Mom has refused to consider a nursing home. What can I do?

Casey! So sad that seniors have to suffer so much as they age....but im soooo happy for you!!

lifeexperiences I took care of my mother purely out of duty. I'm an only child, there is no other family and she had no friends. Life long my father and I trod on eggshells, bent over backwards and jumped through hoops to make her happy but nothing ever made her happy and she treated us like dirt. She never lifted a finger to help her elderly parents and when her mother passed she refused to help her father because it "would be too much trouble" and never spoke to him again. To this day I don't know if grandma was buried, cremated or ...

I've had several months since she passed to go over things in my mind and I've come to the conclusion that my mother was mentally ill life long. I cared for her purely out of duty and now I can get on with my life. One door closes, another door opens.

i just don't understand how anyone could care for someone so abusive especially life long. duty for what? misery? anyway....im very sorry that she treated you and your father like that! im glad you are free of her!! you are a much nicer person than i am. take care!

I am in the midst of moving my mother to AL from our home. I know the guilt that we all express in our answers. I am up at 3AM writing this because I can't sleep. We are active seniors and took my mother in after her sister died last year. It was a mistake. We should have moved her directly to AL. Now a year later we are afraid to leave her alone even though she insists she is ok. At 91 she moves and thinks very slowly, cannot handle minor emergencies, and has trouble using her cell phone. If there were a fire in the house when we are not here she would never get out. We have a neighbor who looks in on her, that helps but only so much. My mother went ballistic when I told her we are afraid to leave her alone and want her to go to a nice AL near here. She flatly refuses to cooperate, will not agree, will not. She has about 3 - 4 years of money before Medicaid thanks to my aunt's will. Now we are at the stage of cold politeness as you would treat someone you no longer trust. It is very hard. This morning I am going to tell her she has a doctor appointment for her entry physical and this will trigger another fight. My mother blames my wife for wanting her gone which is partially true. The tension and confrontation in our house came in with my mother. Still, we are concerned with her welfare and want her to be a happy community participant and not a resented sullen old lady. The burden of having a happy retirement, saving a good marriage, and taking care of my mother are on me. Reading everyone's answers here helps with the guilt. Take care of yourself first and see to your mom's needs second. None of us are getting any younger and you deserve a life too.

Richard, I am feeling such sympathy for you and your wife. I was fortunate that my mother went from IL to AL. I cannot imagine what it would have been like to have her live with my husband and me, no matter how much I loved her. Too many of us "young seniors" are having our own health and retirement burdened with the physical responsibility of caring for older seniors.
It sounds like you have no choice but to tell Mom you can't take care of her any more and then take her to visit a few AL facilities and let her pick one (or you will pick it for her) Then move her. Your marriage and health comes first. Dealing with the guilt is hard and dumping guilt is how they maintain some level of control over us. Just remember that when you get do her moved, she will adjust and will make friends (mine did). Be prepared she will bitterly complain and make you think she is miserable, but she will enjoy herself and have a life of her own when you are not there.
My mother played the merry-go-round with us in IL for years. She acted like she was absolutely suffering, then one time she gave herself away. (I had taken her to lunch, we got to the AL, she saw a friend and threw a "goodbye" to me over her shoulder and left me standing there while she bustled off.
We moved her to IL when she was 92! Good luck. You deserve a happy retirement.

Put her in a nice place. She can't live alone any more, and you can't be expected to run what is basically a puppet show with a old woman sitting watching Judge Judy and the Kardashians multiple hours a day, with bathroom breaks if you're lucky. . Do it. What is she going to do, sue you? Call in tough guys to beat you up? Call a taxi to take her to Disney World? Once the situation is resolved, believe me, it will be like an elephant has stepped off of your chest. You will want to LIVE again. I can't describe it. When I moved heaven and earth to get my mother into a nursing home where she belonged, I began to see the light - a few precious more years of health and happiness ahead of me until my OWN decline. I feel bad for mom's situation, but she doesn't even know where she is now, and is having as swell of a time as is possible when green jello is the highlight of the day!

You need to escape. Tell bubba you are taking a vacation and he's going to be in charge of Mommy. Write down all the routines, notify everybody of the date you are leaving. Including her doctor. The leave for six weeks. I bet things will be better upon your return. Our elders must hot hold us captive as caregivers, guilting us into giving up our lives. [even if you take a 3 day vacay to a local resort]. Leave your cell phone off. Or accept a job in another state and tell bubba it's his turn for a couple years now. My demented mother, in saner days, used to say "if you don't want to get walked all over, stop being a rug and get up off the floor".

Have you considered going to court and becoming her guardian and forcing her into a nursing home? Sometimes this is the only alternative left when all else has failed. This is what happened to a couple of people I used to know, one of them I'm aware of having been taken over by a court appointed guardian who took over everything and put the elder into a nursing home against his will because he was in competent due to dementia. I recently saw the person at the nursing home, and this person is definitely not the person I used to know when he was in his right mind, he's just not in there no more, the person I once knew is just not there, it's just not him no more.