Elderly Parents

[Wart]

I know it's difficult for a child taking care of a parent with dementia/Altimeters and other health issues who have been left by the other family members to make the decisions, I know these children have a hard time believing things could be worse. They can be worse.

You could be left to have to fight with others as to the decisions.

MiL has dementia/ Alzheimers and diabetes. Wife has 7 siblings. 3 years ago Wife and I believed best place for Ma was an assisted facility while she still had the cogs to get use to living there. The majority of the rest of the family decided it would be better to remodel the house. I wanted nothing to do with it, NADA, and the rest of that story would only serve to illustrate how great of a guy I am.

The decision thing, Lets just say it took Ma getting lost within eyesight of the house she lived in for 30 years, falling in a parking lot, the owner of the parking lot calling EMS, ad Ma being put in the system for ALL the family to accept Ma had a problem.

To those of you who are left alone to make the decisions, it could be worse. You could be dealing with people who want to believe the parent isn't that bad after Ma takes off her diaper, squats and pees in the middle of the bathroom floor.

Yee Haw!

I had one Great Aunt who died at 107 (?) and an Aunt who passed at 90 something. Both were blessed, as were their families, in that they both retained their facilities.

 

[Wart]

But I will tell you this, everytime I forget a telephone number, a person's name or an errand my wife has given me, I wonder.

I wonder about myself too.

Then I remember I've been this way for decades.

So if I've got it I've had it for decades.

 

[Wart]

Keep in mind, Your personal Hell is always the hottest.

 

[Wart]

******Contrivercial thought******

Should we always to strive to keep someone alive no matter what. We allow our animals to go in dignity.

THing is, if one has the mental capacity to pull their own trigger I have no qualms with it. That is as long as it IS a quality of life issue and not the BS reasons people usually commit suicide. Someone who is healthy taking themselves out .... Bye Bye!

I'm not sure if a DNR / Assisted Suicide and living will could apply to decreased mental capacity. And I'm not sure I would want to go down that path.

 

[PieSusan]

(please note "vegetable" is the word my mom used to describe what she did not want)

A living will and a dnr are really there to protect the hospital, nursing home or hospice. Further, even with them in place there are no bright lines. No doctor knows if someone will bounce from a pneumonia or whether the pneumonia and weakness will cause further mental decline. If they knew that, then, the issue would be a whole lot easier to deal with and I wouldn't be so stressed right now. My mom's wishes were not to live as a vegetable, at present she is not but I had no idea whether she would be if I gave her this last chance at recovery. However, she knew me, where she was and wanted to live--despite her dementia, I opted to have the doctors treat her. Fortunately, I have a relatively happy outcome. There is a bit of decline but my mom still knows who I am and where she is and her friends. Had she not bounced and had become a vegetable, I would have been obviously very upset and would be second-guessing myself right now. All one can do is make the best decision one can with the information one has at any given moment and then, let go. I am very grateful that my mom is doing as well as she is doing despite her weakness and sleepiness because she still has a quality of life that she enjoys.

So, these documents that I thought would make things easier and would take the choices out of my hands because I would be following my parents' wishes do not actually accomplish that in all cases. It is very hard when dementia is involved and someone is sometimes lucid and sometimes confused.