mama_kestrel

Okay, this is take 5 on figuring out how to start this. That's how amorphous and generally scattered my thoughts are.

It's done. Mom is now a permanent resident at the facility she was getting rehab in. I finally framed the choice very simply: I could have her home but unsafe, or safe but not at home. The two did not coincide any longer.

She's been moved to a different, larger room, with a view out over the large park that borders the nursing home property. The social services director promised that she would do her best to get mom a room with a good view, and she did. This is an excellent place, probably the best in the area. They don't take outside Medicaid placements; the only way this could happen is the way that it did, with mom coming in for rehab and reaching a plateau before she regained her previous level of function. She could walk, but only with a spotter in addition to her walker, and she simply can't stand up on her own. It takes two people to get her to her feet, and there's only one of me. Making the house wheelchair accessible would have taken months and a full downstairs remodel. The 1953 doorways and halls simply aren't wide enough.

I talk to her almost every day, and her best friend calls every other day. But that isn't always enough to keep her oriented. She forgot that our son's fiancée lives with us, and has for a couple of years now, though as my beloved husband pointed out, at least she remembers who his fiancée is.

And I'm slowly wrapping my head around it. I don't have to be on high alert all the time. I'm not solely, or even primarily, responsible for her care and well-being any more. I'm still her advocate. The folks at the facility have spoken to me so often they know my voice when I call. On the one hand, I feel like I ought to have tried harder to find a way to make bringing her home work. But on the other hand, it's a relief. My head knows that doesn't make me a bad daughter. My heart is proving more difficult to convince.

Just barely. One more thing, and I may spin fast enough to achieve escape velocity. You have been warned.

Back at the end of November, my mom fell. She didn't break her hip, but she was in enough pain that the EMTs thought she had. I had called emergency services to get her up when we couldn't, and they called an ambulance less than 3 minutes after they arrived. I knew she was in bad shape when she wasn't mortified to be found on the floor in her underwear with her pants in her hand.

So off she went to the hospital, which at that point was in the midst of a Covid overload. They let me stay with her in the ER until they decided to admit her, at which point they kicked me out because no visitors were permitted. But they had the important information, and I had put together a packet of information which included a sheet headed "Patient has dementia. Information provided will be both incomplete and unreliable. For anything other than current pain level, call patient's daughter" - with my name and phone number. And I will give them credit - they did.

They found that her hip was bruised, but not broken, but that she also had an infection and dehydration and that her kidneys were quite unhappy with her. She was there for 10 days altogether, and I'm grateful that she came out without her own case of Covid.

Second week of December she went to rehab, so weak that she couldn't sit up without help. I knew exactly where to send her, having used the same place last time she needed rehab, and fortunately they had an open room when we needed one.

That's where she's been ever since. I haven't seen her since the day she was transferred, when I happened to be dropping off things she would need at the exact same time she arrived. She's doing a whole lot better now; she can walk with a walker, and sit up all day. But she can't get herself up to a standing position by herself, and has basically gotten stuck at that point. So now they're saying she can't safely come home, and that I need to choose a nursing home for her.

Which is complicated beyond belief by Covid. How am I supposed to judge a care facility when I can't set foot in the door? I look at a lot of things - does it smell good? Are people sitting around staring vacantly into space, or are they busy and engaged? Is it full of light, or institutionally drab? Does the staff look friendly, or just harried? Do the rooms themselves have good windows? Mom's an artist; the quickest way to make her give up on living is to deprive her of windows.

So that's where I am. This being the U.S., which is wealthy and totally uncivilized, I have to spend what savings she has to qualify her for Medicaid. So today I arranged her funeral in advance, and tomorrow I go to sign the paperwork for that and write a check. There isn't much else I can do; anything she gives as a gift in excess of her normal patterns we would have to repay, as there is a 5 year look-back to recover transferred assets. I am also appealing the determination that she can't recover enough to come home, and have a friend with appropriate training coming Saturday to tell us how to make the house work for mom, so that maybe I can bring her home after all. And it all has to be done in the next 9 days.

When this is over, I'm going to have a nice breakdown. I worked for it, I earned it, and nobody is going to deprive me of it!

Dementia (excuse me, "cognitive impairment") has reared its head again. There was a smallish package outside our door yesterday. Addressed to my mother, it proved to contain a teeny tiny lilac bush. This is after surprise packages containing tomatoes, a "scent collection" consisting of rosemary, peppermint and lavender (all of which were already in my garden), a box of astilbe bulbs and a hydrangea bush. There were a some things I wanted to plant this year, but there isn't room for them now, nor energy to plant them if I made room.

Mom has no memory of ordering any of it. None. She in fact insists that she did no such thing. We actually had the following conversation.

Me: Mom, they didn't just send them to you spontaneously.

Mom: They must have - I didn't order anything!

Me: Nobody at QVC (from which all of these were ordered) looked at that and said "Oh, Eleanor would love that - I'll send her a present."

Mom: Well why not? I didn't order it, but I do love it. I should call and thank them. Who did it?

Me: (after metaphorical facepalm) Mom, do you want some lemonade?