Three of four siblings had a meeting this morning about their mom's care. They feel her needs are not met and want to return her to our house.
The Medicaid Waiver would pick up some in home care. One has a child at community college and they want mom to pay her the just over $1,400 in Social Security to pick up night shifts. Brother in law in town will take her every other weekend and stay at the house 2 nights a week. The sibling in the military cannot help but is willing to give $100 a week for food and incidentials.
I think it is a bad idea. What do you think?
If all are on board with it, and can help watch for problems, then it is worth a "try" dependent on how willing people are to recognize the signs it isn't working at all.
If you are the one left doing all the care and all the watching then I think that your opinion on whether this is "working" is the one that should count.
Were you part of the meeting? How convient that 1400 meshes with the night shift payments as suggested by a sibling. Huge red flag right there. Your mother is not to return to your house. I'm pretty sure there are other care facilities to look at, and why haven't they, if they think this one is not good enough?
This whole thing is bad. Really, really bad. I hope Burntcaregiver sees this and really lets you know what they think!
If her needs are not being met in IL, the next “tier” in my area is AL, -Assisted Living.
Presuming on their part that YOU are the next step indicates that they don’t really understand that her needs will be increasing (no one can accurately predict how fast), and also that they think you’re THE CHOICE for the indefinite future.
If/when you break the news to them, they will object, and may continue to object for the long term. The longer you let this go, the harder the work will become for you and the harder it will be to get a fair, safe solution for Mom’s care needs.
Just as an aside, it also sounds that your sibs are willing to shift your mother around much more than her deteriorating condition will benefit from.
This happens in a lot of families. For YOUR welfare, but also for your mother’s, take a stand now. It will never get “easier”.
How much are YOU going to be paid? You gave up your job to be a caregiver, right? And now money is tight?
Medicaid is going to provide what, 10 hours a week?
YOU are still giving her insulin 4 times a day, right?
What happens when the student has exams? When is she expected to sleep? Study?
You will end up doing all the work...again. This is the kind of "plan" that discharge people are always trying to foist upon folks. It never works.
So...
Your DH and two of his siblings met for a summit conference. Presumably Sibling 3 was on speakerphone or something?
DH agreed that his mother would come and live at your house. Medicaid will supply up to x hours of in-home daytime caregiver support per week. What is x, please? And where are the caregivers to come from?
Sibling 1 will be paid $1400 for 18-20 night shifts per month. Sibling 1 is available 3-4 nights every week, week in week out, year round, is that correct? Is never ill, never goes out of town, never has guests at home or better things to do in the evenings? Or is the nominee S1's student child, whom we'll call Niece - and this young person is available 3-4 nights per week, including vacations, work experience, field trips, and never wants to travel or spend time with friends? And certainly *never* gets hungover? And has no plans to finish her studies and pursue career prospects?
Sibling 2 will contribute 2 nights per week free of charge, and MIL will be packed up every other weekend and travel to Sibling 2's house.
So. When DH is busy or away, and Sibling 1/Niece find they have stuff they have to do, and Sibling 2 is having renovations done or in-laws to stay, and the Medicaid caregivers can't be had for love or money (there is something of a global crisis in social care recruitment going on, you know) and these things happen all at once - awwww, it's only this once! - who gets to look after MIL?
That wouldn't be you, by any chance, would it?
I think you should tell the whole dam' boiling of them that you weren't born yesterday and you're not so green you're cabbage-looking.
Besides, has anyone asked MIL if she wants to be billeted on her DIL and packed off from pillar to post every other weekend? What does she think of all this?
Ha!
Just as to the community college person, at that age many aren't mature or life experienced enough to handle care of an elder, especially if they're "party oriented".
This is NOT a workable solution, for all the reasons stated and even more that haven't been addressed.
And you better run the student getting paid MILs SS just to be there at night by Medicaid. Medicaid could look at that as gifting or as a conflict of interest. The student probably has no hands on experience. Will she be able to change a Depends or be waking u up to do it. 1400 a month more than pays for this students tuition in a Jr. College.
I agree MIL was not getting good care at the AL. Really, tge Nurse is capable of giving an insulin shot, Find another AL. Maybe her care is more than an AL can handle. Time for LTC. As I said before, go over the case mangers head.
EPIC FAIL, and I mean EPIC.
Everybody had a different idea for what they could/would do for care for mother. My 2 sisters would throw money at it, but would not do 'hands on'. One YB is still working FT and had zero 'free time'. Other YB has mom living with him, and while he bitterly complained about her care--he refused any kind of outside help--and at the end of the 'meeting' he was screaming at me for even bringing it up. He took this meeting to mean we were all judging HIM, and the whole idea was to find care so he WOULDN'T be the only CG.
Your situation, like ours, had too many moving parts and just was an untenable solution.
In the end, nobody was speaking to anyone else. YB was so angry and it took him about 3 years to 'get over it'. Meanwhile just complaining nonstop about the time Mother's care took him. He REFUSES any help, so it is what it is.
Personally, I wouldn't attempt this at any cost.
The student is Sibling 1 niece, 19 years old. Nice girl but flighty. Her dad is not in the picture and her mom died 6 months ago of breast cancer. She has been living with Sibling 1. Sibling 1 will do dr appointments.
Sibling 2 is overseas, willing to help with food bills. Sibling 3 is an addict out west which is why they were not included on call.
Husband is a project manager that works out of town several months a year.
This will solely be on me. They said that it will be less work for me because I will not have to go to the facility several times a day.
I do not want to do it and will not fight in front of mother in law.
I do not get along with Sibling 1 because he treats us like garbage and has a dominant personality and is intimidating. If Sibling 1 stays at the house, I would have a breakdown or stroke. This will not work. Sibling 2 texted me I am selfish.
So what?
It doesn't make it true, does it?
Why doesn't THAT SIBLING have MIL move in with her/him, if it will be so little work?
THAT'S the answer.
I have no idea what MIL's current set-up is, but I'm going to assume she's in a nursing home situation of some kind. I find that most people don't understand the levels of care available in nursing home situations, so I'll guess she's in the incorrect level of care. Perhaps she should be in a board and care home. Perhaps she's not bad enough to be in a home and can get by with a roommate in an apartment. (Again, I have no way of knowing what her situation is.)
I take it you've done this with her before, so it is well known that your home is also not good care for her. If her current situation isn't giving her adequate care and your home was also not the place for adequate care, then they need to find Plan C,D, and so forth until they figure it out, but Plan A is already past its expiration date.
Simply remove your home from the list of options, then sit back and watch them scramble to find a better situation than what she has.
Sibling 1 is the one talking to Medicaid, trying to make decisions. Sibling 1 says their father in law is living with them, 100 lbs on hospice. I saw the father in law at Home Depot, he spoke with me. He is not 100 lbs, did not look sick but it would be rude to ask.
Husband told me he did not know why Sibling 1 would lie. I froze and said because that is what they do and you know it.
I told him I cannot do it, she is crying right now and I am the bad person.
You are NOT the bad person. I'm so sorry that you're getting all this BS and being cast as the villian here. You are not the villian. You are not doing anything wrong or cruel or unfair.
You are doing what is best for your MIL, your husband and yourself.
She needs to be in facility care because her needs cannot be managed at your house.
I've did in-home caregiving for almost 25 years. Believe me when I say, based on what you've said about your MIL, her care cannot be managed at your house. I have worked for clients who I had to threaten to report on because the care of their "loved one" was not being managed in the home.
They were good people who were trying very hard and had the best intentions. They weren't coping because their "loved one" needed more than could be provided in their family's home.
Your MIL needs more too.
Ask how she is going to get insulin 4x a day if you're at work.
She needs a higher level of care. Has anyone spoken to her doctor about getting her medically qualified for NH care? That's what's needed here.
He said when he worked in Pennsylvania, they were not as generous.
Aides can't do that.
Who is talking to the case manager? Is she an RN?
Being grandma's night-time caregiver in your home is gonna get real old real quick with the kid in community college and well it should. Someone that age is not going to sit around with an elder every night while their friends are out having a good time and being young.
This idea should not have even been suggested.
You will end up on the night shift.
BIL will take her every other week-end and stay two nights a week. That will last all of five minutes. He'll stay a couple of times and then the excuses for why he can't make it will start. Then he will just stop coming and not even offer a reason.
You're now working week-ends as the caregiver.
The $100 a week is a joke and no one should even take that seriously.
What will happen is you're now the Designated Caregiver. Because MIL is in your house YOU will have to do her caregiving. This is not what might happen. This is what WILL happen.
Her needs will best be met in a care facility. Please do not get talked into taking her back.
Sometimes... Just sometimes...
I find I'm apoplectic.
You're selfish because you're not prepared to do other people's work? Without reward?
You should consider yourself lucky because theoretically a "generous" amount of caregiver support is graciously awarded by the state system?
On your behalf, if you'll allow the liberty, can I just say to all of them...
Oh! Just! F*** - RIGHT - off!!!
The facility is not doing its job.
DH doesn't have time to look after his mother.
Sib 1 has her hands full.
Niece is 19 years old, ffs.
Sib 2 is otherwise engaged, on vital work I don't doubt but probably not the indefinite 24/365 commitment you're being expected to volunteer for.
And this crisis for them morphs into your responsibility... how?
No. The proposed burden falls altogether at your feet and is unreasonable. Just NO.
What sounds good on paper turns out, oftentimes, to be a nightmare in reality.
Leave her where teams of caregivers working 24/7 can see to her needs vs. a 'child at community college' to care for her at night........who knows WHAT, exactly, about caregiving? And a BIL in town who will take her every other weekend and stay at the house 2 nights a week. Truly, this sounds so patched together that it will be literally impossible to iron out. Honestly.
Caregiving is not meant to be a patched-together fiasco where 10 people are trying to fit an elder into their already too busy schedule. That's a recipe for disaster and everyone KNOWS it.
Oh, and she needs INSULIN 4x a day to boot? Come on! Who'll be designated that duty? Or will that be thrown to whomever is available at any given time who does or does not know one darn thing about administering NEEDLES to elders? Insanity. That's what this 'plan' is.
Too many cooks spoil the broth, also. Who is the ONE POA here who can make ONE rational decision about this elder's care moving forward?
No matter how carefully a project is planned, something may still go wrong with it. The saying is adapted from a line in “To a Mouse,” by Robert Burns: “The best laid schemes o' mice an' men .
The assisted living in run by a non profit ministry. They only have a traveling nurse so the aides cannot do shots. They said we were trained to do them while she was at home and we were.
My point has always been why should she pay for sub par care. Those words are now biting me in the a$$.
Did YOU ever say you would visit several times a day? There is an awful lot of presumptions going on here. Even your own to believe these people. You know this plan will not work for you.
I guess you did say you.would visit several times a day. There has to be a better way. Something good for you.
Why are you going to the facility four times a day? There is no need for this.
You are going to continue to be villified by your MIL and the family. They are going to treat you like the doormat and continue to walk all over you and take advatage because you allow them to.
By now making four trips a day to the facility, everyone knows that you're willing and ready to be MIL's caregiver.
So I'm going to speak plainly to you. I don't mean to sound harsh but it's for your own good.
Knock off the BS with the four visits a day. Once visit a week for half an hour is more enough from you to your MIL.
You do not want to be her caregiver, so don't let yourself fall into the martyrdom of caregiving becauseyou think it will make the family members and your MIL villify you less.
It will not.
This plan as outlined is just plain crazy and has zero chance of working long term.
It is not your mother, let the siblings figure it out, not your circus not your monkeys.
Keep her where she is, let the caretakers at the home give her meds. A college student isn't qualified to care for the MIL
Stop going there 4 times a day, visit once or twice a week, that's it.
I know mother in law has a $10 personal need fund because husband and Sibing 1 will not allow auto debits from her account so there is a $50 fee. I pay for everything out of a joint checking account.
I can not force a case manager to do their job just because I disagree. I feel awful every single day of my life and I feel it is being piled on.
Actually, maybe you should make yourself unavailable somehow so this charade of unsustainable “care” can come to an end. Don’t you feel a bad cold coming on? 😉
We get texts stating workers are Covid + and there is a sign on the door stating Covid + facility. I wear a mask into the facility but workers do not due to religious freedoms. I always wear a mask inside.
Since MIL hae been at my home (yesterday for cleaning), I am wearing a mask inside, I am usually alone here so it is an adjustment.