Grandmother is becoming a danger to us and herself. I would like to send her to a home.

[dinkydolphin]

I have name changed for obvious reasons.

My grandmother (78) moved in with me and my partner in May 2017 after my grandfather died.

I invited her to stay with us as she was struggling with the upkeep in her maritial home and was generally suffering from loneliness. She sold her property a month after and of course as I invited her to stay with us I never asked her to contribute but, she has decided herself to buy her own food (which I take her out for) and £40 a month towards gas and electric. I am absolutely and hopelessly in love with her. She is a great woman/grandmother and I love spending time with her.

My partner and I both work full time and my grandmother's sister comes by every day excluding weekends to visit and ensure she is ok.

In the summer of 2018 she started having problems with using appliances around the house when she has never had trouble before. It started with leaving food in the microwave for god knows how long until the plate/ bowl explodes. Then she consistently leaves the house throughout the day without locking the doors. She leaves her ensuite shower running for hours for end a few times a week. The most dangerous thing though is leaving the gas running in the kitchen. We have banned her from using it but, she would not listen until I eventually told her I couldn't trust her to stay in the house alone then.

The worst however was this weekend. My partner and I were both gone from Thursday at 8am to work. We asked my grandmother's sister to do her usual checks but extend this to today as we were only coming home this morning. So potentially from Thursday to Sunday she has left the gas running in the kitchen from the stove. We entered the house and the smell knocked us back. Evacuated the house immediately and I've got her booked into the home for Tuesday.

She has always ALWAYS asked that I would never put her into a home and I always said I wouldn't but, I feel like I have no other choice. AIBU?

Stop!!!
OP you dont need to go through this alone, there is help out there.
First step is GP again.
Ask for a referral to a memory clinic.
Ultimately if your grandmother is assessed as having mental capacity then you cannot place her in a home against her will, that would be illegal. But it doesn't mean that she has to live with you either, that situation is clearly not working. She needs a team around her to ensure her safety.
If she is deemed to lack capacity to make her own decisions then the team will also advise on the best places for her to live. They will include you in this process.
Nursing home fees can be thousands a week. How is she going to fund this?
There is help in the form of continuing health care funding that may be available depending on her needs.
Good luck.

Lorelei, the OP moved her grandmother in with her and her partner following her grandfather's death, if you read her opening post.

OP presumably has her own mortgage/rent and living expenses that must be paid and therefore she works full time. So she cannot be home with her grandmother full time.

Why does that seem so hard for you to grasp? Stop being so judgemental and idiotic.

Op does not at present have the freedoms she desires while her Nan lives there.

Yes, imagine, the freedom to go out to earn a living and not wonder if your house has exploded.

You're not at all unreasonable to move her to a home.

Do none of you people guilting the op realise the full extent of dementia? People who suffer from it can quickly become violent, not by choice, they have no idea what they are doing, but it can and does happen. She has already left the gas on repeatedly and could easily cause an explosion. Would you be making the op feel guilty if they lived next to you? I doubt it. You'd be thinking 'hey I don't want my house to explode actually, or possibly die'.

The gran could end up leaving in the middle of the night and end up in a river. That also happens a lot. Recently up here a lady went missing over night. They found her in the river. Would you prefer that option to a home?

It's not great, but a home has 24/7 supervision. The op can't provide that, she needs to work and to sleep. It's just not feasible.

Oh and LoreleiLee1 you are a twat. Don't get huffy about someone telling you the truth.

Agree with @whataboutbob on promises elderly people extract from others on never putting them in a home.

Several relatives have done this! They put their own parent in a home as soon as she was becoming forgetful.

It is unfair to expect unconditional agreement to something like this. The only way to definitely comply is to kill them off before they need help- hardly what was intended I think.

Excellent post from Serin
If grandmother is deemed to have capacity you are going to need discussions with a range of professionals and your grandmothers wishes will me taken into account throughout the process

OP, we had to put my grandmother in a specialist dementia home after trying the in-home carers for a while. The problem was, they were only coming in three times a day and not at all at night and she just didn't sleep, so had an awful lot of time to get herself into trouble. It was awful - she cried and begged us to kill her and we really did question if we had made the right decision. But she needed 24/7 care and that takes at least two people and with everyone in the family still needing to work to pay mortgages, including her children, that wouldn't work. However, the home was brilliant, we surrounded her with her own things in her room and the she went downhill with the dementia so fast, she forgot about her old flat. She also forgot she had grandchildren and great-grandchildren but hey ho. She put on weight as she had been forgetting to eat when she was at home, she had her hair and hair nails done weekly, which really cheered her up as she was always careful of her appearance, she was taking her meds and the home organised lots of outings and in-home experiences for her and the other residents to keep her stimulated. Her quality of life improved, even if her dementia got worse. Before the home she was underweight, distressed and angry as she felt she was losing control and home was not a safe place to be. The home took the load of running a home off her shoulders and she relaxed a lot. Although it took time, we now feel we did the best thing for her. Whatever you decide, I wish you all the best - it is heartbreaking when a relative gets dementia and there are no easy answers.

I hope an appropriate finance assessment had been undertaken. As someone mentioned upthread. I too have seen too many people ‘evicated’ as such from their care homes once they can no longer pay their fees, and put in other facilities that are cheap, barely adequate, and often with many shortcomings with regards to inspections, and far away from family. Care home managers see the ££££ and filling a bed. This is especially so when it is an inexperienced home manager.

You are all missing the point, as is usual on this site: To clarify:

If you take on the responsibility of an elderly relative you need to be avail. ( Does not matter who died leaving them alone, they are alone! )

If you take on the care on an elderly relative and you cannot be there because you work, you need to :

A: arrange carers to come in 2-3 times a day. And be avail yourself when carers are not.

B: elderly relative goes into an appropriate care home.

A bit like a child. If you have a child and work you put them in childcare. Otherwise you leave and become a SAHM. Put the same level of planning into an elderly relative as you do your child preps. simple!

No that's not the case. Most elderly people can remain semi independent even if they're not capable of living alone. There's no point inventing troubles, at the point at which she moved in with the op presumably it worked.
Or in other words why? Why not just reassess as time goes on? Why is it morally superior for the grandmother to have been in the home from the start, when she presumably didn't need it? Maybe we should all just move in to an old people's home at the age of 18,we'll probably need one eventually.
If we're all missing the point that onyl you can see is there any chance it might just be you being wrong?

MN comments make me feel like my mind is going. OP states her grandmother does NOT have dementia and yet many here in the comments are going on about her having dementia.

I'm 65 and I am getting forgetful, it happens. Gas, shower, micro-wave can be sorted. A medical professional I know had the home of her mother rigged with cameras so she could watch her while she was at work. Lots of ideas to keep her out of a home.

Continuing Health Care funding is virtually impossible to get, I know I tried to get it for my mum. Despite having advanced dementia and no mobility she didn't qualify. The bar is ridiculously high.

OP, several people have asked whether or not you have power of attorney.

This is important because without it you will have no legal right or power to make financial or health and welfare decisions for your grandmother as her own mental capacity declines. You would have to apply to the Court of Protection in order to do anything at all, which is expensive and time consuming.

Does your grandmother still have sufficient mental capacity to set that up? It does take time, so you would need to be getting it moving. If she doesn't then I am afraid you are stuck with Court of Protection.

@LoreleiLee1

Are you drunk? That is exactly what OP is doing. She took on the care when it was possible (before her gran deteriorated). And had someone go on to check on her.

The situation has now changed, because someone simply checking on her is no longer sufficient so she needs full time supervision. So, because of the change in circumstance, the OP is now looking into care homes.

What you've said in your last post is exactly what OP is doing. In your first posts, you had a go at OP for "dumping" her into a home, questioned the need for full time supervision and said OP should be putting her life on hold to stay home full time, which she most likely cannot afford to do.

OP has done the right thing by her gran. Took her in when it was possible and is now finding an alternative now that the situation has come dangerous. And you're on here spouting nonsense.

My Great Grandma was diagnosed at 80 and lived till she was 98. The last 5 years in a home. She was a slow burner, though.

In comparison to my other GG who was diagnosed at 92, in a home within 6 months due to her paranoia and violence. She would block her doors with furniture to stop carers, my Grandparents, my Dad - the only person she would allow in was me. But I had a toddler, a newborn, lived miles away and couldn’t drive. She hallucinated almost constantly, wouldn’t take her medications and was extremely violent and needed very expensive specialist care due to it. She went downhill incredibly fast.

Ooops, sorry, I thought the OP said she had dementia! Whatever the reason for her forgetfulness, I just wanted to make the point that a care home can be a positive thing.

Gran should have been in a home since she was 45 apparently, to stop her having to go into a home three decades later. Perfect sense.

But @dinkydolphin very kindly took her grandmother in when she was better able to look after herself. Not all elderly people need 24 care - she just needed company.

The situation has changed now, and different decisions must be made. I doubt it is a good idea for OP to give up her job and do all the care herself. Blaming her for not being willing to do this is unkind.

Could you not get her some support at home? Carers that come in and check on her whilst you’re not there?

We tried this with my GM who had Dementia and similar risk with appliances. Unfortunately it really doesn't work because unless you're literally going to have carers come in all day, every day, the elderly confused person is still alone for some of the time. We thought it would be fine because the carer is coming in to make her lunch, so she won't need to use any appliances. Then she started forgetting that she'd had lunch and would be trying to prepare food for herself a couple of hours after the carer had left. One day my DH received a call at work from one of the carers saying they were at the house, the front door was wide open and there was no sign of her. She turned up safe but we knew then we had to find a nursing home for her.

My grandma had dementia. She was asked about her grandchildren and correctly said she had three girls, 8,6 and 1. So she passed the test. The fact we were all grown up and had left home at the time apparently didn't factor into it.

Hi @top yes I have power of attorney. We sorted this out the first time she went into the home as part an overall house keeping process. I also look after her finances and sort out all the activities she does. She pays for this all herself but, I make sure she can get out and home safely.

The way your grandmother is today OP is the best she will ever be. With dementia, you sadly are on a one way path of deterioration. There comes a point where what your grandmother needs becomes more important than what she wants. And forget any earlier promises that are often made out of naivety of what 24/7 care for an elderly person is like, she may well live another 20 years and her needs do not trump yours. Alarms and carers are very often only a temporary stop gap so it's practical and realistic to think about residential care. As she doesn't need her house any more, the funds from its sale can support the next stage of her life, making it comfortable and most importantly safe.
I have friends juggling a similar scenario at the moment, they are massively stressed with it all. Good luck to you.

@ChrisjenAvasarala no I'm not. But having just read your and some other posts I think getting drunk would help.

It's like taking to a brick wall sometimes on these posts. Either that or my keyboard is set to Japanese and I just can't see it.

Op, if you cannot cope, which I think is what you are saying here, I would suggest you call your GP in the morning and take it from there. At least they will know what they are actually talking
about.

I used to work in care, and knew a lot of families who managed a loved one at home with dementia. Safety locks and turning the gas off to the cooker are one starting place..... and having a carer come in for half hour visits when you're at work. That's going to cost a hell of a lot less than full time care......... It sounds very extreme and sudden to decide on a home, where the reality is that she will locked behind doors and sat in a chair staring into space. I've worked in several good ones, and even in those it's nothing like being at home with relations. I feel quite sad that you're not even trying other avenues here.

At least you have POA set up, so that is one less worry.

When you said on the second page of the thread that she had been "diagnosed for" dementia, did you mean tested/assessed for it? The usual phrase is "diagnosed with" something, meaning that the decision was that the person definitely has that condition. That is probably where the confusion is arising and people (including myself at first) believed that she definitely had dementia.

I am certainly no expert, but the patterns of behaviour and levels of forgetfulness you describe sound very like those we have seen in elderly relatives in our wider families (DH's and mine) who did have dementia. Another assessment might be in order at some point.