Hi I'd like to join you all. Up until February of this year I was managing looking after my Mum who's 95, it wasn't easy but we muddled on through. I did her shopping, paid her bills, organised a cleaner, took her out two days a week, was always on the end of the phone when needed, and she pottered about in her home and garden between outings, helped by the fact that she had a slightly younger neighbour ( a mere 90 year old!) who had a son/partner who was always willing to help Mum as well.
I'm wordy by the way so do skip as much as you want of this. In February this year Mum fell and fractured her hip, she had a partial hip replacement and came home mid March for a week with carers three times a day, me five afternoons a week and my sister two afternoons a week. At the end of the week she twisted awkwardly in bed and her hip dislocated, there followed three more ops, an attempted hip repair ( which disclocated again), another total hip replacement ( which dislocated! which meant as there was unfortunately an infection in place she had to have a girdlestone procedure in which the whole hip joint was removed.
All of this was a shock to Mum and to us, after the girdlestone procedure she went to a rehab unit, where she had pretty much no rehab for four weeks as the physio said she needed orthotics to raise her damaged leg in order to even attempt to walk, and it was going to take at least a month for the orthotics to arrive, they never did and the unit considered her "optimised" but immobile. She can stand to get on a ross return to move from bed to chair, bed to wheelchair, bed to bathroom but this takes two people to use it, there was no way that I ( who am on sickness benefits waiting for a large hernia op!) could do it even if I bought one, plus her small modern semi has doorways too small for any of this equipment.
The rehab unit pushed for discharge and recommended Mum would be safest in a care home. She refused to talk about it, and when me and my sister could get her to talk about it would agree to it but say she could remember nothing of our conversations the next day. It is true to say that her short term memory is now appalling, I have visited five days a week faithfully since February, yet she still doesn't think I have been by her side at all. Noone knows why her memory has gone, it could be the four general anaesthetics in a short space of time, it could be delerium which can take a while to resolve in the elderly, or it could be dementia, we don't know.
So last week the hospital said Mum really had to go asap, so we narrowed down her care home choice and made the decision for her, tried to involve her as much as possible with videos on our phone, visits from the care home manager, me writing down the stages of her leaving hospital in her diary, but it was still a shock to her when the ambulance took her to the care home on Friday of last week.
I visited on Friday and Sunday, I'm currently unwell so my sister ( who's great but lives further away) is covering Monday and Wednesday of this week...it's the first time I have been ill since February, I think I had burned out and got very low....and I hope to be well enough to go tomorrow.
Mum is very unhappy, says all the other residents are "gaga" She is the only normal one! The staff are lazy and don't care about her at all, she feels like she is in prison and just wants to go home. She told my sister on Monday that she can walk and is actually taking herself to the toliet in the night.......she can't walk, her hip joint has been removed, even the optimistic surgeon who did the op told me that at best she might manage a step transfer.
I have talked to the home, and booked appointments for a hair cut ( her hair has not been washed since February!) and a pedicure, plus they are trying to involve her in activities, which she is refusing to take part in. We have paid for a 4 week trial period. My sister is adamant that Mum just needs to make the best of it and we need to actually give this 6 months before even considering another home.
The staff seem lovely and caring, they are actually getting Mum to eat which is quite an achievement, she accuses some of them of shouting at her, but I've seen what they are doing and it is just raising their voice when they talk to her because she refuses to wear her hearing aids.
I'm a much softer touch than my sister, and if it wasn't for the fact that I am physically unwell myself and I also care for my youngest son who is autistic and has other health problems, I would probably have moved in with Mum, but I also know that it would destroy me and have a bad effect on my marriage. It also has to be said that she has been difficult all her life, so I don't know why I'm expecting her to turn into a sweet old lady at this late stage! So yes that's where I am now, I'm 64, with my own health difficulties and a mother who is desperately unhappy in a care home that seems pretty okay to me and my sister, someone tell me this is going to get better???