Mother with dementia recently broke her hip and won't use walker or cane. Any advice?

You have the carbon copy of my father who, even though he is now in a NH, totally flipped and will not speak to me because we let my son sleep over at his house to prevent any theft. We had the audacity to let my son put a desk for his laptop in the living room. So at age 52 after 25 years of living nearby and catering to him, the last 6 years of intense caregiving and several months of being by his side in hospital, rehab and NH....I am stealing from him and have locked him in prison....I am no longer worthy of any relationship with.

So, is your mother cognizant to live there on her own? I went through several years of filthy clothes, refusing to wash hands or bath, horrible hygiene habits, etc. before this. Did you take any pictures of her house before you cleaned? Can you get her Dr. or local social services involved?

I am sharing this with you because by the time my father got to this same frame of mind, there was no way at all he should be allowed to be left alone at home AND no way at all that any normal human being could tolerate being in his angry presence 24/7. Be strong, this will be hard, but you cannot subject yourself to the abuse.

It's a shame you couldn't get the hospital occupational therapist to come out and do a survey of mom's living quarters to make sure they were safe before discharge. In many places, this is standard practice.

You may have to step back and call APS and report her as a vulnerable adult. Her "reason" is gone and trying to use logic is no longer going to work.

She needs to be in assited living. She'll be mad and yell at you but she's doing that anyway , so what's a little more. This is just going to get worse. You may have to get legal guardianship and get the authorities to condem the house if it's really nasty. No one is going to get her agreement on anything, ever. Do what has to be done for her sake and yours and ignore the yelling.

ilovemax - your mother is not safe in her own home. You need to get APS out there immediately to do a welfare check on her to see the situation. They will be much better able to advise you on what steps to take to ensure your mom's safety and well-being than we are. I'm sure once they see the situation, they will help you take the appropriate steps.

they let her come home without any rehab being set up?

Your mom is a hoarder, and hoarding is a mental illness. When she goes nuts at you, especially if she threatens violence or suicide, see if you can at least voice record or video on your phone. Call 911 and get the EMTs out for a suicide watch at the hospital, 3 day hold, Baker act, what ever they call it in your neck of the woods. She needs to be found incompetent and put in a home.

There is a great source of help for Children of Hoarders on the internet and I am a member. It is a relief to know there are other children of people who put things ahead of their family.

For her own safety, and probably others (if she has neighbors) you are going to have to get her declared incompetent. None of this is your fault. She should have never been allowed to go home.

Doesn't Medicare, if requested when patient is in hospital, pay for 90 days, or Hospice? My mom fell and I asked to take with social worker at hospital, they gave me options. Now, do you have POA for Health with your Mom?

shouldn't have even had to ask - should have been standard procedure

Check with the hospital's social worker, her medical doctor, her psychiatrist (she's going to need one) and after that consider calling Adult Protective Services. This sounds like a completely unacceptable situation and her abuse of you indicates to me you may want a professional nurse case manager to help you to with knowledge and resources. If she has an attorney or pastor, call them for help, too. Good luck. You have a difficult situation on your hands there.

People who have not been declared by a court to be incompetent are allowed to make their own decisions, even very bad and self-destructive decisions.

So I understand why some posters are encouraging you to have her declared incompetent. How feasible does that seem? Are her doctors prepared to declare her incompetent? Are there other examples of her being a danger to herself or other, besides the hoarding? Is the dementia diagnosis been made by a medical professional? Can you afford the legal proceedings that would make you her guardian? I'd start exploring this topic with her doctors and the social worker at the hospital.

If that route is not going to work for you, and she continues to be allowed to make her own decisions, for your own sanity you may have to detach from the situation. Notify APS of the situation. If possible, get your mom a medical alert system, so she can at least call someone if she falls.

There may not be anything more you can do until there is an emergency. Sad, but that often applies to people who need more help than they are ready to accept.

A month is a long time to spend in a hospital for a a broken hip. Was it replaced? Did this hospital have "swing beds" -- that is was your mother classified as a "transition care" patient and getting some rehab?

Guardian/Conservatorship is not a magic bullet that solves these kinds of problems and I say go carefully into this. I say this because I was in court last week to get custody of my mother. It's **extremely** expensive. We have almost $2500 in right now and there is another attorney bill coming plus miscellaneous document fees that are going to rack up. The annual bond fee will be nearly $400 as long as she has funds & assets, which was about as low as the judge could make it. There will be upcoming court costs to petition for permission to sell some land, annual reporting on my part into a state court system, and generally a truck load of hassle.

I would take this woman to a neurologist visit to understand if there is cognitive decline and a geriatric psychiatrist to weigh in on any underlying OCD that has caused the hoarding. There may be medication to help tone it down. Mental disorders do not get better with dementia, and can accelerate certain dementia behaviors (like paranoia and combativeness). I say this because my mother is a hoarder with bi-polar & OCD long before her dementia set in.

A social worker is going to be a huge help in creating a plan for her care.

I got by with a durable power of attorney for everything except working with Wells Fargo. This includes setting up her move, getting her into a care facility, working with insurance, tax people, everything but the bank. We are spending thousands of dollars to get access to retirement funds that need to go to mom's memory care expenses and to sell a property in another state where I don't have POA. I hope it comes out as a wash instead of in the red, but mom wouldn't setup her accounts in a way that anybody (namely me) could have stepped in to help her when the time came. Wells Fargo just has notoriously horrible customer service in this area, even though my POA is a legal notarized document.

Jeanne, glad you mentioned the "swing beds" in the hospital; I'd forgotten about those; they'd talked about those for my mother as well; I actually think I'd thought we were going to do that for my mom when she did have, yes, it actually replaced, but they were concerned she might be too frail for even that, that she might be better off if I came to just let her go on home and just have a less intense rehab at home, which is what we ended up doing, why surprised at her being allowed to come home without but I was a little confused about her month stay myself but that might explain it and explain then the coming home without rehab; I'm not really getting that she's still having problems from her hip surgery or that there are any other problems than the hoarding and the problems she's having with what daughter's doing - mine tended that way and didn't much care for what I did, but since she came on home, most of what I did was done with her knowledge while she was there, so I think that could be the issue - a month in the hospital can be a long time to not know what's going on at home and I would think if she was actually incompetent to the point of being declared such the hospital would have had something to say about that in that length of time and there were issues with my mom in the short time she was in the hospital and they didn't say anything about doing that, while they did with my dad later when he was in there and mom was already on Aricept and dad wasn't; they even had dad's doctor to diagnose and say he needed a guardian but nothing like that with mom when she was in there, bringing in a social worker with dad but again not with mom. I say all this to say that I think if you had a case the hospital would have already been on it.
My dad had gotten a medical alert system when mom had passed away but he had not used it when he wound up in the hospital but he was found by somebody he had living there, so I'm saying even though he had that they hospital still got that involved so if they thought she was that bad I believe they would so if not, agree with jean, you may just have to leave, with first, hopefully, being able to put some of those things in place - between the time mom first passed and dad got the medical alert and his hospital stay where they did get all this involved he did have an incident of his own where he fell and was found to have fractured his neck and put in a neck brace, where after a time of being in it but not yet time to be out of it, he'd had enough of me and told me to get out so after making some notifications; didn't have to quite go to the point of APS; don't remember if she has other family around; thankfully, we did; or anybody else you could let know that you're leaving - but anyway I left and left him with it and everything was as fine as could be - for a while, till the next emergency. He wasn't ready then but the next one he was.

You did not "make a mistake" by trying to help your mom. She is in trouble. She needs help but does not want to admit it, which is understandable, but further evaluation and intervention is going to be needed. She needs a medical re-evaluation not only for dementia and capacity assessment, but to see if anything else is going on either pain or an infection that is making her even more unreasonable. You apology gave her total power over the situation which she should not have. If you had to live there, you had to make it livable.

A huge key to this is that it was not like this when you were growing up and when your mom was more able.