Estranged MIL suddenly in our care? What do we do first?

OMG! One of those no good deed goes unpunished. In hindsight, husband should have left her where she was and let them deal with Mom.
Whats husband say.

So where is she now, this minute, Alazrielle?

UPDATE: I'm not sure WHAT to do now. She said she wanted to leave and didn't want to live with us anymore. She destroyed our property, scared myself and the children. She was in the hospital for a month and the doctors said she was fine. All of her behaviors she exhibited here, they didn't observe at all. She showed up on the doorstep today and started screaming at me about "knowing what I did". I called the police. The police are saying that she lives here and that I never "evicted" her. She isn't on our lease and I really don't feel safe letting her into our home, with our children. The police didn't care. Now, I don't know what to do...I want to get her back to the shelter where the hospital made arrangements for her, but they are saying she left voluntarily. She won't go back. I don't want to be cruel to her, or mean, but I HAVE to put the safety of the kids first, don't I?

MIL on her way to group home - yeaa! Dog has been rehomed thru a shelter that gave it medical care. Am I right Alazrielle? You DO, however, want to make sure your state doesn't require children to pay for their parents care in a facility... some states do; it isn't always enforced, but you don't want to take a chance. Hugs!

She should have been taken to hospital right away. She could have just about anything from dehydration to urinary tract/bladder infection, to diabetes etc, etc.
The dog was traumatized and uprooted to a brand new situation. That's why it has bad manners. And she isnt with it, so the dogs gonna take over.

Good luck getting her help.

Maybe husband should allow the State to take over. It will be easier for the State to find a place for her. Her care will be taken over by a guardian. If they call to tell u to pick her up, tell them sorry you are afraid for you and childs safety. Explain she punched holes into her bedroom wall after she didn't get her way. She is mentally ill and you can not care for her. That DH was estranged from her when he found she was homeless. Him taking her in was not a permanent thing, it was until you could get her help. Well, its now time for the help. She is too volatile to be around your child.

Please listen to Barb. MIL isn't going to be in the hospital forever. What are you going to do if she shows up in a taxi from the hospital? Has your H talked to the discharge planners?

Dog weighs so much... He is a big or fat or both... kinda dog.... Pinch Collar. Take him for walks, daily walks.. 5 minutes.. 10 minutes... to the end of the driveway and back...

PINCH COLLAR... he won't bull doze over anyone...

Mom.. 51.. ALZ is not racist of anything.. age, color, gender, etc... Like most illness to attacks anyone...

My friend was a MASTER DIVER.. SCUBA DIVER.. AWESOME GAL. Never had anyone in my life before or since then like her.. MISS her a lot.. She would call us:
" WE ARE HAVING A BBQ THIS AFTERNOON AT YOUR HOUSE! SEE YOU SOON! :) " I would tell my hubby.. quick, hurry, MARILYN CALLED:: We are having a BBQ today. WE need to clean !!!

She past away 10 years ago.. It seems like yesterday.. God, I miss her..O miss her hubby too..Knew something was wrong.. she divorced him..They wer good together. both sweethearts.. He doesn't come around anymore... :(
I actually don't know why I am posting this on this blog..
Wait.. she died too soon... Brain issues.. EARLY ONSET ALZ? It was not good. When I called her at the facility and they allowed me to talk with her... she couldn't talk due to the disease... she had her jovial laugh when she heard my voice...

I don't know how old your child is, but get child involved with a treat/trick with the dog. who knows? the dog may actually be your child's personal pet, or more..
My dog will not allow anyone near me without her guard up.. She needs to see and smell THE HANDSHAKE... If she doesn't see or smell this.. she is on HIGH ALERT... She knows...
TAke advantage of your situation.. GEt this pet on YOUR SIDE NOW... TREAT HIM KINDLY AND WITH STORE BOUGHT TREATS OR YOUR OWN.. LET HIM KNOW HE IS FAMILY.. make sure he all his immunizations are up to date.. Rabies, etc.
Yup, I have a friend who had to take his mom's dog... She hadn't been fixed, etc.. I made them see every time I went to the house poor thing was in "heat"..
I told them with extreme detail what I am seeing.. I would get up and clean up after this poor gal, and clean her up, and clearly say..she was their responsibility... Months later,.. they got that poor gal spayed.
With your new dog... Is he neutered? If not get him neutered.. He will Be a Better Dog.. Make sure he is up to date on vaccines..
Walk the poor guy at least around the block, the dog park. etc. DOGS NEED TO EXCERISE... AND SO DO WE.... Now you and dog can do this together.. tie the bond tighter.

I chose the pet to be the first part of this issue... I feel it's easier in all aspects..You can choose what best suits you.
51 seems young.. I should not judge.. no telling what she has endured, or is suffering from now... Check UTI Urinary tract infections, CAT SCANS ETC.
Does dementia or ALZ run amuck in your family? Cancer? etc? The answer to this with most people would be a resounding: YES.A family member has suffered from or died of something..
This is why I chose a pet to focus on... It is easier to figure in a sense.. Believe me.. You will see a difference if you take out a stale cracker or piece of bread, or a piece of chicken in frig.. whatever is edible and smells, will attract your dog's nose.. You will see a new personality... There are awesome traing treats in the stores. Recentll, I have been making my own pet food...INSTANT POT... Chicken on sale from markets... I find I like boneless n skinless chicken.. last week $1.99 a pound.. ONe small can of cat food.. $1,85... Pure chicken my cat doesn't throw up so much..

HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON.. DOG.. PET... TRAIN YOUR PET!

Potty training.. If you need to deal with this.. 15 MINUTES AFTER YOU FEED DOG... Take him by leash to the area you want him to do his business... TELL DOG: GO DO IT !! Keep dog on leash until he pees. Tell him good job.. !! just like a child.. be happy... but do not think he will do this on his own... He is a newbie... He needs to be taught these new rules...YOUR RULES... and kindly...
So if your dog.. YES,, NOW HE IS YOUR DOG... DO NOT ARGUE THIS ISSUE.. HE IS IN YOUR HOME.. HE NEEDS TO KNOW YOUR RULES... BE KIND.. IT IS THE BEST WAY.
He has not had any training so this may be hard on him.. this is why you need to be kind but assertive.
QUESTION: IS dog small, Chihuahua small, or Shepard large? Small may not do so well in a pinch collar.. shepards can handle pinch collars. They both DO REALLY WELL with KINDNESS & TREATS.. and tricks..

in regards to the dog.. take it on daily walks with a PINCH COLLAR. These are sold at Petco, and other pet shops.. It is a daily training collar. It works very well. It is designed to keep the dog in check. Look up dog training in your area that will teach you and your dog together. It's the best way for training you to train your dog...They are usually in groups so you and your dog can train together and get used to being around new owners and their pet dogs... From there, you can your pet can go to dog parks or similar places that allow dogs to collide with other dogs.
Your mom can be a part of this too if she wants to. 51 is kinda young.. So take he to the dog training classes too... Perhaps you can find a little about "mom" as well..
A fun excerise for the dog.... Put little dog treats hidden around the house.. Like near the t.v.,,,, closet... a ladder,... someone's shoe.. And keep him away from it until all the treats are hidden... Then give him a little smell and bit of it... ROVER : 3 TREATS.. !!!! GO FIND THEM :) HAPPY VOICE!!! fun at last He will thank you over and rover again.
Do this every night... He will begin to see his new family as a happy and loving and treat giving family... :)

Give DOG A HAPPY HOME !!! He just wants attention. Honestly food is where the heart is... and you can toss toys and play games... It will make things so much better= dog will actually feel he is a part of the family....
Our dog knows so many tricks.. I could have had her in a movie that was being filmed locally ... I didn't even think of it til I left... Walk in the park and she was acting goofy... I said: Where's Lilly? her best friend... She jumped and perked up like : WHERE? The movie set people saw this... laughing... I was just walking my dog...
I just wanted to keep walking, and she was taking her time to smell the park etc.
Train the dog to be nice. Treats are a good first start. If it starts nipping.. In a calm but assertive voice, say... nooooo noooo. Max, nooo, that's not nice..and turn away...
I don't know how old the dog is, or his nature, breed etc... But treats usually work... BE kind to this pet... and he will be kinder to you... TREATS TREATS TREATS... Is a good first start.
To give you an idea, my dog is part german shepard.. she looks it.. I take into places and they greet her... not me.. her,,, When I take her she is not known, she demands the attention, stands near the counter.. (treats are hidden there- she thinks of all places) demands the attention she wants--- TREATS---- When they are not presented.. I make her do a trick, and tell her what a sweetheart she is, and thank everyone who endured, this situation :)
She is not as happy, but everyone tells me what a wonderful and beautiful pup I have... She is so good....Fun and loving....

My cabby said the hospitals will put people in his cab, for a $20 ride to where ever that gets the patient to. It's sad.. He says that is more common nowaday..

Alazrielle, I'm glad you have some peace, even if it is only temporary.

DH needs to call the discharge planning department at the hospital and tell them that MIL will not be allowed back into your home as she is a threat to your child's physical and mental health.

Be prepared for pushback. Do NOT allow them to bully you. Change the locks and do NOT let her back in if they send her home in a cab.

Update: Well, things might have sorted themselves out. My daughter was taking a bath and MIL needed to use the restroom. When we told her we would get the babe out so she could use the restroom, she got very irate that she would have to wait. She wanted to go to the restroom on the floor, then in a mixing bowl, then outside. By the time we got our daughter out of the bath, she said she no longer needed to go and went back to her room. We heard a lot of pounding and when we checked on her, she had taken a pencil and stabbed the walls, putting holes everywhere. We didn't feel safe confronting her in that state. When we inquired with the police, they said there wasn't much they could do unless she was harming herself or threatening to harm us. Destruction of property didn't constitute a threat by itself unless we wanted to press charges. So, we took anything from her that could be considered a weapon. She got angry again, and tried leaving. We called the police again and they finally sent someone out. They spoke with us for about 2 hours, and then finally took her to the hospital. We haven't heard anything from them since. It's been about two days. I can't tell how I feel. Worried about her, but relieved at the same time? We have just about all her stuff here, and I don't know what we should do with it. I'm not sure what's next. My daughter told me this evening that she is happy "we have our home back". I'm hoping that MIL is getting the care she needs. HIPPA won't allow the hospital to give us any information. I'm not even sure if we should pursue it. I think, and I hope, that this will lead to her getting better care. She needs a more stable environment. Living with us, having to leave every day to drop kids at school and pick them up, having to wait for hours in doctors offices for their appointments, the random tantrums and birthdays and parent teacher conferences...It wasn't the right place for her.

Alazrielle,
Keep chipping away at those forms, and make it a point to visit the local SS office more frequently. Just to ask questions.
Call Medicare, with her on the phone to give consent for you to ask questions.

Today, in the mail, I received a letter from SS, which read in part:
SS said: "We recently reviewed the evidence (that I provided) in (your husband's) Social Security disability and found that his disability is continuing."

And, SS said: "We find that the work he has been doing does not show that he can do substantial work".

The rest of the letter contained really scary info that mostly, I do not understand. It has helped to be honest in reporting the true facts these past few years, even if there is fear he may be abruptly discontinued, or if the forms are scary, I will keep on advocating for my hubs.

Now, comes the IRS taxes. forms, procrastination. last minute efforts to comply. this is life!

I am telling you all this (not exactly specific to your case) to encourage you to keep on keeping on. And do not be afraid to go forward, even if you do not have all the answers for your Mil.

Take care of yourself. You are a caregiver!

She saw the doctor today. He told me not to worry about the disability forms. If we get denied, which he thinks is unlikely given the report he gave them, we can appeal and go before a judge. The judge will be able to tell easily from a short conversation with her. So, I'll be sending in her forms this week. She is declining, so he upped her donepezil. I asked if there was another medication we could try, but he said that there wouldn't be any hope of improving her mental acuity. We are now only worried about slowing this down. We found out we have to put her on a low sodium diet because of her blood pressure. Her favorite foods are salty: ramen, potato chips, beef jerky. It's practically all she'll eat. I'm wondering the pros and cons of trying to do it. On the one hand: we want to follow the doctors orders. On the other: she's likely to starve herself if she can't eat what she wants. She is really upset after the doctors visit today. She asked him what she could do to "get cured" and he told her it would never happen. She's been saying all day that she'd be better off dead. We've been keeping an eye on her. We changed her bedding this morning to wash it and it freaked her out when we got home. She is paranoid now that someone is stealing her stuff because her blanket is gone. Even after showing her that it was in the washing machine, she was still saying to me that someone stole it. Now she wants to throw away all of her things because "What's the point of having stuff if you guys are just going to steal it anyway." Should I let her throw her stuff away? I tried to stop her, and she just kept telling me it was her stuff to do what she wanted with. So, we gave her an empty trashbag to put it all in. We kept the bag, in case she wants it back. I think a big part of the problem is that she wasn't diagnosed while she was healthy enough to process the diagnosis. So, when she gets reminded about it, it upsets her. But she can't really process through it. I wish I knew how to help her through it better. It feels as if there's not much else we can do until we get insurance for her.

" her dog is seriously untrained, bites us and our dog, and weighs so much that he bowls her over and she can't control him. She forgets that she's not at home and is constantly letting him in from the garage to attack us. We don't want to get rid of him because she is seriously attached, but he is starting to become a danger."

How are things with the dog?

Alazrielle, you are doing SUCH a fantastic job. Giant hugs to you.

Send in her form as she's written it. It presents a true picture of her ability, for example, to understand and process information. Just make sure it's stapled firmly to your own account. Will there be any kind of independent/professional assessment to go with this?

I hesitate, because I don't want you to spit in my eye even virtually, but your (completely barking!) MIL would be a good candidate for our reablement team.

Take the cereal, which would come under "meal preparation tasks."

MIL is able to: choose what she would like for breakfast; put her cereal onto her plate and add milk; feed herself.
MIL requires support to: select appropriate tableware, (?) use appropriate quantities.
Concerns: MIL can lose track of what meal preparation is being done and may be at risk of forgetting e.g. hot stoves, boiling kettles, etc.

So. If she were our client, we would turn up at her house at about a quarter to eight in the morning and use a combination of verbal prompting and minimal intervention to get the right food onto the right plate with her doing as much of the job as possible.

I have yet to get away from a morning call in under an hour, but I am new and I hope to improve. We have a maximum of forty five minutes allocated for each job (we'd also probably cover washing and dressing, maybe meds and creams), and seeing that some of our clients attempt to make their morning cup of tea with first cat kibble and then Bran Flakes (I won't forget her in a hurry!), the "stand back and let the client do it" theory does not always make it into reality. But you can get away with more cheating if you lavish praise on her for what she IS managing to do.

Can anybody send an OT in to help you analyse her routines and smooth out some of the bumps?

A doctor's office, clinic, Dept. of Social Services, or hospital may be able to determine if she has health insurance by entering her social security number
into their database.

It looks like you are making progress already.

It took 1-3 years for "discovery" issues like your mil's to come to the light.
After leaving his home, abruptly, our elder had no real information. But it is better now that one person is in charge.

Hope you can get this sorted.

Another update: we are in a sort of lull. I received the disability functional report in the mail. I filled mine out. It took nearly all week to help her fill hers out. It was very frustrating. She kept checking boxes that she was capable of things. She isn't capable of any of them. I tried talking with her, gently, about how she can't do those things anymore. Her response was "Only because you don't let me". Now, I'm not sure if I should send her completed form in or not. In the explanation parts, the ones she did write in, she wrote a lot of nonsense. Answers that don't fit questions, sentences that aren't sentences. Is that enough, with her medical records, to show she really isn't capable? Or do they only look at the checked boxes?
We took her out for her birthday. Got her her "dream pizza" and ice cream. Everything was going great, she was all smiles, until she wanted nuts on her ice cream. She's allergic. She got really upset and threw her ice cream away before I could even pay for it. I took a deep breath, and Facebooked her daughter. Gave Sister in Law the run down and she had a pleasant talk with Mom while we went home. Made sure I took pictures at the pizza place and I'm glad. Mom got upset because we -forgot- her birthday. Was able to show her the pictures to reassure her we did not.
She mentioned a problem with her lady bits, so we go back to the doctor tomorrow. She banged her knee on something the other day and I think she sprained it. Today, I tried to get her to rest, and elevate it. Went to the restroom and when I came back she was jumping on it, one footed. When I asked her why? "Well, it hurt. When something hurts, you just bang on it till it stops. Seriously, I'm only 14. I'm too young to feel like I'm falling apart". I took deep breaths and managed to get her interested in a movie.
She poured her cereal and milk onto a plate yesterday morning. This made me irrationally aggravated. We had just completed the section about what can you cook and how often and how well on the function report. She said she could cook so well. She can cook seven course dinners. She's a five star chef. She doesn't even have enough sense to use a bowl and not a plate for cereal! Had to take a lot of deep breaths. It seems like that's all I do anymore. Take deep breaths...
And at the end of the day, I feel bad. What could I have done better? Was there something that would've made her feel better? Is she comfortable enough? Is her heater still on or did she turn it off again? And in the morning, it starts all over. Irritation that she peed on the porch (seriously, why?!), Irritation that she's yelling at me for not having any clean clothes when her dresser is stuffed full of them. Irritation all day, guilt and worry all night. Round and round the carousel...

I think the dog is going to have to ''disappear'' for the safety of everyone, let alone your MIL. If you could somehow help her to develop a fondness for your own pet/s as a substitute at least they could fill the gap left when her own dog disappears into the sunset.

Alazrielle, When mthr had a bleeding tumor, she was in low hemoglobin which caused memory loss of the kind you see. I'd suggest talking to Adult Protective Services and seeing if you can get emergency guardianship so you can get her medical care. Perhaps just taking her to the ER would work, but you need Adult Protective Services on your side.

That dog has to go. It's hard enough dealing with her. I feel sorry for her because no one was taking care of her in her condition. Sounds like she might have early onset dementia.

That's very compassionate of you to help her.
Just a few things that you should be aware of.
Narcissism and dementia both have issues.
A NPD person could lower your self esteem, ie. you're not good enough. And pit some people against each other.
With dementia, they lose the ability to reason. So arguments are pointless. They don't understand.

Always remember you are doing your best. If it doesn't work out, pleases look into other options, like a facility.
--- All the best

As a comment on a post a couple back, OP said: "We did finally find a free clinic and got her officially diagnosed with dementia. They said to give her a specific diagnosis of "early onset" or "frontotemporal" she would need a brain scan, which she needs insurance for."

This is a fantasic development! Would you consider/ be able with that diagnosis to put her in a memory care home with that diagnosis for a respite of a week or two so you can tend to your own children to get them started back to school? I know your hands have been so full and I don't know how you are doing all this!

We got her test results back, and took her to a few follow-up appointments. The clinic only sees patients once a week, and the holidays interrupted things a bit. She has been diagnosed as having a thyroid issue and dementia. In order to diagnose a specific type of dementia, she needs a brain scan and the clinic won't do that without insurance. We applied for disability based on the dementia diagnosis, and are hoping that will get her medicare/medicaid? and then we can follow those through to a specific diagnoses. It has also been hard to untangle what is a dementia symptom and what isn't. We know she can't stay here with us and are working to get her into a facility. Her behavior is devolving (maybe she's becoming more comfortable here?) and I am becoming very concerned about her living here with the kids. She has started yelling at them occasionally. I step in, every time, and redirect her. I am hoping to have this all resolved soon. It took us so long to get our bearings and even know which direction to go.

If she hasn't been taking her thyroid meds for a long time that could explain her decline. You will not be able to properly rule out early onset dementia unless her thyroid levels are within a normal range.

However if she has NPD that will be your biggest problem. She is relatively young and do not be guilted into taking on something you will not be able to deal with in the long term.

Good luck!

Maybe you have been misinformed.
The rep-payee assignment can be made at the SS office, can you get her there?