My mom has lived with me for 16 years now. She is 76, has dementia, hearing loss and vision problems. She is usually pretty angry and blames me for stealing her things and mistreating her. I am 42 with adult children and a husband. We all care for her and take excellent care of her but I'm tired :( My heart breaks every time she accuses me of these things. Now she has taken to leaving the house and saying that she is walking to the store. When I try to stop her she becomes combative and angry. I am a teacher and I need to return to work now but I can't afford assisted living or in home help. Is 76 too young for a nursing home?
The short answer is "no." I've seen people in my mom's care facility a lot younger than 76 - it has to do with their health issues. A friend of mine's daughter was diagnosed with Parkinson's at the age of 46 and is in a care facility.
Your mom has a lot of health issues that will only become increasingly more difficult for you to handle on your own even if you do have help from your family.
Please find a reputable place (by doing your due diligence) and place her as soon as you can. Sixteen years is a long time to have her live with you as well as being taken care of by your family. The care facilities, especially if she's put in a memory care unit, are equipped to handle all the behavioral problems that go along with the dementia.
Best wishes to all of you!
Letting go does not mean that you don't care. I told myself this lie. It isn't true. You do not have to convince anyone that you care about your mom. You have already shown for 16 years how much you care for her! Finding the best facility for her is the very best thing that you can do for her. That is caring.
If you are like I was, we feel like no one will take as good care of mom as we do. That isn't true. They survive. We have been conditioned to care for them for so long that we don't know any other life. It takes a bit of deprograming and refocusing on our own lives to succeed in letting go.
Best wishes to you and your family.
As others have said, it's about the condition, not the age. You should look into a memory care facility for your mom (not assisted living), and I think you'll be surprised that she'll do much better there than in your house. The staff at MC is trained on how to handle the anger and the manipulation, while in your house she knows there's a personal connection that makes her behavior hurtful. My mother is doing much better in her MC than she was in her own home and even when she was in a skilled nursing place before MC.
Of course you are! Now it's time to make a change. 16 years you've been doing this? How did you come to take her into your home -- were there no other choices at the time?
"Now she has taken to leaving the house and saying that she is walking to the store. When I try to stop her she becomes combative and angry. I am a teacher and I need to return to work now but I can't afford assisted living or in home help. Is 76 too young for a nursing home?"
It was at the wandering point when my mother had to put her mother into a NH years ago. My mother also worked.
YOU do not have to pay for her to live in a facility. What are her finances? Can she become eligible for Medicaid?
And it's NOT up to you to pay for mom's care. That's why she has SS. Start checking in to places now. Be aware she'll be in a 2 week quarantine right off the bat and then you'll have to follow the facility's rule afterward. If you are ready to have mom be in that kind of a place--do it now.
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