Mini strokes and UTI's when on comfort care. Input?

I feel your pain. My boyfriends mom has Alzheimers (for 7 years now). She lives with us, in the house that her and her husband built 17 years ago...this is her home. She had fallen a couple of years back and broke her hip, it was repaired but she has never walked correctly since, without assistance from 2 people. She was not steady on her feet. She doesn't really "talk" to you....she says words and numbers and letters but only occasionally you can make out what she is saying. It's the saddest thing to watch but she was doing alright. A little over a week ago, all of a sudden, she started breathing funny and spiked a temperature, really high. She has a DNR but we were not on Hospice or anything so her son called the ambulance and she went to the ER. Eventually, they found she had a UTI (she has been prone to them but the symptoms weren't there this time for us to catch it before it got bad), but it took 2 days to find it. In the meantime, she was admitted to the hospital and she was on antibiotics, fluids and oxygen and she started doing much better. It was a very grave situation for a while though. We brought her home a week ago, with two different antibiotics, which are now gone, but she still has not completely recovered. She is not walking at all anymore, no matter how much we try, so we are not going to try to walk her anymore because we would rather she spend her energy on eating. She doesn't swallow very good now and eats only tiny amounts of food and when we give her something to eat, she chews it forever and only swallows when we try to get her something to drink.....which is not easy most of the time. She is now on Hospice and I can feel that the end is coming soon, although we will continue to do everything we can to make sure she is comfortable.

I wish you all the luck in the world and pray for peace for you and your mom and family. It is a very sad situation, one that I hope that my kids don't have to go through when I get older....I would like to go very quickly, in my sleep so that the kids don't have to see me in such a frail state.

God Bless you and your mom!!!

2lslana first posting this and not receiving responses must be frustrating! It happened to me before as well, and here we are 10 days after your original post, and to be going through something so difficult! I do not know how AC works with new threads and calling attention to them. When we all find one of these I suppose if we flag it as inappropriate it may receive more attention.

How is your mom doing now? Urinary tract infections can have significant impact on older people, particularly those with dementia. My mom was admitted to the hospital with stroke symptoms about a month ago, but it wasnt. The best guess is that it was a UTI causing the symptoms.

What a hard thing to be going through, I cannot imagine.

Just got back from visiting my mom and she is not eating only chicken noodle soup and a small amount of it. She answers questions when asked does not try to start a conversation. She has not been out of the bed now for 2 days too weak. I believe that we are coming to the end of this journey. I remember when she first went into the nursing home she was so angry and just didn't feel she belonged there. Now she thinks of it as home. The staff is her extended family. She is quite attached to some of them. I like that I know when I leave her she feels safe and content. I do know that if she is not out of the bed by the beginning of the work week she will not be able to get out..... her muscles will be shot ;)