic spoons or honey packets. She also began coming to terms with the fact that a lot of things don't matter anymore and can be thrown away or donated since I would have to deal with them when she is dead anyway. I had some initial success, but it is surpringly difficult to clean and organize a house with forty years worth of sentimental junk in it. It's difficult to know where to focus too since every nook and cranny needs attention and has years worth of documents, gifts, old art projects, correspondence, etc. My mom also kept buying new stuff and way more groceries than she needs and not maintaining areas I'd already cleaned, so I stopped making headway.

Then she hurt her hip and needed my help just doing the basics like taking out the trash and the cat litter (The cats are a big reason that things are not only untidy but also filthy.), feeding and walking the dog, and picking up and unloading groceries, so a lot of my visits were then spent on those things instead of cleaning. I eventually had to adopt the dog because she could no longer care for her. A lot of time was also spent just keeping her company since I am the only person she sees anywhere approaching regularly.

She has been obese my whole life and morbidly obese for at least fifteen or twenty years. With this come diabetes and hypertension. She is good about checking her blood sugar and taking her insulin, but she has so much food that it won't all fit in the kitchen and has to be stacked in other rooms, so she is always surrounded by snacks (and she doesn't want me to throw away expired packaged food since "it might still be good"). For some years now, she hasn't been able to bathe or reach her feet because of her weight. She seems to think her weight is some kind of affliction rather than something she has control over.

My goal with cleaning her house was to give her a sense of a fresh start so that she could get other things under control, but instead I felt that she just began to depend on me for everything. She wouldn't even go through the shoes and clothes I'd gathered up almost a year ago just to decide what to keep and what to get rid of.

My fear has been that she would have a heart attack or a stroke, and I'd just find her dead in her house one day. Her health is poor enough that things just stack on top of each other and don't get resolved because she doesn't seek treatment, and, when she does, her doctor doesn't seem to address her concerns to her liking (like her asthma; although her breathing trouble is likely at least partly caused by having a huge gut pushing against her diaphragm. I know what that feels like from my fat days).

It has all come to a head in the past week when her hand started swelling. She thought this was related to a dental abscess she had had removed a month prior that took a long time to heal and for which she had been given no antibiotics. Her primary care doctor misdiagnosed the hand issue as gout, so she sat at home taking medicine for the wrong thing while an infection was festering. She requested I come by to help every day instead of the usual twice per week. This is the first time I've had to help her stand up from the toilet and help her pull her pants up. The hand was getting visibily worse every day, so I persuaded her to go to the ER when it became apparent to me that she couldn't wait until her follow-up appointment with her PCP.

She has been in the hospital going on four days now. She had to have surgery to clean the infected hand, and she's been on IV antibiotics since admission and will have to remain on them for eight weeks after discharge. Now she is on the cardiac floor because of a hearth rhythm issue they detected. I have never seen her so miserable. She is doing a bit better now, but she was basically ready to give up and die the first two days in the hospital.

The only two positive things to come of this so far are that she has barely eaten for a week, so maybe she'll lose some weight from this and it can snowball and that she finally realized none of the stuff she has bought from her retail therapy matters. She gave me the go-ahead to get rid of or give away whatever I need to.

If she doesn't make some serious life changes, I don't think she will recover from this. She absolutely has to lose weight to gain any independence back. She was barely mobile before this happened. I knew this a long time ago but didn't have the courage to say anything, especially since I know her resistance to change. My dad was disabled for nearly ten years before his death and everything was made far more difficult by his weight gained during recovery, which my mom enabled by feeding him whatever he wanted. I was much less empathetic at that time in my life since I'd never experienced such misery from illness or weight gain, so I am trying to have more empathy and understanding now, but a reality check is needed. She will need physical/occupational therapy at home after this, but I don't even know how to prepare her house for that given the current disaster state of the house, recently made yet more complicated by the cats pooping in the hallway every day. One brother lives in another city and the other no longer talks to her, so this all largely falls in my lap.

[tp4tissue]

It's a tough environment with looming covid to be going through the hospital cycles.  Stay safe.

[fohat.digs]

I wish that I had something meaningful to say, but I don't. As I have moved deeper into my 60s these things have come into much better focus. And about 3 years ago I had a mysterious debilitating condition that was, I am convinced, the indirect result of an abcessed tooth.

Fortunately both of my parents went rather quickly when their time came, but I have watched many others around me deteriorate inexorably over a lenghty arc of time.

One thing I will say, though, is to get rid of the animals. I reached my turning point on domesticated pets many years ago, but regardless of whatever "companionship" they provide, the responsibility of attending to their needs and properly isolating oneself from the inevitable filth that they produce is probably well beyond the capabilities of anyone who is physically or mentally impaired.

[noisyturtle]

It's really tough, my father constantly warns me about the amount of unseen things one has to deal with when a parent gets old and dies. There's a lot of responsibility.

I've been very lucky to have two pretty healthy parents who have so far not been affected with the same ailments their parents had. I also know that I have no means to care for either of them, physically or monetarily. I cannot even care for myself, and I believe they realize that too and don't expect much from me anyway. All I ever wanted from my adult life was for them to see me successful, but that is obviously not in the cards for me.

Both my parents eat well and exercise even at their advanced ages, My mom is in her 80s and still goes on 4 hour intense bike rides! I'm sure she is in better health than I am. I am exceptionally grateful for health conscious parents.

I am the most frightened of Alzheimer's. My father described it as he began to feel like the person he knew with Alzheimer's had died long before their body did, and when they finally did pass it was a relief. No one should go through that.


As far as being healthy in your older years the only people I see succeed at that are people who maintain that healthy living long-term from their younger years (best way to go, starting in your 20s/30s, plus this way you can eat anything you want in your 70s) OR people who have a serious heart attack and are scared into making huge changes quickly a la Larry King.

[Leslieann]

Been there done that, expect to do it again in a few years.

First things first...
Take care of YOU and don't feel guilt for it. Seriously this puts a ton of stress on you and you need to take breaks. Too often people taking care of parents and family forget themselves in the process.

Next thing,
Especially since she's in the hospital get some help and go through that house while you have the chance. It's way more difficult with them there. Anytime they are not there is a time to get things done. Get things set up to make things easier for you. Does she have a chair that's difficult to get in and out of? Get rid of it before she can't get out of it. If you need it, be prepared to hire someone to come in once a week even, that alone can help, spread the cost among the others who don't live nearby, make it part of their contribution and insist on they help, otherwise they probably won't as they will have no idea how much this is being put on you. If they don't want to help make sure the will (there is a will right?) reflects this, that sounds crappy but you'd be surprised how sh*tty people your siblings can be when money is involved. If they can't kick in $50 a month now expect them to fight for every dollar later, so keep receipts for EVERYTHING.

If it looks bad on the surface, expect things to to be way worse as you dig in. Check everything, heat, air, water, stove... Check her bed. My grandmother had been using the same matress for years, when we went to remove it we found coils and wires poking out all over, how she slept on it without being constantly stabbed we have no idea.  It was also really easy to fall out of because the way it had worn almost pushed you out of it. We had to get a fence to keep her in, once the matress was replaced she no longer needed that. She also (surprise!) slept better, something she had been fighting for years.

And do not be afraid to take her car keys, seriously, people wait far too long to stop driving. My grandmother knew she wasn't good to drive and gave them up willingly, both of my grandfathers were fine till the end.

If she has memory issues, even minor ones, get ready. If she has a fireplace, block it off. We were almost killed when she forgot about the flue. We bought a carbon monoxide detector the next day. We eventually had to watch her cooking as well, she'd cook and reheat the same chicken dinner over and over again, eating a few bites then stick it in the freezer and do it again the next day. Expiration dates mean nothing when they don't understand time or dates anymore. You may need to take a more active approach to her diet and that includes doing all her grocery shopping. Also once they get a bit deeper on this, do NOT move them to a new place, they get in a routine and changing it just destroys them and they may not recover, they don't adapt to change well. If you toss something don't even tell them, just do it (hidden) and act like it was never there, use that memory loss to your advantage at times, seems mean but it's easier than dealing with the fallout. Memory issues brings a whole new slew of problems to driving, my grandparents went to dinner at a favorite place 10 minutes from home and got lost for almost an hour, you need to revoke driving for memory, not just bad driving. Also expect them to become full on children again, extremely petulant ones at that.

It was rough but putting her in a home was the best thing for her and us, even after she took the hit from the change. We no longer worried about her falling without us around, eating the wrong things, using the stove, using the fireplace, bathing... We didn't realize just how much stress was being put on us. The sad part is we took too long to do it and we actually did it sooner than many people would have.

[Kavik]

Thank you for all the thoughtful replies, everyone. These really help.

@TP4
Thank you. Fortunately, COVID-19 numbers in my area have been holding steady for several weeks now and not increasing, so that's good at least. Definitely still a risk I'm mindful of though.

@Fohat
These cats are coming up on 18 years old (I think), so I've been hoping their own mortality would take care of them for me. The only good cat she had died last year at the age of 20. They are a big variable, so I definitely need to figure out what to do with them. The dog I adopted from her is actually one of the best dogs I've ever had, so that's at least one positive to come from it.

@Noisy
That is amazing that your parents are still that active at that age. My mom and her sister are both having all these health issues in their late 60s while their mom is almost 91 and completely fine, living by herself. My dad's dad had Alzheimers combined with Schizophrenia, so it was a combination of forgetfulness AND paranoia. It definitely wasn't a fun time, but fortunately for me, I was too young to understand it until the very end. My grandma felt the same way as your father described. When she heard of his death, she apparently didn't have much of a reaction because he'd already been dead to her for a long time.

This and my dad's demise have fortified my commitment not to let this happen to me. With the exception of a few years in my 20s, I've been an active person, so I will try hard to maintain that into my elder years.

@Lesieann
This is all very good advice. I actually did swing by her house after the hospital last night and went to town for a couple hours. You are correct about how much worse things are when you peel back the layers. To make her broken couch more comfortable, she'd covered it in pillows and bedding. Even after removing the pillows from the pillow cases, it filled a 32 gallon tote. The plumbing has been an issue for years, and I was able to fix a few problems in the bathrooms earlier this year, but the kitchen and utility room have had issues related to a broken pipe in the slab for twenty years that never got fixed. I have definitely thrown things away without asking; my strategy was to ask about just enough things that she had some control (or at least an illusion thereof) and to silently discard things I knew needed to go.

There is a will. My mom had enough foresight to get all that stuff taken care of about a year and a half ago. I don't remember who gets what, but I am basically in control of everything if she is unable. Fortunately, she has not been driving for a little over a year, partly because she doesn't have an automatic garage door opener, so getting her car out is hard, and also because of COVID-19; she doesn't want to go out and catch it.

I did manage to lift weights once and run once this week despite this. I have also not been going to the hospital as early in the morning as I could. I'm not sure if those count as taking care of myself, lol. Work has been really understanding this week, but eventually I'll have to balance that into the equation as well.

[pixelpusher]

Glad you shared with us.  I find sharing helps the most. While the exact details aren't the same for everyone, we do ALL have to deal with things like this.  We just don't talk about it.  It's not pleasant.  Talking to others and hearing their stories and letting them hear our stories offers some comfort.

Have had to clear out 3 houses in the past few years (2 grandparents, 1 parent).  Slowing working on cleaning out 50 years of basement storage from my father-in-law who is not so well with Parkinsons. 

The only good news is I've often found there is some funny **** that happens in these ****ty moments.  So yeah, when the dogs have bloody diarreah all over the house because your mom found out how to get the lock off the cabinets and fed every goddamn thing in the house (including chocolate) to the dogs... it's absolutely the worst.  But a few years later you can have a chuckle   

Kinda reminds me of when my son was born.  ****er screamed for a year. It was absolute hell.  We wanted to send him back from whence he came.  We wanted to drive the car off a cliff.  But people dont' talk about this stuff.  12 years later it's kinda funny.  Kinda.

[Leslieann]

There is a will. My mom had enough foresight to get all that stuff taken care of about a year and a half ago. I don't remember who gets what, but I am basically in control of everything if she is unable. Fortunately, she has not been driving for a little over a year, partly because she doesn't have an automatic garage door opener, so getting her car out is hard, and also because of COVID-19; she doesn't want to go out and catch it.

I did manage to lift weights once and run once this week despite this. I have also not been going to the hospital as early in the morning as I could. I'm not sure if those count as taking care of myself, lol. Work has been really understanding this week, but eventually I'll have to balance that into the equation as well.

Make sure the will is going to be legally recognized and that it spells out as much as it can to avoid issues for you later.
My grandmother had a will but the state didn't recognize it so my aunt decided it should fall back to her and my grandfathers last will they knew about, one that dated back to the 80's and was long gone. Then came questions about my grandfathers possessions... He'd died years before and everything had been distributed at the time but my aunt wanted to keep going back to it. Keep in mind they were not rich by any means, lower middle class at best and yet it kicked off a bunch of insanity. Fights over jewelry, antiques, the long gone car, even the ashes, it got real petty, real fast.  Her distance didn't help because much of what she wanted was long gone as my grandmother had dwindled things down to the basics and given it to who she wanted prior to her death but it didn't stop her.  Luckily the state was having none of it , so the same rules that hurt us also helped us. What was expected to be a smooth transition turned into a year of infighting and lawyers

One important thing... Anything that you do on the house, document and keep receipts. That way if there's a fight over something you can slap those down and at least get paid back for it, that cut what my aunts and uncles got by 80%. You should also document lost wages, I don't know if it would help but the more you document the more likely you will get what you deserve. Some things that we thought were irrelevant turned out to be and did make a difference later in final payouts.

Anything that de-stresses or maintain some normalcy is personal care.

[Kavik]

Just an update to this: she was in the hospital for about two and a half weeks, where she had two hand surgeries and a pacemaker installed, and then she was moved to a nursing home temporarily. She's been there for over four weeks now, progressing at a painfully slow rate. And now she has COVID-19 since nursing homes are a breeding ground for that. She said she is asymptomatic and feels exactly the same as before, which is a relief. I was almost certain it would kill her if she got it since she has so many other comorbidities.

[ddrfraser1]

Man, sorry to hear all this. Glad you have a place to share.

It would seem to me that at the point she became unable to manage her own affairs, as a symptom of her poor choices, and she became dependent on you, she forfeited her right to make certain decisions. It's one thing for her to decide to take care of cats and hoard things but once it impacts your life, she doesn't get a vote any more.

It's strange how when we grow up we see all our parents' junk for what it is and unfortunately it falls on the children. It becomes very difficult to balance the desire to be patient and understanding with the need to set healthy boundaries. Ultimately, that is for you to decide.

Good luck and keep us posted. We are pulling for you and praying for you.

[tp4tissue]

Something to keep in mind.  Like with old cars,  there are components that go out of production, things that you Can-Not Fix at all, or -In TIME-.

Old Hughmahnns are similar in this regard.  You have a choice, spend time peacefully with them in what remains of their -lifespan- OR you can fight their mental-resistance, arrogance, ignorance, trained helplessness, thus gambling on the very small probability of a longer health outcome.

It's different than beating a young person over the head with Knowledge and Veggie-Facts.

 

[Sintpinty]

Pre-emptive: Please don't turn this into "eat m0ar veggies" since I can see this devolving into that. Any tales of similar experiences or whatever are welcome. This isn't a post for sympathy; I just needed to express it.

What I have feared for at least the past year and a half is finally coming to pass but not as I expected it would. I should have taken a stronger stand ealier, but it may not have made a difference anyway.

At the beginning of last year, I decided to clean my mom's house once and for all.  Her house is almost like one you'd see on the show Hoarders, but not quite as bad. She began to trust me to clean since I understand the propensity to keep things and feel sentimental towards things unlike my brothers who had been much less discriminate when cleaning her place before; although, I have been scolded for throwing away stupid things like used plastic spoons or honey packets. She also began coming to terms with the fact that a lot of things don't matter anymore and can be thrown away or donated since I would have to deal with them when she is dead anyway. I had some initial success, but it is surpringly difficult to clean and organize a house with forty years worth of sentimental junk in it. It's difficult to know where to focus too since every nook and cranny needs attention and has years worth of documents, gifts, old art projects, correspondence, etc. My mom also kept buying new stuff and way more groceries than she needs and not maintaining areas I'd already cleaned, so I stopped making headway.

Then she hurt her hip and needed my help just doing the basics like taking out the trash and the cat litter (The cats are a big reason that things are not only untidy but also filthy.), feeding and walking the dog, and picking up and unloading groceries, so a lot of my visits were then spent on those things instead of cleaning. I eventually had to adopt the dog because she could no longer care for her. A lot of time was also spent just keeping her company since I am the only person she sees anywhere approaching regularly.

She has been obese my whole life and morbidly obese for at least fifteen or twenty years. With this come diabetes and hypertension. She is good about checking her blood sugar and taking her insulin, but she has so much food that it won't all fit in the kitchen and has to be stacked in other rooms, so she is always surrounded by snacks (and she doesn't want me to throw away expired packaged food since "it might still be good"). For some years now, she hasn't been able to bathe or reach her feet because of her weight. She seems to think her weight is some kind of affliction rather than something she has control over.

My goal with cleaning her house was to give her a sense of a fresh start so that she could get other things under control, but instead I felt that she just began to depend on me for everything. She wouldn't even go through the shoes and clothes I'd gathered up almost a year ago just to decide what to keep and what to get rid of.

My fear has been that she would have a heart attack or a stroke, and I'd just find her dead in her house one day. Her health is poor enough that things just stack on top of each other and don't get resolved because she doesn't seek treatment, and, when she does, her doctor doesn't seem to address her concerns to her liking (like her asthma; although her breathing trouble is likely at least partly caused by having a huge gut pushing against her diaphragm. I know what that feels like from my fat days).

It has all come to a head in the past week when her hand started swelling. She thought this was related to a dental abscess she had had removed a month prior that took a long time to heal and for which she had been given no antibiotics. Her primary care doctor misdiagnosed the hand issue as gout, so she sat at home taking medicine for the wrong thing while an infection was festering. She requested I come by to help every day instead of the usual twice per week. This is the first time I've had to help her stand up from the toilet and help her pull her pants up. The hand was getting visibily worse every day, so I persuaded her to go to the ER when it became apparent to me that she couldn't wait until her follow-up appointment with her PCP.

She has been in the hospital going on four days now. She had to have surgery to clean the infected hand, and she's been on IV antibiotics since admission and will have to remain on them for eight weeks after discharge. Now she is on the cardiac floor because of a hearth rhythm issue they detected. I have never seen her so miserable. She is doing a bit better now, but she was basically ready to give up and die the first two days in the hospital.

The only two positive things to come of this so far are that she has barely eaten for a week, so maybe she'll lose some weight from this and it can snowball and that she finally realized none of the stuff she has bought from her retail therapy matters. She gave me the go-ahead to get rid of or give away whatever I need to.

If she doesn't make some serious life changes, I don't think she will recover from this. She absolutely has to lose weight to gain any independence back. She was barely mobile before this happened. I knew this a long time ago but didn't have the courage to say anything, especially since I know her resistance to change. My dad was disabled for nearly ten years before his death and everything was made far more difficult by his weight gained during recovery, which my mom enabled by feeding him whatever he wanted. I was much less empathetic at that time in my life since I'd never experienced such misery from illness or weight gain, so I am trying go have more empathy and understanding now, but a reality check is needed. She will need physical/occupational therapy at home after this, but I don't even know how to prepare her house for that given the current disaster state of the house, recently made yet more complicated by the cats pooping in the hallway every day. One brother lives in another city and the other no longer talks to her, so this all largely falls in my lap.

Thats awful. Hope your mother recovers well.

[DonkeyD]

Pre-emptive: Please don't turn this into "eat m0ar veggies" since I can see this devolving into that. Any tales of similar experiences or whatever are welcome. This isn't a post for sympathy; I just needed to express it.

What I have feared for at least the past year and a half is finally coming to pass but not as I expected it would. I should have taken a stronger stand ealier, but it may not have made a difference anyway.

At the beginning of last year, I decided to clean my mom's house once and for all.  Her house is almost like one you'd see on the show Hoarders, but not quite as bad. She began to trust me to clean since I understand the propensity to keep things and feel sentimental towards things unlike my brothers who had been much less discriminate when cleaning her place before; although, I have been scolded for throwing away stupid things like used plastic spoons or honey packets. She also began coming to terms with the fact that a lot of things don't matter anymore and can be thrown away or donated since I would have to deal with them when she is dead anyway. I had some initial success, but it is surpringly difficult to clean and organize a house with forty years worth of sentimental junk in it. It's difficult to know where to focus too since every nook and cranny needs attention and has years worth of documents, gifts, old art projects, correspondence, etc. My mom also kept buying new stuff and way more groceries than she needs and not maintaining areas I'd already cleaned, so I stopped making headway.

Then she hurt her hip and needed my help just doing the basics like taking out the trash and the cat litter (The cats are a big reason that things are not only untidy but also filthy.), feeding and walking the dog, and picking up and unloading groceries, so a lot of my visits were then spent on those things instead of cleaning. I eventually had to adopt the dog because she could no longer care for her. A lot of time was also spent just keeping her company since I am the only person she sees anywhere approaching regularly.

She has been obese my whole life and morbidly obese for at least fifteen or twenty years. With this come diabetes and hypertension. She is good about checking her blood sugar and taking her insulin, but she has so much food that it won't all fit in the kitchen and has to be stacked in other rooms, so she is always surrounded by snacks (and she doesn't want me to throw away expired packaged food since "it might still be good"). For some years now, she hasn't been able to bathe or reach her feet because of her weight. She seems to think her weight is some kind of affliction rather than something she has control over.

My goal with cleaning her house was to give her a sense of a fresh start so that she could get other things under control, but instead I felt that she just began to depend on me for everything. She wouldn't even go through the shoes and clothes I'd gathered up almost a year ago just to decide what to keep and what to get rid of.

My fear has been that she would have a heart attack or a stroke, and I'd just find her dead in her house one day. Her health is poor enough that things just stack on top of each other and don't get resolved because she doesn't seek treatment, and, when she does, her doctor doesn't seem to address her concerns to her liking (like her asthma; although her breathing trouble is likely at least partly caused by having a huge gut pushing against her diaphragm. I know what that feels like from my fat days).

It has all come to a head in the past week when her hand started swelling. She thought this was related to a dental abscess she had had removed a month prior that took a long time to heal and for which she had been given no antibiotics. Her primary care doctor misdiagnosed the hand issue as gout, so she sat at home taking medicine for the wrong thing while an infection was festering. She requested I come by to help every day instead of the usual twice per week. This is the first time I've had to help her stand up from the toilet and help her pull her pants up. The hand was getting visibily worse every day, so I persuaded her to go to the ER when it became apparent to me that she couldn't wait until her follow-up appointment with her PCP.

She has been in the hospital going on four days now. She had to have surgery to clean the infected hand, and she's been on IV antibiotics since admission and will have to remain on them for eight weeks after discharge. Now she is on the cardiac floor because of a hearth rhythm issue they detected. I have never seen her so miserable. She is doing a bit better now, but she was basically ready to give up and die the first two days in the hospital.

The only two positive things to come of this so far are that she has barely eaten for a week, so maybe she'll lose some weight from this and it can snowball and that she finally realized none of the stuff she has bought from her retail therapy matters. She gave me the go-ahead to get rid of or give away whatever I need to.

If she doesn't make some serious life changes, I don't think she will recover from this. She absolutely has to lose weight to gain any independence back. She was barely mobile before this happened. I knew this a long time ago but didn't have the courage to say anything, especially since I know her resistance to change. My dad was disabled for nearly ten years before his death and everything was made far more difficult by his weight gained during recovery, which my mom enabled by feeding him whatever he wanted. I was much less empathetic at that time in my life since I'd never experienced such misery from illness or weight gain, so I am trying go have more empathy and understanding now, but a reality check is needed. She will need physical/occupational therapy at home after this, but I don't even know how to prepare her house for that given the current disaster state of the house, recently made yet more complicated by the cats pooping in the hallway every day. One brother lives in another city and the other no longer talks to her, so this all largely falls in my lap.

All you can do is your best.

Please just try to take it day by day and please make sure you're also giving yourself the care you need and deserve. Your health/well-being doesn't need to take a back seat while caring for someone.

Wishing you well.

[Kavik]

It's been over a year now, so I suppose an update is in order.

The first "skilled nursing facility" after her hospital stay released her when she was so weak that she couldn't even stand up on her own. I took her back to her house for maybe an hour and determined it wasn't going to work, so she came to live at my house for a bit until she was stronger. That "bit" has turned into 11 months at this point. She did seem *somewhat* determined to get better, sticking to a rather strict diet with my help, but even eating no more than 1300 kcal/day for several months, she was unable to loose weight except for a few pounds after the initial week. She struggled to exercise because of the difficulty breathing caused by congestive heart failure. She did get back some strength from occupational and physical therapist visits at the house.

She has been back to the hospital, followed by a stay at a skilled nursing facility, twice since then. The second hospital stay was for an infection in her leg, which we caught early enough this time that it didn't require surgery, and the third stay was for pneumonia, UTI, and a stomach ulcer. I think this was also partly caused by her stupid doctor not sending her prescriptions to the local pharmacy; he sent them to her prescriptions by mail pharmacy when she had already been out of medicine for days. Humana is an absolute joke by the way because I had requested refills before this that never got filled, and it never filled the new prescriptions sent in by the doctor either. So she didn't get medicine until she went back to the hospital. One of the meds was a diuretic for the congestive heart failure, so she was retaining water like crazy, causing breathing difficulty and leg swelling.

When she was at the skilled nursing facility after her third hospital stay, I noticed she was not sounding like herself, repeating certain things almost compulsively and not being able to string together a coherent sentence (she has always had trouble thinking of words though) and would just give up after a while of struggling with the words. Her personality had changed. When she got home this time, she was incontinent, and she never checked her blood sugar or took her insulin unless I asked her to. That has never happened before; she had always been very diligent about managing her diabetes. Just last night, she forgot how to check her blood sugar; she put the strip in the glucometer and didn't remember the step of pricking her finger and putting blood on it. She also went from very talkative to saying almost nothing. At first, I thought she may be depressed, discourage, or not motivated. However, her occupational therapist noticed these things too and suspects dementia may be setting in. I was unware it can come on this fast (if that's indeed what is happening), but I had suspected it in the back of my head as well.

Over the course of this whole ordeal, she's lost 80 pounds (but is still obese) and has gone from using a cane to using a walker. At this point, I do not envision her returning to independence, but I don't want to take care of her myself for the rest of her life either. Her house is still a disaster, so that's not an option anyway. I have donated or thrown away a lot of stuff, and my brother helped me throw out a couple dumpster loads from the garage, but the rest of the house still needs a lot of work. She had three cats I have been taking care of during all of this, and two of those have since died (they are about 20 years old, so it's their time). I'm not sure what to do with the last one since I can't really keep him at my house. This whole year has felt like a waste (maybe more so than 2020), and I feel as though I've just been white knuckling life until something changes. Based on what I saw at the skilled nursing facility (her second two stays being at one that is considered the best in the area), I can't imagine just sticking her in a nursing home forever.

[Leslieann]

However, her occupational therapist noticed these things too and suspects dementia may be setting in. I was unware it can come on this fast (if that's indeed what is happening), but I had suspected it in the back of my head as well.

Sorry to hear about the problems.

It usually doesn't come on that fast unless something triggers it but this sounds like more unless she has given up the pretense that she's fine.
Something else that can cause similar issues though is a U.T.I., they can make elderly, especially women go absolutely bonkers. If she does have some dementia she may not even be aware or able to express her symptoms.

[Kavik]

However, her occupational therapist noticed these things too and suspects dementia may be setting in. I was unware it can come on this fast (if that's indeed what is happening), but I had suspected it in the back of my head as well.

Sorry to hear about the problems.

It usually doesn't come on that fast unless something triggers it but this sounds like more unless she has given up the pretense that she's fine.
Something else that can cause similar issues though is a U.T.I., they can make elderly, especially women go absolutely bonkers. If she does have some dementia she may not even be aware or able to express her symptoms.

Thanks, she did have a UTI recently for which she was on antibiotics (it was a short course though, only three days). I think she will be getting another urinalysis to confirm if it's cleared up or not. I hope that's all it is, but it has been a couple months since I first noticed her personality changes.

She does have trouble expressing things when home health people ask her questions. She sometimes answers that she doesn't know even if it's something about her own body that she should know (like "has your incontinence improved?"), but she does answer that she's fine even when it's clear she's not, so the pretense is still there. I sometimes wonder if her responsibilities have been taken care of for so long that she just defers to me for everything by default. Her brain also may be atrophying from watching so much television and not being challenged. Maybe I should get her some crossword or sudoku puzzles or something. I talked to her about setting up an easel for her to paint, but her dominant hand has no dexterity anymore because of the surgery.

[tp4tissue]

I've read good things about the elderly and super-nintendo.

[Leslieann]

She does have trouble expressing things when home health people ask her questions. She sometimes answers that she doesn't know even if it's something about her own body that she should know (like "has your incontinence improved?"), but she does answer that she's fine even when it's clear she's not, so the pretense is still there.

As they decline they take less and less care of themselves and U.T.I. become more and more common, it may have cleared up and she caught another.