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Sadandlonelymom,
Thanks for thinking of us. Do you know if medicaid paid for your mom to stay in the hospital? I'm asking because the health insurance company is going to stop paying for her hosp ...Read More

Sadandlonelymom,
Thanks for thinking of us. Do you know if medicaid paid for your mom to stay in the hospital? I'm asking because the health insurance company is going to stop paying for her hospital stay at that time, and the discharge coordinator (who works for the health insurance company) is now saying to my family that we should find a place to take her so she doesn't end up in the homeless shelter. It seems like since she is on medicaid which paid for the nursing home, maybe that should pay for the hospital stay until she is placed?

I somehow feel compelled to comment again here with another update. My mom has been in the hospital now for almost a month. They were trying to send her to a far away nursing home for people with beha ...Read More

I somehow feel compelled to comment again here with another update. My mom has been in the hospital now for almost a month. They were trying to send her to a far away nursing home for people with behavioral problems, but when someone from there came to evaluate her they did not agree with the hospital that she has serious mental health problems. So they wouldn't take her because she has only minor mental health problems and other places won't take her because they say her mental health problems are too serious. Most of her actual problems are neurological. It is getting completely ridiculous. She needs long term care and basically every nursing home in the region with an available medicaid bed has rejected her. We keep re-explaining to everyone that it is not an option to take her home because our family's house has been auctioned. There is not a safe place to take her where she can get 24/7 care. The hospital agrees that she needs 24/7 care, and is now trying to send her to and adult family home, but the state is refusing to pay enough for her to go to one where they can actually take care of her 24/7. I'm not sure what will happen, but my family has started contacting government officials and I am looking for a lawyer who might be able to help us even though we are practically broke. She needs to be placed somewhere that can actually provide a safe environment and care for her.... I'm really starting to wonder if there is a way to make that happen.

Well, mom is STILL in the hospital waiting to be discharged. They have now found a nursing home that says they can take her. This one is about an hour and a half away from my family, like you predicte ...Read More

Well, mom is STILL in the hospital waiting to be discharged. They have now found a nursing home that says they can take her. This one is about an hour and a half away from my family, like you predicted Starlight. They are going to send her there as soon as there is an open medicaid bed, which they keep saying will be any day.

I was upset before about her being sent so far away, but now I am really hoping that they discharge her there soon. The doctors and nurses in the hospital are still not taking her muscle spasms and neurological issues very seriously, and when she is in pain and asks to be repositioned, or tries to ask for other help, many of the staff still tell her no. They say that she can do those things herself, because when she is having an "on" period, she can. It frustrating to see medical professionals treat her this way. I know that they can't always do everything she asks, and that sometimes she will have to be in pain because there may not be anything they can do -- but it breaks my heart to see them tell her that she could move around herself if she wanted, when her muscles are totally rigid and she has trouble even opening her eyes. I have given up on them, because they are not willing to listen to my family or my mom about her condition, or to do anything else to treat her symptoms. Someone from my family has been there everyday with her since she has been in the hospital, and we have tried to talking to the staff members about this multiple times. Talking to the doctors and nurses in the hospital has NOT helped, and they are extremely defensive when we bring up these issues. At this point the doctors will not visit her even if she requests it, because I guess they are treating her as being there for non-medical reasons. Which makes sense, but we can't take her to another doctor until she is outpatient again. I am praying that the new nursing home staff will be more understanding about her neurological condition and at least acknowledge her physical inability to move sometimes.

Cece -- thanks for you comment. Do you know what medications have been effective for dystonia? I think you are right that my mom has it, and actually I have heard some of her doctors use this term bef ...Read More

Cece -- thanks for you comment. Do you know what medications have been effective for dystonia? I think you are right that my mom has it, and actually I have heard some of her doctors use this term before, but recently it has fallen out of favor and they have been blaming everything either on the back surgery and psych diagnoses. The doctors that we have been seeing are not really willing to take this problem seriously (the doctors in the hospital where my mom is currently definitely are not). Or if they do, they just say there is nothing else they can do to treat her since narcotic pain killers make her psychotic. She just saw her neurologist the day before she was admitted to the hospital, and he basically said there was nothing more he could do. We have taken her to several neurologist before, and they haven't been able to get this under control. So I'm looking for any ideas I can get!

Annlidot and Kelleybean, I wanted you to know that your comments really helped me today. After I read your comment Annlidot, I knew you were right -- I can't just let my family be paralyzed by this si ...Read More

Annlidot and Kelleybean, I wanted you to know that your comments really helped me today. After I read your comment Annlidot, I knew you were right -- I can't just let my family be paralyzed by this situation and do nothing, or it will end in a total disaster. I met my dad and my sister at the hospital. We talked about how mom might end up having to go to a place that's far away, and what we will do if that happens. We didn't come up with a plan for it really, since we don't know where they will send her.

With all of us there, I called the social worker at the hospital who is in charge of discharge planning. She told me that we DO have to accept the first placement the find for mom, but that they will NOT kick her out on the street just because she doesn't need hospital care. They have to send her to a place that will be able to take care of her, and that's why it's taking so long -- because most places don't want to deal with the "behavioral issues." I asked the social worker how wide the radius was that they could force us to send her, and she said that she didn't know but that she would find out. We are hoping it is limited to the county and not anywhere in the state, since this is not a small state and a distant placement would really limit our ability to see her and help with her care.

Then my sister came with me and we talked to one of the nurses about the behavioral issues, and tried to get an idea of what they mean by that and why they are expecting her to do so many things that she can't physically do. I thought that we did understand each other pretty well, and agreed in the end that there might be unresolved issues with her physical pain and symptoms, and maybe with her behavior too. The nurse said that the behavior issues were mostly asking for an unrealistic amount of help, like asking time be repositioned many times or to have pain cream rubbed on her often, stuff like that. It is more requests for care than they can really handle. I told them I understood how it can really be a drain to take care of all the things mom needs when she is in an off period and in pain. I guess I just never thought this counted as a behavioral issue, but I can see now that this is the terminology that the social workers and the doctors are using for when someone is asking for help but it doesn't seem totally necessary. The nurse said she could look into having a psychological consult done.

The doctor was not there at the time, but when I talked to the doctor yesterday it went pretty badly so it might be better than I talked to the nurse today instead. She also said she would talk to the hospital staff about trying to force her to do things that are painful or that she can't do. I'm not sure if that will have an effect, since the doctor and the day time nurse did not offer to do this, but at least it was nice that she was willing to look at things from our perspective too. I think part of it is that in the hospital, they are used to making people do things even if they are painful, as part of their recovery from surgery or whatever -- but this situation is different, because she just needs long term care. I still think that they are making problems that are actually physical (like not being able to move) into problems that are psychological (like being unwilling to move). The nurse in the end said she did understand that mom sometimes actually can't move, so in the end I felt like that was a victory, considering how badly things have been going.

We have called but have not heard back from mom's state social worker about this situation, but the discharge coordinator said that she was in contact with another, higher level social worker from the state. I feel a little better about the situation now, I am pretty sure that they will not kick her out on the street (although it is still a fear that I have in the back of my mind). It will be bad if they discharge her to a place that is very far away or that can't take care of her in the long term, but we will have to find a way to make it work.

Sorry this post is so long. I just found this website and could really use some advice about what to do. Here is the situation:
Almost a year ago, mom was moved kind of suddenly to a skilled nurs ...Read More

Sorry this post is so long. I just found this website and could really use some advice about what to do. Here is the situation:
Almost a year ago, mom was moved kind of suddenly to a skilled nursing facility because my family could not longer afford to care for her at home, and our house was foreclosed and auctioned. Things were not great with the first skilled nursing facility, and we had her on the waiting list for a better nursing home (for over 8 months now!). We decided in consultation with the first nursing home that she just needed more one-on-one care, since her symptoms are so unpredictable. We tried moving her to a group home type setting with 24 hour care, and that was immediately a disaster. She was asked to leave because her care needs were too much, as were her unpredictable symptoms. She was taken to the hospital, and has been there for over a week waiting to be discharged to a nursing home. None of the nursing home in the area will take her now because she has "behavioral issues" -- most of which are related to her having really unpredictable symptoms, I think. I'm not really sure what is meant by the behavioral issues so I asked the doctor at the hospital about it, and she basically said that my mom seems to be okay when no one is in the room, and then becomes rigid and stiff when they are there, and unable to move. The implication was that she is not really physically sick with the parkinson's-like symptoms, and that this is psychological. She has been diagnosed with the PD / parkinson's like symptoms (doctors disagree on which she has) for 15 years! And now they are acting like she has all these behavioral problems. This is not what my family has observed with her, her symptoms come on suddenly and randomly, and she has a lot of pain. When I brought this up with the hospital doctor, she said that they had to go based on what THEY had observed. I know there is probably a grain of truth to the behavior thing -- but that has NOT the main issue with her care by a long shot.

The situation is making me physically sick to deal with. I am a grad student living on the other side of the country, but I have been able to come here briefly have been visiting my mom the last few days in the hospital. My dad has been with her as well, but he is not very good at communicating with doctors and social workers. The hospital has recommended that we take her home, but I have repeatedly explained to them that there is no home left that we could take her to. Even if we could cram her into the trailer where my dad lives or my sister's studio apartment, it would be an immediate problem because she does need a very high level of care at this point.

I don't know what to do about this situation, and I don't know what to do to take care of myself, I feel like I have rally lost the ability to do that over the last week. I have to go back to work/school in mid-January, and I was also planning to be with my boyfriend in a few days. My mom says I should still go to be with my boyfriend -- I can come back after Christmas -- but I am getting terrified that the hospital is going to kick her out with nowhere to go. They are obviously angry that she is there in the first place, and the nurse is not being very understanding about her condition, and keeps putting her positions that cause her a lot of back pain. It is really starting to traumatize me. This last year has been awful for me and my family, and at this point I feel nauseous all the time. I want to just go see my boyfriend and hope that things are better when I come back, or at least try to get myself together a little more. My sisters are both married and both live in the area. But they have been less involved recently -- my younger sister is taking care of her newborn baby; my older sister is just really struggling with the stress of all this and isn't willing to be too involved anymore. For the last year, literally every day has been an emergency with mom's living situation or care. It just seems to take so much effort to get anyone to understand mom's condition, and I don't know if ANY of us can handle it anymore. We are all pretty young (mom is only 56), and I think that has been an extra issue.