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Wow. Just looking for a reason to resent, Mom, huh? You have absolutely NO right to judge the decision your mother made for HER husband and HERSELF. YOU should have taken him into YOUR home then, if that's what you wanted. And YOU could pay for it. Get a grip.
If he is not living with you, then do not judge your Mom. Every person is not cut out to be a caregiver. I often wonder if I did the right thing taking my Mom into my home. It is a 24hr+ Job 24/7/365. Have you committed to take him in? Will you take in your Mom when she needs care? Give your Mom a break, visit your Dad as often as you can. Love, laugh, Live.
I'm sorry you got taken advantage of so blatantly by the person you hired. Whether or not she's a single mother is really irrelevant.
My experience in homecare comes from actual experience in homecare for 25 years. Not from Dave Ramsey. Americans looking for homecare don't know how this business works and no one with any real experience in it ever wants to tell them. Many people only need someone to be on the premesis at night and they hire for 'Sleep Duty' only, This kind of aide gets paid by the shift, not the hour. Their wages are like hairdressers and restaurant servers. They don't get minimum wage even.
Another way your husband could have been prevented from getting up at night, would have been to medicate him. Doctors will prescribe medications to keep someone in bed at night.
I've had families at the end of their ropes with their elderly LO who has dementiaand lives with them but wanderers all night long. Many can't afford to hire more help. I advise them to get the elder's doctor involved and get medications that will keep them in bed at night. You set up some baby monitors in the room then put a hook-and-latch on the outside of the bedroom door and that solves the wandering problem. A hook-and-latch costs 99 cents at Home Depot.
President Carter was a president so of course he's going to have top-shelf care. If you're worried that no one will come and change your husband's diapers for less than minimum wage, you're wrong. You can find caregivers willing to be live-in from websites like care.com and others. You would be negotiating what their pay would be and that pay is not paid hourly.
If I wasn't in business, I'd seriously consider doing a podcast to tell people exactly how to hire homecare and save money at the same time.
@BurntCaregiver It really is that expensive. I hired a single Mom to help me at night. That was simple a single Mom, not even a CNA. It was $20 per hour for her to watch my husband at night because he was a fall risk. Her full-time rate would be $168,000 per year if I used her 24/7 for a year. My numbers come straight from experience and Dave Ramsey. He is setting aside $200,000 per year to "age in place," and not burden his kids. If you need CNA or RN that amount easily doubles! Jimmy Carter required 3 full-time caregivers and it was over $200,000. I don't know anyone who will come to my house and make less than they would flipping hamburgers to change my husband's diapers.
I'm sorry for your ordeal, but every case is not yours. I was an in-home caregiver for 25 years and I own a homecare business. No one I know or ever knew was paying out $200K a year for live-in help. That may be what an agency would charge, but that's not the only way to hire. Many people hire private caregivers and pay the privately. There are caregiver websites like care.com that have many profiles and many types of care to choose from. Then you negotiate what the pay is going to be.
@Lylii1
No, homecare is far cheaper than a care facility if you know how to hire and people who do save a fortune.
Really though, it usually gets to the point where the person being cared for needs to go into facility care. There's no shame in having to place a person and I really wish all the guilt-trippers out there who passionately declare to everyone they'd never put a loved one in a nursing home, actually took care of an invalid or someone with dementia. They'd change that tune quick. It's always the people who aren't in a caregiving situation who always have something to say.
Round the clock home help is very expensive. It was $160 per night just do I could sleep each night. My husband got up at all hours and he was a constant fall risk. I was only 50. I can't imagine watching my husband at 80! If you hire someone 24/7 it's over $200,000 per year! It requires 3 full-time caregivers just to cover each 24 hour period. In addition, you have to step in if one doesn't show up. You have to maintain the scheduling, hiring and firing. It's a lot of work. Your Mom can now visit your Dad. He is safe. She can simply love him without all the responsibility of caregiving.
Until you've walked a mile in your Mother's shoes, you have no room to judge. It is getting to be too much for your Mom, and home care is much more expensive than a facility.
Delta3939, did you know that a person who is doing the work of 3 caregivers (24 hrs), there is a 40-50% chance of them dying leaving behind the love one they were caring. The physical and emotional toll is overwhelming for the caregiver.
When my Dad needed someone to help him (he was in his 90's) he got in home help which was costing him $280 per day (this was 10 yrs ago) for one caregiver working 8 hours. Could your Mom afford around $8,000+ per month? Eventually he needed around the clock care at his house which was costing him $24,000+ a month. Thankfully he had saved for emergencies like this.
When my Dad went into memory care living, it was costing him $7,500 for 3 shifts of caregivers, plus 3 meals, linen service, 24-hour nurse on call, etc. He loved it there.
Honestly, you must know that home health care isn't always 24/7, and your Mom would have continued to carry the brunt of your Dad's care. Your Mom was strong for your Dad. Home health care sounds doable in theory, but it's not reality in the long run unless your family is mega rich, and you can afford trained care givers and nurses around the clock.
In my experience, even when we had PTs, OT, and a couple of nurses in our home, I had to make myself available, clean the home, get my love one showered, dressed and fed. Not to mention keeping up with his health care, doctor visits, calling in EMTs for emergencies, visits to the hospitals, admittance to the hospitals, and a back and forth to in house rehabs. I did it all as his condition worsened. My person is only 64 years old, so it's very sad indeed. Through it all, and early on my guy told helpers and a social worker at the hospital that he didn't want me to take care of him long term. I tried though. His Doctor told him that his small vessel disease which led to advanced vascular dementia. would progress. My loved one was aware. So of course, we had open discussions about LTC before things got much worse. He signed himself into a SNF, and within 2 weeks he was placed in the special care unit. He doesn't like where he is, but he tells me it's ok. God Bless him. He does this because he loves me too, and he doesn't want to continue to be a burden to me. Your parents probably made this decision together. No one can force a person into a facility unless they have no mental capacity whatsoever, and the spouse or another person has medical POA. I serve as his primary health agent, and when we filled out his advanced directives he knew his time on this earth was transitioning. Even with a diagnosis of severe dementia, he understood. His dementia is more physical in nature even though the SNF says he can no longer make any health care decisions for himself. It's odd because he passed a cognitive test. In addition, my loved one's doctor recommended LTC or hospice by signing off on the paperwork to admit him into a facility. We agreed he needed better care. Also, we had a team of advisors including at least two social workers, an OT, three PTs who all agreed that placement would be necessary that his safety was important. He was falling and injuring himself. Once he injured himself rather badly after falling backwards off the front porch that he fractured his vertebra. He now has a deformity in his back and a serious vertebral wedge compression fracture that will not just 'get better' with time. He had other falls too, and he can't do stairs anymore without a lot of support. I couldn't stop him from making ill advised movements when his brain said go for it. His coordination is way off and his muscles have atrophied.
So, in my humble opinion your Mom is actually helping your Dad. She is probably very sad, so maybe give her a big hug and tell her you love her. Just that one sentiment will help all of you.
Resentment is such a wasted emotion; you should try shame for a while.
We come to this forum seeking advice, support and absolution for the decisions we have to make for our loved ones. I admire your mother for being able to make the hardest decision of her life for someone she loves.
You say she was his main "carer" so it sounds like there was some home help. What was your contribution to the in-home care? Or did you let your mother shoulder the burden? If you helped at all, you'd know how hard it was on your mother, at her age 👵, to take care of another person 24/7/365 let alone herself AND all the other aspects of the life she had with your father before she became his "carer."
I am speaking from experience - caregiving for a loved one destroys whatever relationship there was, it robs them, and it's hard AF to do, so please don't judge your mother - support her, love her, thank her for doing the heavy lifting.
You can practice humility when you visit your father once or twice a week and on weekends so you don't have to deal with guilt on top of resentment. While you are there, it's a good time to ponder this: Some day you will have to make the same decision for your mother. Will you put her in nursing home as pay back, or will you put her in a home because you found the job to be more than you could handle?
Sometimes, we make promises we can't realistically keep. I've left instructions for my child to put me in a home when the time comes. I want their memories of me to be full of the love, strong bond, and happy times we shared during our lifetime!
So few people realize how beneficial some nursing homes are. I've seen very bad ones, but the one my mom is in is clean and safe. The food is home cooked and the activities are fun and inclusive of a wide range of abilities. If he is in a bad one, yes I can understand your resentment. But many people are not able to age in place. They need a safe environment.
Were you assisting your mom? Comments like these bug me. Often when that happens, the person is ready for a nursing home. Seeing and hearing how badly my aunt was and how it was beyond my physical and mental capabilities, I suggested to my cousins that aunt needed to go into a care facility where she can be properly cared for. Their first reaction was offensive. "We don't want to put her in a facility and make her think we're forgetting her". Oh, but their suggestion was to have me do everything, while they play back seat drivers, telling me what to do and criticizing every little thing. Your mom made the best decision for your dad and herself. Unless you're willing to take this all on yourself, leave it be and respect her decision. I do. Smart lady,
I'll be blunt here - when the person who is primarily responsible for hands on caregiving decides it is best if their loved one be moved to facility care - that's it. that's the decision.
Unless others are actively giving up their lives to ensure that the loved one is receiving care and working with the primary to do so - all due respect - they don't get a vote.
Home health is EXPENSIVE. Much more so than facility care. When we did the math for home care for my FIL - because he was ADAMANT he wasn't going to SNF - the cost for full time (24/7) in home care was going to be over $200,000 a year. Let's say you just wanted someone in 4 hours each day, you would still be looking at more than $35,000 a year. People often don't have the money to pay for home care long term.
You have a right to your feelings - if you are feeling resentful - it would likely help you to understand why she made the decision she did.
Additionally, how much help were you providing to her in order to keep him home? Was family giving her time to herself or away from home every day? Was family coming in to feed or bathe or even toilet dad? If none of these things were happening from outside "free" help, was anyone offering to help her pay for home health? Or make arrangements for their scheduling? If the answer to these questions is that no one was helping her - then she made the choice that worked best for them.
And dealing with the resentment - you'll have to figure out why you are resentful. Is dad unhappy? Did you feel that mom should continue to take care of dad in spite of needing more help than she received? Are you upset because she made the decision without engaging family? (if so, see my previous questions).
Caregiving does not just impact the person who needs care. Something like 40% of caregivers predecease the ones they are caring for. It can take its toll on a person mind, body and soul. And rarely does anyone who is not participating really understand what is happening, are not available to help, but are the quickest to judge when the primary caregiver makes a decision they don't agree with.
Were you helping her on a daily basis? If not, this is none of your business. Even if you were, still none of your business. Did you offer to take him into your home before she placed him? What gives you the right to dictate what she can and cannot handle?
There's two main issues here,she was defeated and you are in denial. Caregiving has its limits and mom reached hers. You can't fix old age and make things better,you're denying what is inevitable. Please take into consideration that lots of caregivers die before the loved one because they exhausted themselves of their energy while trying to fix something that couldn't be fixed. Your mom had to do this for dad,herself and you. Visit your dad and remember that mom's still here for you. She has to make the decisions and be there for everyone now. How about you tell your mom you love her? Just let it go. Save your resentment for later,when you get no support when your mom has to be placed. It's called life, you either sink or swim. Mom chose to swim for her family. She did the right thing and she will forgive you if you were mean to her. That's what mom's do! She really needs you more than ever as dad's not there to take care of her, its not like it used to be. She's going to be so lonely and lost.
Nursing home as probably or certainly recommended by drs or other professionals is not something you decide to put spouse in just because you no longer want to care for him/her. When care is complex and it takes several well rested staff to attend to different needs than it becomes necessary.
Resent the disease that caused this placement to be necessary, not your mother . Your mother did not cause your father’s disease . It is very difficult to place a spouse in care. I suggest you see it from your mother’s point of view . She realized she could no longer live with someone with dementia. I see one of the topics you chose is dementia behaviors. It often becomes too difficult to deal with these behaviors at home even with home health care coming in .
Is having Dad live with you with home healthcare an option?
Delta, Reading all these comments/answers including my own it sounds like we are heaping a lot on you. That is not the intention. The intention/hope is that you see it from "our" point of view. That of a (possibly) older person trying to care for a person with dementia. You do the best you can at the time hoping that you are making the right decision. You want support from friends and family but you also do not want to burden them with all that you have to do. I have said often the 2 most difficult things when caring for a loved one is. 1. ASKING for help 2. ACCEPTING help.
Stop wasting your time resenting your mother for something you cannot possibly understand, and instead focus on visiting dad and making him happy by seeing you. That's my suggestion. It's very easy to pass judgement on someone when you have no idea of the hardship involved in her life OR in the decision she was forced to make. Now mom has TWO big losses in her life.....her husband and the understanding of her own daughter! How must SHE feel? Ever think of that?
If you haven't ever cared for a dementia patient at home, you have no idea what a family caregiver goes through. Sometimes a family caregiver tries to protect the dementia patient's privacy by not telling what that person actually does. Sometimes family doesn't want to know it because what their loved ones do is so disturbing. Such as: carrying their feces around the house and painting walls with it. Putting it in their pockets. Hiding it and the tissues they wipe with. Hiding other things, like knives, in various places, like under the couch cushions, in a fake flower arrangement, in the refrigerator. Peeing indiscriminately and secretly on the bed frame, in the shower (not while taking a shower), on the shower curtain, in the refrigerator, dishwasher and on the kitchen table. In their shoes in the closet, on their pets, in the pantry, in the A/C vent, on the door. In the wastebaskets. In the kitchen sink.
They fall, and no one in the house, especially an elderly caregiver, can pick them up. They scream bloody murder when water touches their skin in a shower or even while just tidying them up. They put on their clothes backwards, inside out and upside down, and they wear seven layers of clothing put on all mixed up on a 90 degree day. They won't get in the car. They won't get out of the car. They don't know what a car is. They think their spoon is a telephone and have imaginary conversations to the spoon pressed to their ear. They fall down, don't know what blood is, and show up at the caregiver's bedside covered in blood and not knowing what to do. They can't find their bed so sleep on the floor. Their bladder fails. Their bowels fail. And on and on and on.
Please don't judge your mother. Instead you can help her now by taking over chores that she needs done at home and by supporting your dad as he faces the last part of his life in the nursing home. Your resentment has no place here.
I want to start off by telling you that I was an in-home caregiver for 25 years and am now in the business of it. I know how hard it is to care for a person with dementia and how hard it is on a spouse when the other has to be placed in memory care.
You say your mother was your father's main caregiver, most likely was his only caregiver. Remember, I've seen every family dynamic there is and in cases where adult kids are resentful because towards one parent puts the other into LTC, those adult kids are usually not helping out with any of the caregiving needs. Do you know what caregiver burnout is? Compound that with old age.
You could have stepped up and insisted on taking over your father's care and see for yourself what his daily care needs entailed. Homecare is very expensive. I know this for a fact too and often feel like a robber baron from the Guilded Age myself because it is so in demand and market price for it is very high. In many states homecare is not covered by Medicaid and Medicare only pays for a few hours a week if a doctor orders it. So if your parents don't have a Long Term Care (LTC) policy your parents may not be able to pay for the homecare your father would need. Medicaid pays for LTC and will allow a spouse to remain in their home until they pass and if they are dependent on the other's income, they allow them enough to live on. This could be your mother's reasoning for placement.
Then there's the other reason. The person with dementia cannot be kept home anymore even with homecare. There is a limit to what homecare services can provide.
Don't be so quick to resent and dismiss your mother. Instead try talking to her and then listen to what she has to say. You'll probably get a better understanding of why she decided for placement of your father.
How old are your parents? If in their 80s you can't expect Mom to care for Dad. In home care is private pay and as said, expensive. You have strangers coming in your home. Dementia is very unpredictable. You don't get a good nights sleep because they are up wandering around the house. The one caregiving may go before the one they are caring for.
Think of Mom. Dad is in his own little world. We are not made to care for an adult 24/7. Let Mom have peace in the time she has left in this world.
My question is..... have you ever been a caregiver for your Dad? Have you waited on him hand and foot? Have you prepared meals for him and made sure he eats? Stay awake all hours and make sure he is safe? Have you changed him multiple times of uncontrolled urine and bowel episodes? Have you taken him to his Dr appointments when you are tired and over worked? This is half of what your Mom has been doing. She probably knows how much home help can cost and doesn't have the funds for it. Beening a caregiver to a loved one can be very exhausting. You do things out of love for them, but running yourself down. Please be understanding with your Mom she is caring a heavy load. I know, and feel for all caregivers it is not an easy job to care for someone you love. Your Mom needs your support and a nice warm hug from you and let her know you will be there for her and help if needed. It's easy to sit back and judge someone if you haven't walked in their shoes.
Not your business to be blunt. Home help is enormously expensive. There are minimums from good agencies such as requiring the person hiring to accept at least three days a week four hours per day minimums. At about 40.00 an hour you can figure that out yourself. Often there are problems with staff arriving, and etc. This was your mother's decision to make and she has made it and I am certain it wasn't easy to make. Your would do well to be supportive. If you cannot be that, then do mind your own business as far as this is concerned.
Perhaps you're resentment is misplaced and should be instead towards the horrific disease of dementia and not your mother. Or maybe even towards yourself, unless you can say beyond a shadow of a doubt that you did everything in your power to assist your mother with your dads care, so that she was able to keep him home, and still maintain her sanity and health. Unless you have walked in someone's shoes you have absolutely NO right to judge the decisions they made or are making. Your mother made the right decision for both your dad and herself, and she can now just be your dads loving wife and advocate and not his burned out caregiver. This issue isn't about you.....it is about what was best for both your parents.
Unless you were there DAILY to help her and to see what she did, what she went through you have no reason to resent her. And a not about trying home help. It is difficult to let someone into your house, your life. You give up control of your home, of your loved one. If taking care of your dad was no longer safe for her to do at home then placing him in any facility that can care for him is the right decision. You say "nursing home" I do not know if you actually mean a Skilled Nursing facility or Memory Care. since you have this under Alzheimer's & Dementia I am going to guess that is it. It is not easy to take care of anyone with dementia . Most houses are not set up to care for someone with dementia. Stairs, small bathroom, carpet just to name a few. And there is the possibility dad was getting violent.
Please support mom in this decision, it is never an easy one, She needs your support, understanding not your resentment.
Can you share the reasons she gave for the move and why you feel it was a mistake? Were you participating in his care? It’s rare anyone wants a nursing home, it’s most often chosen when caregiving needs are overwhelming and cannot be reasonably continued in a home setting. We’d like to know more about the situation.
My dad had dementia plus a lot of other health problems and my mom refused to consider placing him even though she could not take adequate care of him. I felt like I had to take her point of view as seriously as I could despite disagreeing with it.
It was a nightmare. She lived almost daily in a nervous breakdown state herself for around three YEARs and was leaning on me heavily to make decisions, arrange and take him to all his doctor appointments, and a thousand other things, including I would hear late at night how she was contemplating harming him and/or taking her own life. Once he wandered out of the house and collapsed in the road and she didn’t even do anything. (Not that she could have helped him up— but she could have called me or 911 and could have put alarms on the doors or cameras) A couple of other times neighbors called the police because of him acting inappropriately outside. He didn’t bathe, change his clothes, brush his teeth, he ate only tiny amount of ice cream. He was throwing food, plates and silverware into the yard and hiding food and soiled underwear in his room. She said she couldn’t do anything about any of this. In the end he was in home hospice (which I insisted upon and arranged) and developed pressure sores and was so thin he looked worse than a concentration camp victim. He could barely walk or stand and would sometimes crawl to the bathroom and smear s**t along the walls which she also could not do anything about due to mobility problems — so she would call me. He got a bacterial infection from touching his own eye. His last 3 days he was in the hospice facility (again, I had to insist). He was not happy about it, but I felt like he was really not living in a safe, healthy or dignified way at home. He was falling almost daily and she could not help him up and objected to the aides being in the house.
The hospice staff told us from the beginning that he needed round the clock in-home care but the first one quit and then my mom fired all the others that I hired. But she felt like he was “better off” at home because why?? He could watch what he wanted on TV and no one “bothered” him?
Delta-- Have you spoken with your mom about her reason(s) for placing your dad? Is dad now receiving good care?
Why do you feel resentful?
I'm curious, because I had to make the unilateral decision to place my husband into SNF. So far, I haven't gotten any pushback from his family. They all seem to understand that his care requirements became to much for me to handle alone. (They all live 100s of miles away.)
It breaks my heart that I had to do this, instead of "home care" but since hubby needed 24/7 supervision, it was actually less expensive to place him. I miss him terribly and he (when he's lucid enough) misses me, too.
There's a reason your mom placed your dad. As his primary caregiver, I'm sure she did the best she could, and carefully considered all the options before making her final decision.
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I'm sorry you got taken advantage of so blatantly by the person you hired. Whether or not she's a single mother is really irrelevant.
My experience in homecare comes from actual experience in homecare for 25 years. Not from Dave Ramsey. Americans looking for homecare don't know how this business works and no one with any real experience in it ever wants to tell them. Many people only need someone to be on the premesis at night and they hire for 'Sleep Duty' only, This kind of aide gets paid by the shift, not the hour. Their wages are like hairdressers and restaurant servers. They don't get minimum wage even.
Another way your husband could have been prevented from getting up at night, would have been to medicate him. Doctors will prescribe medications to keep someone in bed at night.
I've had families at the end of their ropes with their elderly LO who has dementiaand lives with them but wanderers all night long. Many can't afford to hire more help. I advise them to get the elder's doctor involved and get medications that will keep them in bed at night. You set up some baby monitors in the room then put a hook-and-latch on the outside of the bedroom door and that solves the wandering problem. A hook-and-latch costs 99 cents at Home Depot.
President Carter was a president so of course he's going to have top-shelf care. If you're worried that no one will come and change your husband's diapers for less than minimum wage, you're wrong. You can find caregivers willing to be live-in from websites like care.com and others. You would be negotiating what their pay would be and that pay is not paid hourly.
If I wasn't in business, I'd seriously consider doing a podcast to tell people exactly how to hire homecare and save money at the same time.
It really is that expensive. I hired a single Mom to help me at night. That was simple a single Mom, not even a CNA. It was $20 per hour for her to watch my husband at night because he was a fall risk. Her full-time rate would be $168,000 per year if I used her 24/7 for a year. My numbers come straight from experience and Dave Ramsey. He is setting aside $200,000 per year to "age in place," and not burden his kids. If you need CNA or RN that amount easily doubles! Jimmy Carter required 3 full-time caregivers and it was over $200,000. I don't know anyone who will come to my house and make less than they would flipping hamburgers to change my husband's diapers.
I'm sorry for your ordeal, but every case is not yours. I was an in-home caregiver for 25 years and I own a homecare business. No one I know or ever knew was paying out $200K a year for live-in help. That may be what an agency would charge, but that's not the only way to hire. Many people hire private caregivers and pay the privately. There are caregiver websites like care.com that have many profiles and many types of care to choose from. Then you negotiate what the pay is going to be.
@Lylii1
No, homecare is far cheaper than a care facility if you know how to hire and people who do save a fortune.
Really though, it usually gets to the point where the person being cared for needs to go into facility care. There's no shame in having to place a person and I really wish all the guilt-trippers out there who passionately declare to everyone they'd never put a loved one in a nursing home, actually took care of an invalid or someone with dementia. They'd change that tune quick. It's always the people who aren't in a caregiving situation who always have something to say.
When my Dad needed someone to help him (he was in his 90's) he got in home help which was costing him $280 per day (this was 10 yrs ago) for one caregiver working 8 hours. Could your Mom afford around $8,000+ per month? Eventually he needed around the clock care at his house which was costing him $24,000+ a month. Thankfully he had saved for emergencies like this.
When my Dad went into memory care living, it was costing him $7,500 for 3 shifts of caregivers, plus 3 meals, linen service, 24-hour nurse on call, etc. He loved it there.
Just food for thought.
In my experience, even when we had PTs, OT, and a couple of nurses in our home, I had to make myself available, clean the home, get my love one showered, dressed and fed. Not to mention keeping up with his health care, doctor visits, calling in EMTs for emergencies, visits to the hospitals, admittance to the hospitals, and a back and forth to in house rehabs. I did it all as his condition worsened. My person is only 64 years old, so it's very sad indeed. Through it all, and early on my guy told helpers and a social worker at the hospital that he didn't want me to take care of him long term. I tried though. His Doctor told him that his small vessel disease which led to advanced vascular dementia. would progress. My loved one was aware. So of course, we had open discussions about LTC before things got much worse. He signed himself into a SNF, and within 2 weeks he was placed in the special care unit. He doesn't like where he is, but he tells me it's ok. God Bless him. He does this because he loves me too, and he doesn't want to continue to be a burden to me. Your parents probably made this decision together. No one can force a person into a facility unless they have no mental capacity whatsoever, and the spouse or another person has medical POA. I serve as his primary health agent, and when we filled out his advanced directives he knew his time on this earth was transitioning. Even with a diagnosis of severe dementia, he understood. His dementia is more physical in nature even though the SNF says he can no longer make any health care decisions for himself. It's odd because he passed a cognitive test. In addition, my loved one's doctor recommended LTC or hospice by signing off on the paperwork to admit him into a facility. We agreed he needed better care. Also, we had a team of advisors including at least two social workers, an OT, three PTs who all agreed that placement would be necessary that his safety was important. He was falling and injuring himself. Once he injured himself rather badly after falling backwards off the front porch that he fractured his vertebra. He now has a deformity in his back and a serious vertebral wedge compression fracture that will not just 'get better' with time. He had other falls too, and he can't do stairs anymore without a lot of support. I couldn't stop him from making ill advised movements when his brain said go for it. His coordination is way off and his muscles have atrophied.
So, in my humble opinion your Mom is actually helping your Dad. She is probably very sad, so maybe give her a big hug and tell her you love her. Just that one sentiment will help all of you.
We come to this forum seeking advice, support and absolution for the decisions we have to make for our loved ones. I admire your mother for being able to make the hardest decision of her life for someone she loves.
You say she was his main "carer" so it sounds like there was some home help. What was your contribution to the in-home care? Or did you let your mother shoulder the burden? If you helped at all, you'd know how hard it was on your mother, at her age 👵, to take care of another person 24/7/365 let alone herself AND all the other aspects of the life she had with your father before she became his "carer."
I am speaking from experience - caregiving for a loved one destroys whatever relationship there was, it robs them, and it's hard AF to do, so please don't judge your mother - support her, love her, thank her for doing the heavy lifting.
You can practice humility when you visit your father once or twice a week and on weekends so you don't have to deal with guilt on top of resentment. While you are there, it's a good time to ponder this: Some day you will have to make the same decision for your mother. Will you put her in nursing home as pay back, or will you put her in a home because you found the job to be more than you could handle?
Sometimes, we make promises we can't realistically keep. I've left instructions for my child to put me in a home when the time comes. I want their memories of me to be full of the love, strong bond, and happy times we shared during our lifetime!
I wish you peace.
Seeing and hearing how badly my aunt was and how it was beyond my physical and mental capabilities, I suggested to my cousins that aunt needed to go into a care facility where she can be properly cared for. Their first reaction was offensive. "We don't want to put her in a facility and make her think we're forgetting her". Oh, but their suggestion was to have me do everything, while they play back seat drivers, telling me what to do and criticizing every little thing.
Your mom made the best decision for your dad and herself. Unless you're willing to take this all on yourself, leave it be and respect her decision. I do. Smart lady,
Unless others are actively giving up their lives to ensure that the loved one is receiving care and working with the primary to do so - all due respect - they don't get a vote.
Home health is EXPENSIVE. Much more so than facility care. When we did the math for home care for my FIL - because he was ADAMANT he wasn't going to SNF - the cost for full time (24/7) in home care was going to be over $200,000 a year. Let's say you just wanted someone in 4 hours each day, you would still be looking at more than $35,000 a year. People often don't have the money to pay for home care long term.
You have a right to your feelings - if you are feeling resentful - it would likely help you to understand why she made the decision she did.
Additionally, how much help were you providing to her in order to keep him home? Was family giving her time to herself or away from home every day? Was family coming in to feed or bathe or even toilet dad? If none of these things were happening from outside "free" help, was anyone offering to help her pay for home health? Or make arrangements for their scheduling? If the answer to these questions is that no one was helping her - then she made the choice that worked best for them.
And dealing with the resentment - you'll have to figure out why you are resentful. Is dad unhappy? Did you feel that mom should continue to take care of dad in spite of needing more help than she received? Are you upset because she made the decision without engaging family? (if so, see my previous questions).
Caregiving does not just impact the person who needs care. Something like 40% of caregivers predecease the ones they are caring for. It can take its toll on a person mind, body and soul. And rarely does anyone who is not participating really understand what is happening, are not available to help, but are the quickest to judge when the primary caregiver makes a decision they don't agree with.
When care is complex and it takes several well rested staff to attend to different needs than it becomes necessary.
Your mother did not cause your father’s disease .
It is very difficult to place a spouse in care. I suggest you see it from your mother’s point of view . She realized she could no longer live with someone with dementia. I see one of the topics you chose is dementia behaviors. It often becomes too difficult to deal with these behaviors at home even with home health care coming in .
Is having Dad live with you with home healthcare an option?
Reading all these comments/answers including my own it sounds like we are heaping a lot on you.
That is not the intention.
The intention/hope is that you see it from "our" point of view. That of a (possibly) older person trying to care for a person with dementia.
You do the best you can at the time hoping that you are making the right decision.
You want support from friends and family but you also do not want to burden them with all that you have to do.
I have said often the 2 most difficult things when caring for a loved one is.
1. ASKING for help
2. ACCEPTING help.
If you haven't ever cared for a dementia patient at home, you have no idea what a family caregiver goes through. Sometimes a family caregiver tries to protect the dementia patient's privacy by not telling what that person actually does. Sometimes family doesn't want to know it because what their loved ones do is so disturbing. Such as: carrying their feces around the house and painting walls with it. Putting it in their pockets. Hiding it and the tissues they wipe with. Hiding other things, like knives, in various places, like under the couch cushions, in a fake flower arrangement, in the refrigerator. Peeing indiscriminately and secretly on the bed frame, in the shower (not while taking a shower), on the shower curtain, in the refrigerator, dishwasher and on the kitchen table. In their shoes in the closet, on their pets, in the pantry, in the A/C vent, on the door. In the wastebaskets. In the kitchen sink.
They fall, and no one in the house, especially an elderly caregiver, can pick them up. They scream bloody murder when water touches their skin in a shower or even while just tidying them up. They put on their clothes backwards, inside out and upside down, and they wear seven layers of clothing put on all mixed up on a 90 degree day. They won't get in the car. They won't get out of the car. They don't know what a car is. They think their spoon is a telephone and have imaginary conversations to the spoon pressed to their ear. They fall down, don't know what blood is, and show up at the caregiver's bedside covered in blood and not knowing what to do. They can't find their bed so sleep on the floor. Their bladder fails. Their bowels fail. And on and on and on.
Please don't judge your mother. Instead you can help her now by taking over chores that she needs done at home and by supporting your dad as he faces the last part of his life in the nursing home. Your resentment has no place here.
You say your mother was your father's main caregiver, most likely was his only caregiver. Remember, I've seen every family dynamic there is and in cases where adult kids are resentful because towards one parent puts the other into LTC, those adult kids are usually not helping out with any of the caregiving needs. Do you know what caregiver burnout is? Compound that with old age.
You could have stepped up and insisted on taking over your father's care and see for yourself what his daily care needs entailed. Homecare is very expensive. I know this for a fact too and often feel like a robber baron from the Guilded Age myself because it is so in demand and market price for it is very high. In many states homecare is not covered by Medicaid and Medicare only pays for a few hours a week if a doctor orders it. So if your parents don't have a Long Term Care (LTC) policy your parents may not be able to pay for the homecare your father would need. Medicaid pays for LTC and will allow a spouse to remain in their home until they pass and if they are dependent on the other's income, they allow them enough to live on. This could be your mother's reasoning for placement.
Then there's the other reason. The person with dementia cannot be kept home anymore even with homecare. There is a limit to what homecare services can provide.
Don't be so quick to resent and dismiss your mother. Instead try talking to her and then listen to what she has to say. You'll probably get a better understanding of why she decided for placement of your father.
Think of Mom. Dad is in his own little world. We are not made to care for an adult 24/7. Let Mom have peace in the time she has left in this world.
This was your mother's decision to make and she has made it and I am certain it wasn't easy to make. Your would do well to be supportive. If you cannot be that, then do mind your own business as far as this is concerned.
Or maybe even towards yourself, unless you can say beyond a shadow of a doubt that you did everything in your power to assist your mother with your dads care, so that she was able to keep him home, and still maintain her sanity and health.
Unless you have walked in someone's shoes you have absolutely NO right to judge the decisions they made or are making.
Your mother made the right decision for both your dad and herself, and she can now just be your dads loving wife and advocate and not his burned out caregiver.
This issue isn't about you.....it is about what was best for both your parents.
And a not about trying home help. It is difficult to let someone into your house, your life. You give up control of your home, of your loved one.
If taking care of your dad was no longer safe for her to do at home then placing him in any facility that can care for him is the right decision.
You say "nursing home" I do not know if you actually mean a Skilled Nursing facility or Memory Care. since you have this under Alzheimer's & Dementia I am going to guess that is it.
It is not easy to take care of anyone with dementia .
Most houses are not set up to care for someone with dementia. Stairs, small bathroom, carpet just to name a few.
And there is the possibility dad was getting violent.
Please support mom in this decision, it is never an easy one,
She needs your support, understanding not your resentment.
It was a nightmare. She lived almost daily in a nervous breakdown state herself for around three YEARs and was leaning on me heavily to make decisions, arrange and take him to all his doctor appointments, and a thousand other things, including I would hear late at night how she was contemplating harming him and/or taking her own life. Once he wandered out of the house and collapsed in the road and she didn’t even do anything. (Not that she could have helped him up— but she could have called me or 911 and could have put alarms on the doors or cameras) A couple of other times neighbors called the police because of him acting inappropriately outside. He didn’t bathe, change his clothes, brush his teeth, he ate only tiny amount of ice cream. He was throwing food, plates and silverware into the yard and hiding food and soiled underwear in his room. She said she couldn’t do anything about any of this. In the end he was in home hospice (which I insisted upon and arranged) and developed pressure sores and was so thin he looked worse than a concentration camp victim. He could barely walk or stand and would sometimes crawl to the bathroom and smear s**t along the walls which she also could not do anything about due to mobility problems — so she would call me. He got a bacterial infection from touching his own eye. His last 3 days he was in the hospice facility (again, I had to insist). He was not happy about it, but I felt like he was really not living in a safe, healthy or dignified way at home. He was falling almost daily and she could not help him up and objected to the aides being in the house.
The hospice staff told us from the beginning that he needed round the clock in-home care but the first one quit and then my mom fired all the others that I hired. But she felt like he was “better off” at home because why?? He could watch what he wanted on TV and no one “bothered” him?
Why do you feel resentful?
I'm curious, because I had to make the unilateral decision to place my husband into SNF. So far, I haven't gotten any pushback from his family. They all seem to understand that his care requirements became to much for me to handle alone. (They all live 100s of miles away.)
It breaks my heart that I had to do this, instead of "home care" but since hubby needed 24/7 supervision, it was actually less expensive to place him. I miss him terribly and he (when he's lucid enough) misses me, too.
There's a reason your mom placed your dad. As his primary caregiver, I'm sure she did the best she could, and carefully considered all the options before making her final decision.