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Ugh! Moved Mom to Maryland from Florida after my father died. My father was her rock and only friend. She said she hated Florida, too many memories, etc. well, now after we get all settled, she decides she wants to move back to Florida. We came here because MD is her home and family and old friends are here. She won't connect with old friends. I have offered to take her to the local senior center and she refuses to go. She has had social anxiety in past and my father would just stay home with her and miss important events and milestones. I have convinced her to stay through the holidays so she can be evaluated by Hopkins neurologist. She won't let up on the subject! I told her I would not go to Floruda with her! She said she wants to go back and live alone & take care of herself and her dog. She has mobility problems, can't manage her bills or medication. Her belief that she can live independently is making her unreasonable and I am stressed out and at my wits end. Can a case manager help, Ian unbiased assessment. Anyone dealt with this? I think she needs to go to assisted living, Soiry for being long winded :(

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Sounds a bit like my mom--though my mother is getting help with some activities of daily living where she lives in an independent retirement home. My mother is very frail, not eating or drinking enough and is recovering from a fall late August yet she thinks she can travel abroad to stay with her elder brother next year. Yeah, right. Like you, I am not traveling with her. If past experience is an indicator of future experience, she will wind up getting sick or hurt while out of the country. I don't need nor want the extra stress of trying to keep her safe. So I am biding my time letting her think what she wants to think, knowing full well she won't be able to figure out how to make the arrangements. She can't figure out how to call the beauty shop where she lives to make a hair appointment. She hasn't asked me to make the arrangements. She could still do that I suppose. I tell my mother she needs to get healthier and stronger to make the trip and she thinks she will be just fine to travel with no effort on her part. She is just going to be fine come next summer. She doesn't remember or realize all the hospital visits she has had in recent months. So I just let her talk as it probably is all talk.
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Do not move her back. Trying to take care of an elderly parent from out of state is a nightmare. You have half the battle done as you now have her physically close to.This may be grief behavior, beginnings of dementia, depression. How would she get back anyway? If she has mobility problems I take it she doesn't drive? Don't enable this behavior ,she isn't making rational requests.You said also she can't manage bills or medication,so right there you know her living alone is not realistic.Your relationship with her is already changing,you are now her grown daughter telling her what to do, this is not an easy transition,can be very emotional.You are going to have to stand firm,if there are other siblings start making phone calls and formulate a game plan. Mom can no longer live by herself safely ,from what you wrote you already know this.This isn't going to be easy, I wish I could tell you differently but I have been going thru this for the last 2 yrs.Had to tell my mother with a 1 month period that she could no longer drive due to powerful narcotic she was placed on, could no longer live alone because of this med and would have to move in with me as my house would not sell but hers was in a better location to sell,also AL and NH would not allow her 2 little dogs she dearly loved. Had her whole neat little world turned upside down in less than 30 days.I always had to be the bearer of bad news but I knew that in the long run the very hard decisions I had to make would be the best for her and just now 2 yrs. later she is slowly starting to see this.It's been a hard journey.I had to do things I knew my mother would be angry about, would be obstinate about and say nasty things to me but I had to incur her wrath for her own good and it has taken 2 yrs. for her to realize this,for right now she doesn't have dementia.Do not be a part of moving her back and letting her live alone.
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Mimix2, stall your Mom, you now will have artic weather and a long winter on your side.... no way anyone is going to move in those conditions. I live in the D.C. metro area, so you and I both know that just a dusting of snow can put D.C. and Baltimore in the stop mode. Maybe by spring your Mom will be content to say in Maryland :)

Oh, any chance you can connect with her old friends and have them call her, or have one stop by? Sometimes it takes a little nudge.
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My inlaws made the same mistake. They moved grandma from IL to AZ. It was just too much for her. Nothing was familiar. She developed dementia within a couple of days and they had to fly her back, first class and put her in a nursing home, in IL. She did regain her faculties after she got back to IL. Good luck, but I think she needs to go back, also. The cold weather is going to be unbearable for her. (I am 60 and am visiting IL., at the moment. BRRR. My home is Tucson.)
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You say she has social anxiety? Has she ever been diagnosed by , say, a geriatric psychiatrist . Antidepressants often help with social anxiety. It's not a complete answer. But it might make her living in a "strange" place a little better and easier for her.
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