She is still lives in her condo, still has CNA only 3 mornings/week - refuses any additional paid help, though she has long-term care ins. When I posted last Fall, she had developed a CDiff infection after an in-hospital procedure to drain her hip bursa. After 6 wks in rehab, she insisted on returning to her condo. (I refused to take her home; she persuaded her aide to transport her.)
I was amazed at the time that yet again; she had appeared to be at death's doorstep but pulled through. She has been treated for CHF, stage 3+kidney disease, HBP, autoimmune bleeding disorder, a variety of infections & more for at least 15 years and has been hospitalized more times than I can count with stents in the ICU and multiple blood transfusions. She had serious mobility problems before then, arthritis & broken hip repaired 2 1/2 yrs ago, but was slowly & painfully walking with her rollator before the bursitis episode. Since then, she can only get around by sitting in her rollator and pushing with her feet. She has a wheelchair but won't use it - she can't clear her bedroom doorway with it. She spends most of her time in bed anyway.
Her hip pain has been increasing & she received 2 cortisone shots over the last six weeks - she had to find a new ortho to give them to her; her previous doc refused, saying her risk was too great for infection &/or bone collapse. The shots didn't help, her pain has kept increasing, and yesterday she couldn't move at all and was complaining of abdominal pain along with the hip pain - and looked terrible.
With great difficulty (& the use of a gait belt), her aide & I got her into the car and to the ER. Xray was clear, abdominal CT was clear, bloodwork looked good (at her usual baseline - how?!). She was hooked up to an external catheter since she couldn't move enough to get to the bathroom, even with assistance. She felt a lot better after a dose of Tramadol, and the ER doc said she could be discharged.
So, I'd like to thank you all for teaching me the phrase "Unsafe Discharge". I informed the doc that there was no way she could return home alone to her condo; aide was not scheduled again or available until Mon am, and I am not able to give her the assistance she needs. Doc relented, and admitted my mother for the weekend, with a referral for Mon to go to rehab for PT.
This, of course, is just kicking the can down the road again. My mother has been to rehab 5 times. She does the required PT there, when she goes home, they send PT to her condo & she does it there. When she completes PT, she goes back to spending her days in bed. She wears Depends, but I can't figure out how she's dealing with the bathroom situation when her aide isn't there. She can't dress herself, and there's no way she could put on a new pair of Depends. She informed me in the ER that she wants to get an external catheter for home use.
My mother is a retired RN (used to teach CNAs) and still making her own decisions. As I left last night she said: "I AM NOT GOING TO A NURSING HOME".
Thank you for reading this long post. It helps just to type it out. The only wisdom I have, for those who may be newer to this, is that your LO may very well live a lot, lot longer than you think, so factor that into your life plans.
I really appreciate the constructive advice and support that is offered on this site, but I do find it disappointing how quickly some rush to judgement. Not all of us are emotionally unstable enablers. Sometimes it's hard to know what the morally right thing to do is when assisting a parent, especially when you don't know up front that they may be lingering for years - and years. And when a parent is making their own decisions, a lot of it is out of your hands.
And yes, it's true: the most difficult parents last the longest.
You have a Mom who wants it her way. And she will die having it her way. Nothing you can do about that. Hey, she is 91. She would be miserable in a facility. Just let her have it her way. She is entitled to leave this world on her own terms. And you don't need to be there and watch it.
Glad your not picking her up itbshows that ur willing to take on the responsibity for her care. Anyone picking her up should be made aware of this. But you should make it clear to discharge that there is no daily care at home and you cannot be there for her. That its "unsafe" to discharge her.
I will cross my fingers that the ‘unsafe discharge’ will work out well and that you will be able to place your mom in a facility. 🫰
I told her if she wanted to go back home she needed to arrange for everything herself, I and my sisters were done with propping up her so-called independent living. Of course she was not able to do that and needed to accept the fact that the NH was the best place for her now. At least she is there with my father. Our situation was simply not sustainable anymore.
Not ideal, but better than the 3 mornings/week she's had up until now. She's in that in-between stage where she needs more help than she'd get in assisted living (got to see that with my MIL) and she's not quite at nursing home stage - very frail, but not demented (yet, anyway). And she really, really wants to be at home (and has demonstrated several times that she won't hesitate to use her medical alert button).
Thank you for all of the advice, especially your observation, JoAnn29 that my mom has lived her life on her terms and wants to come to the end of it on her terms, and I should let her. I hadn't really thought of it that way before, but now it's the way I'm approaching this situation. And I've stepped back hugely.
Thanks again, everyone. This forum helps so much.
I'm really pleased that you've stepped back. You and your husband both need you.
You're doing everything right to ensure that nobody thinks that you will be taking care of Mum. So, if she is discharged (unsafely, imo and, I guess, yours) then that's down to whichever healthcare facility and practitioner made the decision.
My one piece of advice would be to speak with the care agency and let them know that you disagree with their aides ferrying your mother home. Unless the company is willing to take responsibility for what happens to your mum during the times that she is home alone, then they should not be enabling her discharge, seeing as she cannot live independently.
If they say that it is a private arrangement between your mother and the individual aide, point out that the only way your mother knows this person is through the care agency.
Also, remind them to be professional about this conversation.
Other than that, you will just have to let your mum make her own mistakes, until that independence is taken away from her. But it won't be by you.
Just be her daughter, not her parent.
You are in the right place even if it is not an entirely comfortable place. Watching anyone decline for any reason is never comfortable, but decline comes to us all unless our lives end quickly.
My mother lived to 106. I had to look after me and if I were to do it again, I would put my needs first more often. You made a good decision to step back. There may come a time when you want to do more. For now be thankful you don't have to.
HOWEVER, as a Phlebotomy Technician and a Phlebotomy Instructor, her blood work might look "good" or "okay" simply because it was not collected properly. There is an astounding amount of people whose job it is to collect blood samples that have the slightest idea of the proper way to do it, as to not cause the results to be off. There are also an astounding number of doctors who see a result that is within "normal range" but don't make connections between the one "high normal" and the other "low normal" that would indicate a problem. Being in the hospital, I would also assume Mom is on IV fluids. This can also skew accurate results by diluting samples. Some Drs and NPs order BMPs, they look okay, so don't order the CMP, which includes a lot MORE tests that would show them a lot more. They aren't hematologists so they aren't even aware of the intricacies in Hematology testing. They rely on the Scientists to note something as "out of range" and don't look deeper at each analyte's relationship to the next. They scratch their heads because patient has signs and symptoms of xyz, but the lab work "looked okay." While they forget that the lab scientists' job is to result and report results, indicate when a result is out of range, or positive or negative, it's not their job to diagnose, or look farther than that.
I couldn't even tell you to ask them to run the blood work again, and make sure they give you a nurse or phlebotomist that knows how to do it completely correctly, because those nurses or phlebotomist are RARE.