I am sole caretaker for my wife, age 88, who has multiple health problems. Should I feel selfish?

When looking for facility .. tour multiple places. Make appointments, tour places..
Whst does it smell like??
clean, urine? Good? Not good?
where are residents? In a common room visiting? Music? Get lunch.. good food?
Activities? MiviecorcTV ROOM?
Excercise? Games? Activities? Excursions?
WHAT IS IMPORTANT TO YOU SND YOUR SPOUSE? WHAT DO YOU WANT TO SEE and UNDERSTAND?

you can ask other visitors how they feel about the facility..
do smile ask questions and look and smell.. see if residents are out n about or stuck in their rooms..
one place has a glass of wine for people who’s like a glass.. socialization is important..
and so is location.. how long will it take you to get there?
Remember some places may be too big… my aunt lived by herself for 44+ years..
i put her in a micro community… TOO BIG!!!
finally out her n mom in a 6 pack together.. one stop shop..
MY Doctor ASKED WHAT CHANGED? 2 elders in same place… one stop… I was the only caretaker … and being able to visit one place.. very changing..

Oh, how I wish that you weren’t dealing with this situation at your age. It’s so very sad. What a sweet husband you are to care so deeply.

I’m sorry that you are struggling with caring for your wife. Please reach out for help. No one can do everything all on their own.

You matter too. Enjoy some time with activities you've been denying yourself.

I
if and when you do place her, please make sure that you have a picture in her room and a fun story about her framed next to her picture. If she has a POLST frame that that nicely for all to see… no looking for it, no need to ask anyone if she has one; it’s on the wall. This is important if you plan to go on long travels. It sounds like you would be the only one visiting her on a regular basis,

You are 90 so the odds of having a major health crisis yourself is greater than if you were in your 60s. What is most important is that your wife be cared for if you you become incapacitated or die. Place her in memory care now. Don't expect your family to step up to help with caregiving. If they haven't been helping you out so far, it isn't likely to happen.

The bonus will be that you will be able to reclaim your life and enjoy the time you have left. You will be able to be a husband and not a caregiver for your wife.

Good luck to you.

You have to stay active physically and mentally. Find good care for your wife and enjoy what time you have left. There is no trophy at the end for sacrificing yourself and no matter what you do, it won't change her situation. Enlist families help in finding your wife the right memory care facility.

If I were you, I would absolutely consider memory care for your wife and maybe AL if her dementia is not too far along. Her doctor would be a good advisor as to what level of care is right for her. We put our MIL in an AL that had a separate memory care unit for when she was at the point of needing it. She will soon be moved. We actually thought about memory care earlier but after visiting, we figured out that her dementia was not that far along.

Having a loved one with dementia is heartbreaking. Your goal is to make sure she is safe and has the level of care she needs. You should not feel guilty trying to find the care she needs. Nor should you feel guilty wanting to stay physically and mentally active. In fact, having your own activities will enable you to better deal with the stress of watching her decline and enjoy the time you have together better. In memory care, there will be activities that you cannot provide at home. There will be a nurse on duty so they will be able to respond to emergency medical needs quickly.

You may have guilt feelings if she is one of those who resists leaving her home. Some of that is natural fear of the unknown and they will more likely than not adjust. We were talking to the daughter of another resident whose mom was very unhappy about going to AL and was just going to stay in her room...making her family feel very guilty. Now her mom is always the life of the party at social events and participates in all the other activities.

A note before my post: I would hope everyone posting on this site, is doing the right thing by giving true account of their situation, we will never know. Personally, I generally assume people are giving a true account and just want to reach out. One thing that is a bit of a downer is (disappointment), after people have spent thought on reply, in most cases very little is heard from the person that posted the question. I agree with some of the things "ventingisback" is saying, but would have said it differently. I guess being direct is being direct.

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Hello, everyone is different. Some people have no doubt about wanting to look after their loved one's and the question you posted wouldn't even cross their minds, some people will have a vast array of help from family members, so it frees up time for others and some will consider care homes, help facilities, etc for their loved ones. Then there's the question of memory care, how advanced is it, will your wife understand, will she feel let down.

These are hard decisions for sure, but sounds like you are handling all this care alone and the time you're putting into caring for you wife, is taking joy out of your life. I think you deserve the joy, you are a fit person at your age. I think a good compromise can be reached by putting your wife in a good caring environment, where you are able to stay with her when you want to. Plus you can do the things you enjoy. Life is to be enjoyed and you lucky than many to have your fitness at your age; I say make the most of it.

Love & Peace.

There are several things that bother me about OP's post.

1. OP you've probably been married to your wife for a long time. You and her had YEARS to discuss this. You two must have discussed it. For example, "Darling, when we get old, how about we try to take care of each other at home. But darling, if it gets too much for you, please don't hesitate to put me in a facility or hire in-home care." It's impossible you two never talked about the topic, even just let's say 5 years ago, when her dementia was less severe.


2. OP if you have money for tennis and travel, you also have money to hire in-home care, in case you do want to keep her home, since you said you fear you're being selfish if you potentially put her in MC.

3. Whoever you are OP, obviously it's your decision what to do. You must decide, not strangers on the forum.

husband33: Please place your wife in a facility. Caregiving is exhausting work. Mine was short term, but out of state as an elder myself (approaching 70 at the time).

THIS is why people do not JOIN 'supposed' helpful websites like this. You posted a question, I posted my opinion and then I get crucified for it. I've been SUICIDAL for a year and I thought joining a website like this would help and then I get negative feedback that I cannot HANDLE right now. I am EXHAUSTED all the time. People need kindness. Not criticism.

Ask yourself this....if it were you, would she put you in memory care? whatever that is...but it sounds like a nursing home. My husband was in a nursing home for 2 months after a major stroke and it was supposed to be a great one - looks good - but a foreign man and his wife ran the place and they treated the patients like crap. It reminded me of the movie "Happy Gilmore" where his grandma was in a nursing home and the director treated the patients like crap until the family came around. If you think your wife would've done that to you, then you have no reason to feel selfish. I live like an eye for an eye. As for me, I'm caring for my 64 yr old husband who had a major stroke in April 2022 and we have had many problems in our marriage so I have resentments working a busy insurance job, even though I'm blessed to work from home but every morning I take my lunch hour at 11 a.m., haul him up off the couch bed (he can't get upstairs), hold my breath while I throw his urine-soaked sheet, blankets, mattress topper into the washer, make his coffee and breakfast, give him his plethora of pills, spray Lysol all over the couch, clean him up, get him dressed and then RUSH back upstairs - usually with a cupcake in my hand for my lunch - and go back to answering my clients' emails, etc. I turned 60 in Feb., I have acute arthritis in my back and knees, I'm in pain CONSTANTLY but this is my life now. So, PRAY about it and really listen to the voices in your head. If you can put your wife in 'memory care' with no guilt, then do it.

I was exhausted taking care of my mom in my 60’s! I can’t even bear to think about you doing this at your age!

You are the definition of Superman. The super hero in the cape doesn’t hold a candle compared to you!

Caregiving is an endless job. You’ve been an incredible husband. I would say that it is way past time for you to think of yourself.

Please place your wife in a facility. Then go visit her as her husband and let the staff do the caregiving! You have earned a break. You have paid your dues and then some!

Best wishes to you and your dear wife.

Enjoy your tennis games! You should be hanging out with my 100 year old cousin who still drives and attends her weekly exercise classes.

No you should not feel guilty.
You can feel grief. You can feel sad. You can not feel guilty.
You already say she will get more appropriate care in a memory care facility.
I am sure she will also be safer in some regards. (This is not saying you can not safely care for her yourself. )
If you are still wondering....
What would YOU want her to do if it were reversed and you had dementia and she were able bodied?
Once in MC and you visit you can be with her as a loving husband NOT as a sole caregiver. I think the time you spend with her will be more focused on her and not her needs.

What I want to know is how you play tennis 3x a week at age 90? 😎

You've gotten some pretty good answers to your question about "feeling selfish", so I'll leave that one alone.

You should feel selfish. Taking care of your”self” is the only way to attend to her needs. It can be a long journey.

My dad was you, and my mother was your wife. My dad cared for her lovingly for years and would never have considered a nursing home for her, but he also lamented to me that "my world has gotten so small."

He was also fit and healthy (but a terrible tennis player), but he ended up dying first.

We never know what's in store for us, especially at 90, so if I was you, I'd be considering MC for your wife solely because you're looking ahead to the time when you might possibly not be able to care for her. The worst thing in the world was my mother losing her husband of 66 years, burying him, and having to move from her home of 50+ years to a nursing home all in the span of two weeks. I had to do it as I couldn't care for her in my home, and it broke her brain the rest of the way and broke my heart. I did it with my dad's blessing, because he didn't want what happened to him to happen to me.

My wife is only 68 and I'm her sole caregiver. I traded in my shop drill press and welder for a vacuum cleaner and stove, this has been the case for nearly 5 years post stroke. From my observation, the more I do for her the less she wants to do for herself. To the point of doing every aspect of her life for her. I try to back off and she starves to death next to a refrigerator full of food without taking her meds, which caused the stroke in the first place.
I feel I've taken away parts of her live that affect her desire to function. I see the day coming to avoid the damage I'm causing getting professional help might be wise. This is defiantly uncharted territory for us.
So no, you should go into it feeling your doing it for your wife's best interest. I don't know about you but I sometimes feel my health going sideways simply by focusing always on her needs. At 90, if you go down, what happens to her if she's not already being taking care of?

Obviously my opinion shouldn't matter just like all of these other opinions shouldn't matter. You do what you need to do. Sounds like your torn between the two. But I think if you can still do it you should. Do you know how many assisted living, memory care, nursing home facilities are neglecting their residents each and everyday anywhere from falls, bed sores, dehydration, sexual assaults, infections, lack of attention. Most of these incidents occur with someone who has dementia. They are the most vulnerable resident's in these facilities. It's like putting out a piece of meat for the lions. Sorry. But true. Anybody who doesn't believe this can or does happen all I can say is "wake up!" I have watched stories of nursing home/memory care neglect and one thing that stands out are the families who are disheartened and angry regretting putting their love ones in these places in the first place all while they ignored the signs of neglect when they should of been listening to their intuition. So if you knowingly know that you can give her the best care at home then you should. Putting her in any form of care outside of the home is Institutionalized care. No matter what you call it! People can tell themselves anything they want to make themselves feel less guilty. This type of business is quite nifty in their marketing to address all of your concerns. They only care about your money not the human in that's occupying the room. They will tell you whatever you wanna hear. They feed off of your fear, guilt, and pain. I don't know how much time your wife has (and I hope she has many days ahead of her) but wouldn't you want to know you were there for your wife from the beginning to the end throughout this journey. If you know she will get better care from you don't you think that the love you have for your wife will allow you to personally provide this. You may want to hire at home care aides for a few hours a day(make sure you have hidden cameras in your home as well because I have seen abuse with home health aides and dementia love ones too) then when you feel more comfortable and feel you can trust them you will be able to leave and play tennis. Good luck.

Absolutely not… you have a life left to live. It would be important for you to see your wife frequently (3-4 times per week if home), definitely to check on her condition a couple of times weekly when you are away.

If her condition has deteriorated to the point of memory care, nursing home care, she NEEDS the daily care.

My 95 yo neighbor cares for his 94 yo wife and has done so for several years as her health has really deteriorated. He does EVERYTHING for her, this man is a demi-god!....she has macular degeneration and is now pretty much totally blind. He has to do all the things--from toileting to feeding to geting her meds--the whole shebang.

I am amazed and touched and humbled when I watch him putting in flowers in their yard that she can't see! He keeps an absolutely immaculate house. I have never heard him raise his voice to her and calls her 'sweetheart'--or 'my love' even when he thinks no one can hear him.

Luckily they have a LOT of support from family, so he does get the occasional half day off (meaning 4 hrs). I go over from time to time to sit with her and chat, b/c he likes to know she has company.

NOBODY would look down on him if he had opted to place her in care years ago, but he chose not to. Would anyone think less of him if he did? Absolutely not.

My point is, there is NO one right or wrong way to do care. This man is one in a million--but there may come a time when he cannot maintain this level of care. Would anyone call him selfish?

He's doing what he's choosing to do, and doing it perfectly. You do what YOU need to do and leave selfishness on the shelf. It's not selfish to self care and I don't know your dynamic at home.

Weigh the pros and cons. I personally think you'd both be better off if she were in a place where he needs can be met and you can be her husband and be loving and kind, but allowing others to do the daily stuff.

Anyone who judges you as selfish should walk a day in your shoes. And no GUILT. That's for people who are bad and mean. You obviously care a lot or you wouldn't have done this for so long.

When I first moved my mom from Assisted Living to Memory Care, she was FURIOUS with me because she could no longer come and go as she pleased, as she felt she could in AL (that wasn't strictly true, but that was her perception). I confess I felt terrible every time I punched in the code for the locked unit to come and go on visits with her. It was clearly more regimented, more institutionalized, and I really felt like I had put her away. I hated doing it, but I also knew I had to. She had been wandering and had become combative at her AL - too much for them to handle. To make matters worse, her room was much smaller than the one she had at AL (which, admittedly, was huge).

But then, after a couple of weeks, her attitude started changing. She was generally more settled. She still had the dementia misperceptions and some of her narcissistic behaviors, but she seemed happier and more secure.

If you had asked me in the first month if I had done the right thing, I would have responded that I had, but you would have read between the lines that I wasn't so sure about it. Ask me today, eight months later, and I give a resounding yes. No reservations about it at all I strongly believe that reducing the size of her environment gave her peace and security so that we could better focus on slowing down the progression of her memory loss.

As I think about it, I can only imagine how frustrating and perhaps frightening it must be to see doors and sidewalks and thing that go to places beyond what the mind recalls.

I agree with Jean Louise's comments. Sometimes we have to "put out the line" and just get some support. It sounds like you are very much loved and understood by this community.. I hope you will accept it.

No . No. No.
That's the simple one word answer to your question " should I feel guilt?"

Here are a few other things to perhaps help you " feel" better about the difficult decision:
1. Since you say that there are few others to ' help out', wouldn't you feel better knowing that you have had the say in deciding where and how your wife will be cared for, in what facility etc etc; rather than risk something happening to you ( God forbid) first and then she is left at the mercy of all those who have no time for her ( or to help you) now ??
Even though you share your health is good ( yea!), one never knows what simple things could happen that could impact your ability to care for your wife. Not to mention that 24/7 , 365 days a year 'on duty' care in your home with someone advanced in dementia presents a host of safety issues for you both.

Please do confer with her PCP and get referrals as you need to start making the decision that you already are aware needs to be made....

Also seek support for yourself, spiritual, emotional and grief related care from your faith leader of choice or a community chaplain.

Peace

It really shouldn't matter what a bunch of anonymous strangers think of you. Frankly, it shouldn't matter what people who KNOW you think of you.

What matters is what you think of yourself.

If you were to be honest, if your wife were not riddled with dementia and you asked HER this question, what would HER answer be?

I can tell you unequivocally that, were my husband in your position with me being so ill, where because of physical ailments I was shackled into my home, and because of my mental ailments he was shackled to me, to the point where he had to give up everything he loved and everything that made him HIM, the man that I love more than anyone, I would tell him the situation had become untenable in the long term; that it was time he placed me somewhere I was safe and cared for, and went back to being the man I fell in love with, and not a slave to my increasing, never ending needs. I would expect there would be a fair amount of guilt; but I would hope that he would come to realize that it is the best solution to a situation in which there are no GOOD solutions. Sometimes that's all that fate leaves us with, and it's a waste of energy to rail against the way the dice fall.

I hope you can come up with a solution that gives you some measure of comfort and peace.

No, because ultimately you will be doing what is right for both of you. As a caregiver and as her condition worsens and demands more of your strength and emotions, no matter how determined you are to keep her with you a realization begins to dawn on you. If something happens to you—if the stress and anxiety, the sleeping with one eye open, the mood swings— start to take a toll and your own health begins to deteriorate because of it the question becomes, where does she go if *you* sicken and maybe die? My guess is is that unless you have a family willing to make a huge sacrifice it will be into MC. So, it may happen inevitably but the difference is that she will no longer have you to be her support and strength. Putting my husband of 50 years into a very capable and caring facility was extremely difficult and there were times during his adjustment when I questioned the decision but after six months he is settled into a routine and our visits are devoted to me monitoring his care and loving him, When I’m home I miss him terribly but I can take care of me and stay strong and involved for him. No one says this transition is easy. It’s hard but ultimately may very well be the best choice.

Memory Care sounds like an appropriate choice. If you continue to devote yourself to your wife's care, you are likely to resent your situation and your wife. You might feel better about that decision if you accept that there may be some selfishness involved, but you are also responsible for your own health and well-being.

No do not feel guilty. You have done very well taking care of your wife. It is important to think of yourself as well. Caregiving is mentally and physically challenging. If you think she will be happy go for it. You can always visit as often as you want. Everyone’s situation is different.

We all feel guilty at times for the care decisions we have to make for our loved ones. We are often having to choose the least bad of multiple bad options. There are no perfect solutions and the time comes for all of us when we know it’s too much to continue as a full time caregiver and still have a life of our own. Some people continue doing it anyway at great risk to their own physical health and finances, and some accept that in order for both caregiver and loved one to live things have to change. Someone said to me once, “Guilt is an emotion to be reserved for times we intentionally do something wrong or bad to another human being.” Seeking good quality care for your wife does not fall under the guilt umbrella. She may even thrive when she is around other people, and you can come and go as her husband bringing her flowers and treats instead of being her full time home health aid.

You are not selfish. You matter too.