[wheeliebear75]

Well I'm not 100% sure as to where to start so hopefully everyone can just make some sense of it all. A few years my grandmother had a stroke........she has had balance issues ever since & a bit forgetful but aside from that she came out otherwise unaffected. At Thanksgiving (in the U.S. it's in late November) she was talking about how excited she was about the upcoming Christmas Holidays. She wanted to go shopping & do some decorating & help do Christmas goodies with the grand-kids now more like great-grand-kids. When my Aunt went to go pick her up a few days after having talked to her on the phone & confirmed that they would go out Christmas shopping my grandmother was VERY confused! She just kept dusting (my aunt could see from out the window) rather than getting her coat & purse. So my aunt went in (had to let herself in with HER key) & then my grandma asked why she was even there. OK so immediately everyone including her Dr. thought another stroke, so she was taken to the hospital to see what was going on. MRI shows no new damage to the brain, lab work shows no sign of anything wrong there, & it wasn't anything to do with a medication being wrong/incorrect. So now somehow she went from being forgetful but "there" to not knowing who ANY OF US ARE, she turned her dinner plate upside down over her food like a 2yr old would, when she is given the phone she forgets that you have to keep the receiver to your ear, my aunt had found that the poor cat had been fed coffee grounds instead of cat food. Needless to say she is now unable to live on her own & is in a nursing home. But although I "get it" that she is not "there anymore" it still feels kinda unfair. I mean I've heard from my aunts how Mom was willing to call up her professor & say "my daughter was in an accident I'm sorry but I have to drop out.........is there any way I can get a incomplete vs. an F?" & drop out of the Masters program she was in but yet for grandma we're just having someone babysit her. And Mom has tried talking & explaining that my accident & what was going on with my brain was different than what is going on with her.........especially since she doesn't even recognize her own daughters......but yet I just can't help feeling like somehow I got treated better than she is. I don't think my mom would have just left me at some "home". Yes I could at least still recognize family & close friends.........but......still.........

[guido]

Hi WB

Yes - parts of life suck, but you already know all this. Don't feel guilty about whether you were treated better or worse - though this does highlight your generosity as a human. Mother-Daughter and Daughter-Mother relationships are very different and time of life make a huge difference. In an ideal world we'd all deal with everything equally, but it's not an ideal world and practicalities / realities get in the way.

My Great Aunt is the most wonderful woman who has always done everything for everyone else. She's 94 and lives by herself in a 4th floor flat. I can't get up there, and the most I got to see her was when she fractured her hip and had months in hospital.. then I could see her twice a week. Now it's back to phone calls and letters - even though I drive past her door twice a week.

i saw a really interesting documentary on Alzheimer's a while back. It was a businessman, who's father had died with it, and he realised that we did care badly in the UK. So he wanted to discover the difference (if it existed) between good and bad care. And the results were astonishing. He found one home where the residents were completely involved in the daily tasks - like cooking and washing and cleaning - of their own home, rather than sat in chairs staring at the walls all day and being ignored. At meal times, the staff ate with the residents like a normal household lunch. And the relationship between staff and residents was much closer. These residents were MUCH happier and seemed to stay mentally in the here and now more than in the bad homes. And they had all their own things around them: photos, books, bedding, clothes, etc.. But the fascinating thing was (remember it was a businessman that was investigating) was that it did not cost any more to run a home the good way, in fact a happy home meant a full home which meant more business, so it was a win-win for everyone. It was all about attitude and approach, tackling the same problem in different ways.

I'm not sure what I'm trying to say. I have no experience of what you or your mother or grandmother are going through. I just think that when life doesn't seem quite fair, we have to work out what we can do to make it a little better, and sometimes, when we accept a situation, we can work much better at doing what we can and that normalcy will have a surprising way of bringing about change and peace.

[allis53ca]

yes, they treated you diff...you were injured and had recovery to work on...shes not injured per se, and theres no recovery to work on....make sense ?

[edlee]

Sorry Guido,,, but I don't buy it. It's a wonderful thought that the "good" places and the "bad" places could cost the same,,,, but it just isn't so.

Put three old people in chairs in front of the tube,, and it takes one person to watch them,,, and a relatively lazy one at that. On the other hand, get the three of them up, moving about in different parts of the room,, and you better have three fairly strong, attentive, and ,hopefully, caring people, moving with them.

If you can't see that the latter three will cost you more than the former one,,,, well,, I'm afraid your business won't last long.

My father went from being 84, and living alone, taking care of himself,, to being 85, in a home,, not knowing who we were,, unable to see,, and resenting the whole idea. He was still physically strong,,, but completely out of touch,,, and hostile. As much as we all loved him,, there was simply no way any of us were going to be able to give him the supervision and constant care he HAD to have.

Did we feel guilty,,, hell yes,,,, was there anything we could do about it,,,, no. And we visited often,,,, not because he knew us,,, but to be sure of the care he was getting. No matter how much you pay,,,, you have to keep watching.

He lasted about a year,,, and, in truth,, it was a blessing to him and us when he died,,,, My mother in law refused to get out of bed for almost four years,,, praying to die,,, asking my wife to HELP her die. The difference between the two was stark,, but one thing was the same,,,, the care that they both needed was beyond what we were able to give them,,, and they weren't going to get "better".

So,, to sum up MY feelings on the matter,,,,, DON"T YOU DARE lay any more quilt on your mother,,,, trust me when I tell you that she's living with it already. As for you feeling guilty,,, well ,,, save it for when you have to do the same for her.
ed

[guido]

edlee, on Feb 20 2010, 07:08 PM, said:

Sorry Guido,,, but I don't buy it. It's a wonderful thought that the "good" places and the "bad" places could cost the same,,,, but it just isn't so.

Put three old people in chairs in front of the tube,, and it takes one person to watch them,,, and a relatively lazy one at that. On the other hand, get the three of them up, moving about in different parts of the room,, and you better have three fairly strong, attentive, and ,hopefully, caring people, moving with them.

If you can't see that the latter three will cost you more than the former one,,,, well,, I'm afraid your business won't last long.

Hi - Don't apologise to me: I'm not Sir Gerry Robinson, millionaire business man (=successful at something) running this 2 part series looking into Dementia Care Homes.

Your assessment was part of the problem currently faced in homes, and managements dogmatic "we've always done it like this... we're doing the best we can" strategies were causing abuse, low staff morale, home closures or worse, poor homes staying open. However, while your one person is watching the bored residents, another is changing beds, another is doing some washing and another is cooking, etc... What the good care home (with the happy residents) was doing was getting everyone involved in their own home. So all those other members of staff had residents with them, busy with activities.

There was a fascinating form of assessing the home where a chap came in and sat in the room and marked down everything that was going on, in a clever time line format. This was then used to show what was going on and then provide the evidence to fix problems, along with training and a wholescale change of approach.

I don't know about this subject, except what was shown on TV - the difference between good and bad care - but the good places didn't have any more staff. Yet they were much more successful businesses. But the staff there were trained and led differently - and all loved their jobs because of the way they could do their jobs. There is a bit in this link about the money issue.

Sometimes doing the same thing the same old way isn't actually the way forward.

It's a shame I can't link to a viewable programme because it was eye opening, and would challenge your view head on.

[wheeliebear75]

We're on our way to go to dinner so I'll write more when we get back.

Parkinson , Alzheimer, & dementia were all ruled out due to the quick on-set.

There were several places looked at for her to go.......& even one wrong answer by them or anything they didn't like then they immediately said good-bye & left......like the place that said "you mean we have to bathe her?!?!?". And yes the fact that although initially I needed round the clock supervision I was making progress. Mom also said the biggest difference being that I still knew who everyone was......I was still "there". I just still feel guilty.