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tctwall Posted August 2009

end of meds.

When do I stop insisting that my mom kekep takingher meds when she really does not want to. She is 93, and has dementia, but insists on being on her own home, making her own decisions, and wants no help (except me, her only child, who takes her everywhere, visits each day, etc...)

195Austin Aug 2009
None of our home health aides would even watch my husband doing his meds let alone remind him when it was time for them.

gvergrl Aug 2009
Dad isn't a door locker. I'm just happy when he buttons his pants.
She was there the night we brought him back from re-hab. He had had a stroke because he refused to take his meds. He was frail, and willing to have assistance twice a day. She hasn't left. he has no idea that she gets paid. As far as he knows she is just a kind soul.
I do not know what to tell you. waiting for her to be hospitalized seems extreme. The pill bags work because you can count them easier than the pills in each bottle. And you know one pill hasn't been double dosed or forgotten. I was numbering them with the date or the day, but he has no clue to either of those, even with a news paper in his hand. Call her doctor and ask them for suggestions. If nothing else you will have a record of having called them with the problem, and it will not look like you are being neglectful. I hope I am willing to allow my son to do his best for me, without resisting him, but when dementia moves in, we just do not know how we will behave.
Dad got so mad at us for trying to keep him on his pills...we are still being punished for that. But he will take them for his care giver.

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tctwall Aug 2009
How did you get your father tp unlick the door and let the health care giver into the house to give him the meds? My mom is positive I am bossy, and a lot of other not nice things, because I go and gently try to trick her into taking the pills. Then after about 5 moinutes she says, you know, I already took those pills? I try to count them when I leave, but she really gets mad about that, too.
I REALLY want to do what is right, and am unprepared for this stubbornness.

gvergrl Aug 2009
I hire someone else to go to My father's home twice a day and stand over him until he swallows. He damns us to hell and back, but will do as his caregiver tells him to do. When he gets stuborn she tells him that the next stroke will remove him from his home, and someone will have to wipe his bottom for him. That seems to do the trick.
He can not remember from moment to moment, and all days look alike to him, so he is SURE that he has taken pills, when he hasn't. The pill caddy just did not work.
I make little zip lock packages of his pills, am & pm. She puts them into a pill cup and hands him water and that's that.
However, your question of when do we leave our parents alone to their own demise? I do not know. I think they arrest us for that now.

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