I did it for both of my parents -- mostly by myself. It can be done. Both of them had dementia with a host of other problems. My father was diabetic and lost part of a leg. I dealt with this and more. Yes, it was hard, but I don't regret a minute of it, as they got to spend their last days at home where they wanted to be.
Impressive. Hats off to you and yours. My family also is on the side of letting them die at home rather than nursing homes, but dementia/alzheimers is the deal breaker. That is when they get moved into good professional facilities. So hard to care for them when they have alzheimers. If we ever find out alzheimers is something our govt was behind? Off with their heads.
Well, let me tell you something. My mother-in-law, who was of sound mind, was the first to go into a nursing home when she became wheelchair-bound. Her family made this decision. It was actually just as much work for the family as if she'd been at home. If she had to go to the hospital, we had to pay a fee everyday to hold her room. Since it was expensive to do this, we had to go with a truck and clear out her room of all her belongings, then lug it all back when she got out of the hospital. We had to do this a number of times. Since having them do her laundry was another added expense (where most of the time other residents ended up wearing her clothes, as a result) the family had to start doing her laundry. They charged an arm and a leg for Depends, so we ended up buying them ourselves at Sam's Club. We made countless trips back and forth doing this for a couple of years. They chose a nursing home that was central to most of the family, but it wasn't necessarily the closest to anyone.
Really, in the long haul, it would have been easier in many respects to have kept her at home.
exactly....you are not going to get one on one care...you are going to get whatever the staff can get to......keeping them home would be better with one caveat....many elderly can be very stubborn and prideful and demanding.....oh yes, elderly can be very difficult to handle....
What if you don't have a home? What if they didn't have a home?
Say you have a small one room apartment. What do you do?
Not only is that extremely ruinous to any further progress, both financially and socially, it is extremely stressful.
This isn't exactly some fringe situation either. Housing prices are getting ridiculous, with Blackrock further jacking the prices up. Taxes are insane. So on.
You are lucky that the state didn't intervene and force you to put them in a home "for their own good." It happens, and in California, spousal separation is mandatory when one has dementia and the other doesn't. I believe the mandatory spousal separation is cruel.
Visiting nurses came in frequently to check on my parents. They were a godsend. They helped me get whatever I needed to take care of them, along with monitoring their health. They always told me I was doing a good job, so I had no fears of the state intervening. In fact, it never even crossed my mind that they would try.
It is hard emotionally and physically caring for dementia and Alzheimer’s family members. You will have no regrets, knowing you did everything to make their last days comfortable.
When it first started, yes. When it became necessary to do full-time care, no. My spouse and I both worked for many years and were careful with our money, which allowed me to give my parents the care they required. (I have no siblings.)
My grandfather was an ex POW. got pulled over and detained by cops 6 hrs away while driving and would not give them anything but name rank and serial #. It went downhill from there.
We tried nurse visits, etc but he ended up in a high security dementia facility after he made a dummy from his clothes and tried to escape the regular nursing home after lights out.
I wish we could have done more for him but there was zero cooperation on his part and little recognition that he viewed us as any different from the Nazi camp guards.
My father-in-law thought he was the President, and all workers in the facility were his cabinet. He couldn't understand why they weren't responding to his call to "scramble the warships"!
State police were cool tho. They called my dad at like 1 or 2 in the AM. "Are you related to this man?" "Yes." Explained situation and kept him there til dad got there. He was just sitting on a chair, hunched over like a little kid.
He looked at dad and said "oh, you're with the fuckers now?" Dad said it was the first time he ever heard him swear.
The cop in charge understood, he was going thru same thing with his dad. So there are good ones out there. He had even lost his wallet and damaged his car on this trip but no citations or anything were issued. All in all a very human bunch at that station that day/night.
Could also have been all the exposure to aluminum etc during the war. We have his POW cup, where they would give him his spoonful of watery soup. It was an old tin can, and he had attached barbed wire to it as a handle. At some point he gave away the spoon, which was worn flat from trying to get every last drop. I have often wondered being as old as it is and from German origin if it's not soldered with lead, as the joints are very visible unlike modern tins. Had started life as one of their fake milk tins or "klim cans" as the POW slang went
The Cabal doesn't allow for families that take care of seniors to have enough money to do it oftentimes. I'm not sure how much they compensate a relative caregiver but its a small amount.
Often people resort to trying to find an affordable live-in caregiver. The trouble with that is affordable and fair to the live in doesn't work.
He hosed the non family live in or visiting situation by constantly thinking they were stealing. When they finally took his driver's license, which was an act of God bc he even had the Dr fooled, we found notes on his phone book where he had tried renting cars.
He had destroyed his with enough reportable accidents that insurance would no longer cover as well as some unreported accidents I'd rather not speculate on.
He would come home from a drive with trim missing, once with the webbing of a lawn chair stuck in the front rim. No idea what happened and I'd rather not know. He's been gone 16 years now.
My mom, God bless her, is very healthy. I took over her medical care years ago and now that she is in her eighties, it is paying off in spades. No vaxxines, a clean diet, and the only Rx she takes is for her thyroid. I have her on some good supplements as well. She is as sharp as a tack and has the energy of someone half her age. I pray I am that lucky when I finally get there. She doesn't look her age either. Currently she is taking care of her sister that is almost ninety and still at home. If it was not for my mom being there, her own kids and grandkids would have killed her with the Covid jab. My aunt was made to watch all the videos I sent my mom - many of which had been posted on this forum. Those videos convinced my aunt she was not going to allow anyone to jab her. Thanks pedes. You all helped save a life.
I worked in a nursing home for 9 months and couldn’t take it any longer. It was “deficiency free,” but in the first week I saw at least 3 blatant violations. I am sure the DON was sorry she hired me! I reported the following to her and she asked if I was gunning for her job: within the first two days I observed chunky potato salad given to people on a puréed diet, kitchen staff placing food on dishes with their bare hands. The next was a personal infection control violation: dirty linen was placed in covered trash cans, with contaminated gloved hands it was wheeled to laundry and clean linen placed on top of the same lidded trash can. Employees returned in same gloved hands. Patients might wait 2-3 hours before cleaning and changing out of soiled diapers-this was a staffing issue because 1 aide cared for 25-33 residents. I also saw a nurse who always seemed to quickly pass her medications, while I was always lagging behind. When I asked others how I could improve my speed, they told me they suspected that one nurse only passed medications to those residents who were alert and oriented! Appalling! Even worse, no one reported her to the best of my knowledge.
It is easy for people to be judgmental when looking on the outside. In my own case, we had no choice but to put my dad in an assisted living. He was cognitively ok, but thanks to severe arthritis and rotator cuff injuries and a hand disorder that rendered his hands useless, he was, physically-speaking, a 200-lb four month old baby. I physically wasn't strong enough to get him in and out of bed, etc. And to make matters worse, he was difficult and uncooperative. For example, he was incontinent and would refuse to wear diapers and pee all over my furniture. My dad was also a drama queen and enjoyed starring the pot and creating problems. After I had enough, my sister tried, and she couldn't manage him, either. The assisted living facility we put him in was great in terms of most of the staff being loving and caring, but the bureaucracy of those places (much of the bureaucracy is mandated by the state) is a nightmare.
I've been in this for the better part of ten years now. Dad passed four years ago at 90 with Alzheimer's. Still taking care of mom...and the poop thing? 😳.....yesterday she got my shirt, arm, bare foot(yeah I wore sandals)....but hey, we laugh about it. Well, she did anyway 😒. So how is everyone else doing?
There are many examples where a family member genuinely cannot safely take care of their family members. I say this as someone who works in nursing. I often work with dementia residents and they do become a danger to themselves and need constant 1 on 1 care.
Where you are right is that the nursing industry itself is entirely backwards. The industry does not look at the residents as people but rather as a number. Facilities constantly prioritize having a head in a bed rather than judging on whether or not they can be cared for by the staff in the building. Residents do constantly get ignored and staff consistently get away with doing nothing in nothing because the industry prioritizes having a number of staff rather than quality of staff. The amount of training and requirements to take care of family is far from professional. The work itself is not hard but when the bar gets set so low you’re getting so abysmal people. I have so many stories of horrible staff members and many examples of blatant sexism against me due to me being a male in the industry.
All in all the facilities especially the smaller ones do care about your elderly but it’s the way corporate dictates how you take care of these people is what really degraded these residents.
During lockdowns i got so many write ups for actually trying to treat residents with dignity and respect.
I frequently say that one of the silver linings with Covid is that we can no longer turn a blind eye to cracks in society. Health care in general is a giant crack, and another is elderly care. My dad was in a great facility in terms of loving staff (well, before Covid; after covid the staff was less consistent). If the staff could have run things the way they saw fit, it would have been an excellent place. But they were hamstrung by nightmarish state bureaucracies and corporate ownership guidelines that simply don't work well. Both health care and elderly care are issues we have to tackle as a society. There are better ways and we have to demand the better ways are implemented.
Yes. I don’t believe corporate is 100% at fault. It’s the nursing staff too. So many nurses get such a sense of superiority and like they know better than anyone and everyone and in reality they usually don’t. So many of my coworkers over the years have been some of the dumbest people I’ve met and I don’t understand how that’s even remotely acceptable to be taking care of our parents and grandparents.
I’ve been at many facilities in multiple states and it’s unfortunately the same in every single one.
Even during my first days of schooling for nursing the instructors would flat out tell you that none of this makes sense and you will not be doing any of what we tell you. I remember me and the one other man in the class just looked at each other and that look spoke a thousand words.
Don’t get me started on the whole covid fiasco with nursing. I’ve so far managed to avoid the vaccine but man they’re still consistently pushing.
On a semi unrelated note i actually had a resident who i would go spend time talking to who they all treated like he was insane but the man was right on the money with a lot especially pertaining to covid. He was the only resident who outright refused the jab and they ended up kicking him out and would have rather had him homeless. He was actually a frequenter of this site along with another lady who unfortunately did have early stages of dementia so anytime she would try and talk about anything pertaining to the industry or Q related she would be brushed off.
All in all the nursing industry does not care about your family. They do not care about their needs. They use their faux empathy and make it “look” good but in reality they just care about keeping a head in a bed and racking up as much money as possible and would be damned if they let any negative image prevent them from doing so. It’s so sad.
In college, I was a nursing major specializing in geriatric care because old people are fun - no bullshit with them. Working in a nursing home, I realized, at least at this home, that people were in the facility because they needed the extra care. Their families visited and the staff was very nice. Most of the the patients had some sort of dementia or Alzheimer's with a comorbidity. They needed meds besides basic care. I won't judge anyone who feels that their family member needs a nursing home. Caring for these patients is like caring for an infant only these "infants" can hit, bite, get angry and lash out. Loved the work though.
Yes, but the risk of poor quality care and abuse is very high. I think subsidizing senior care within the family, where able, is a good option when possible. The amount of financial aid to be a caregiver is abysmal.
I remember when my dad's parents had to live in nursing homes and assisted living for a long time because none of their 7 children could or would take care of them. (In my family's case we simply had no room and we were strapped for cash because my siblings and I were all still in school, otherwise I think my dad DID want to care for them). My grandparents had saved up a lot of money during their lives, probably over $1 million, and it was ALL spent on assisted living in less than 8 years. It really is a scam.
Im in no way trying to say they should be charging 550 a month.
My wife had 15 patients at night, while 1st and 2nd had 10, that's when fully staffed. A lot of the medical care is billed as additional charges to medi-xxxx.
I have experience with this, and if there's one piece of advice from what I learned that has incomparable value it is this...
For elderly people, a UTI (very common for people soaking in piss for hours at a time) can present with symptoms very similar to dementia and bipolar disorder. Once someone in a home presents anything that can be misconstrued and diagnosed as psychotic or even be seen as just "bad behavior" they'll be put on seroquel and adovan, and will never be taken off until they die.
Cranberry pills stops UTIs fast and prevents recurrence.
It's basically the same treatment done to active children, drugs.
I admire the Spartans, and their striving for a beautiful death, in battle, doing their best for their mates and homeland, and not withering away as a burden.
This makes me think about how I live my life. I am frugal, live below my means, save and invest. My neighbor blows every dollar, lives for the moment, pulls equity from his home, taking loans for new cars, boats, snowmobiles, etc. He will have nothing in retirement.
After my mom had a stroke, she needed to be in a nursing home. They took every cent she had saved a lifetime for, then the government stole her car, house, personal items through estate sale.
Who is the smart one? The person that lives a moral life taking self responsibility or the person throwing caution to the wind that knows they will receive the same care and not have to pay for it.
I never made big money working, but retired from FT work at 55, worked 2 out of the next 4 PT, and moved abroad living on savings for 3 years. Came back to US and started my age 62 SS, went back to work at 63, and at SS income cap by mid-July... and will stop working until next year.
I built a house in my wife's country, so I have provided help for her old age. I have spent most of my savings during all of this time. My needs are simple and I have no one to leave money to. My wife is 11 years younger, works, and spends her money like water... the house is enough.
Your neighbor is not smart just worldly. Sad about your mom and how they drained her dry. People need to enjoy life a little or get those assets into the hands of their descendants early on. Few do so.
I have 1 year of my costs of living in liquid assets, which with my SS would last two years. Keep my FICO scores high, so CC as a backup. I'm no longer trying to increase savings but will work and spend that money to enjoy up until the earnings cap each year.
I'd rather not give the medical world my money fast or slow.
My wife was a CNA for 5 years 15 patients normally, if short, 20. Of her 15, 9 were in diapers, and 3 needed a machine to lift the patient up. Dayshift and second shift 1 CNA to 10 when at full staff.
If only nursing homes were vibrant, loving places without FWA rampant. If they were lovely places with open visiting hours and provided our golden populations with the best care and food. Wouldn’t that be cool? Until that day comes, perhaps it be better the elder stay with their kids. No way I would put my mom in a home.
Many people would choose to live among family and possibly die sooner than live warehoused and alone because the medical community can keep the body alive regardless of many physical and mental issues, its business after all...
Your clothes get divvied out to other patients, and your photos and momentous go in the dumpster if no one comes to claim them.
Unless you were a 100+ lb baby when your parents changed your diapers, I think it's not an equal equation.
But it's nice to see the devotion you have to family.
There seems to be a lot of judgment here, especially for people who are going the nursing home route. I think a bit of empathy is called for, along with the reminder that every situation is not the same. And if you haven't lived the lives of those you're judging, you can't really know the situation. It's wonderful that so many people have the ability and desire to take care of their parents themselves, though.
I would bring my parents to live with me and pay for home health & respite care. They didn’t send me away when I was difficult to care for as a baby and child, or kick me out when I was a mouthy teenager. Who am I to do that to them?
We are grateful that my deceased father in law had the foresight to plan well for my mother in law. He left the resources for her to be able to live independently in her own home. I am an RN, and I hired an LVN and two CNA to provide supportive care as her dementia diagnosis progresses. I assumed care of her after another family member was more focused on her resources and doing a poor job actually looking after her. I know that's a common story, and it's sad. My mother in law has no idea that she has a staff of 5 looking after her. She thinks some of my friends stop by every day to see her. That's exactly what I wanted.
They don't LET you take care of your parents. My mom had a stroke at the beginning of corona when the lockdown was ordered. They took her by ambulance to the hospital and eventually discharged her after trying to convince us that she should be DNR but we opted for feeding tube. Eventually she was allowed to have it removed. She will be 92 this year but she's in a nursing home. They get her up at the crack of dawn and have a schedule of daily events with NO NAPS. When she was here all we did was watch squirrels and sing hymns and nap whenever she wanted. But I couldn't lift her or keep her from having constant accidents. Plus, after the stroke she required so. many. drugs. Before the stroke she took ZERO Rx.
people should never complain about nursing homes UNLESS they are willing they themselves to keep their elderly in their own homes which is a 24/7 job of unending tasks......its extremely difficult.....there is no rest....its not like a cuddly little baby that you can clean up in a minute or less ...and the fact faces you ever day that it will never get better, only worse, until they die.
A lot of nursey homes are into satanism. We had a house next door to us when I was a teenager and weird shit happened there. The elderly tried to escape all the time.. So sad. I was too young to understand what was going on and my mom oblivious.. They rented rooms out and unsuspecting families trusted this.. so sad.. one night at 3am my sister heard weird chanting and looked over the brick wall fence and saw the satanic ritual with the candles and pentegram thing... she was freaked out... our dogs even freaked out... Everyone needs to really inspect what is going on with their elderly.
The trouble with nursing homes besides sucking up huge amounts of money, is the murder, manslaughter, and abuse going on.
My wife worked in a Nursing Home with 3 out of 4 star rating. Previously they had changed the name because of a staff member getting a non-senior patent pregnant
Dr's who visit nursing homes tend to be the least successful doctors, similar to having a public defender. They work for a temp agency type situation.
A patient went out on a day cruise and returned to the nursing home not feeling well afterward. Vital signs were terrible, but the nurse called the lady DR. He said to check them again in the morning. Lady dies, 911 should have been called and both the Nurse and DR are guilty of neglagence.
That is why I wonder when all those patients became sick in the nursing homes, why didn’t they call 911 and send to a hospital (not that hospitals would have taken measures to help them survive, because there are good and not so good hospitals. There are hospitals out for money too.
In your case the nurse and nursing home should be sued. Proving the doctor said that is another story, unless the nurse documented a telephone order verbatim, and then it is still iffy.
I was in it for 12 years. Got quite the education in the process. It was to the point that I knew how to do things a lot of doctors and nurses didn't -- like how to put on and use a wound vac.
Yeah, the poop thing....been there, done that! Baby wipes are your fren. Keep the faith, fren!
In the Philippines seniors typically live with family, and die in a family setting. I'm sure that's true in many countries.
Putting your elderly in Nursing Homes is Satanic.
It's all well and good to say that, but until you have experienced three grandparents with dementia it is a much easier said than done proposition
I did it for both of my parents -- mostly by myself. It can be done. Both of them had dementia with a host of other problems. My father was diabetic and lost part of a leg. I dealt with this and more. Yes, it was hard, but I don't regret a minute of it, as they got to spend their last days at home where they wanted to be.
Impressive. Hats off to you and yours. My family also is on the side of letting them die at home rather than nursing homes, but dementia/alzheimers is the deal breaker. That is when they get moved into good professional facilities. So hard to care for them when they have alzheimers. If we ever find out alzheimers is something our govt was behind? Off with their heads.
Well, let me tell you something. My mother-in-law, who was of sound mind, was the first to go into a nursing home when she became wheelchair-bound. Her family made this decision. It was actually just as much work for the family as if she'd been at home. If she had to go to the hospital, we had to pay a fee everyday to hold her room. Since it was expensive to do this, we had to go with a truck and clear out her room of all her belongings, then lug it all back when she got out of the hospital. We had to do this a number of times. Since having them do her laundry was another added expense (where most of the time other residents ended up wearing her clothes, as a result) the family had to start doing her laundry. They charged an arm and a leg for Depends, so we ended up buying them ourselves at Sam's Club. We made countless trips back and forth doing this for a couple of years. They chose a nursing home that was central to most of the family, but it wasn't necessarily the closest to anyone.
Really, in the long haul, it would have been easier in many respects to have kept her at home.
exactly....you are not going to get one on one care...you are going to get whatever the staff can get to......keeping them home would be better with one caveat....many elderly can be very stubborn and prideful and demanding.....oh yes, elderly can be very difficult to handle....
What if you don't have a home? What if they didn't have a home?
Say you have a small one room apartment. What do you do?
Not only is that extremely ruinous to any further progress, both financially and socially, it is extremely stressful.
This isn't exactly some fringe situation either. Housing prices are getting ridiculous, with Blackrock further jacking the prices up. Taxes are insane. So on.
You are lucky that the state didn't intervene and force you to put them in a home "for their own good." It happens, and in California, spousal separation is mandatory when one has dementia and the other doesn't. I believe the mandatory spousal separation is cruel.
Visiting nurses came in frequently to check on my parents. They were a godsend. They helped me get whatever I needed to take care of them, along with monitoring their health. They always told me I was doing a good job, so I had no fears of the state intervening. In fact, it never even crossed my mind that they would try.
It is hard emotionally and physically caring for dementia and Alzheimer’s family members. You will have no regrets, knowing you did everything to make their last days comfortable.
Did you also have a full-time job that required you to be away from home?
When it first started, yes. When it became necessary to do full-time care, no. My spouse and I both worked for many years and were careful with our money, which allowed me to give my parents the care they required. (I have no siblings.)
My grandfather was an ex POW. got pulled over and detained by cops 6 hrs away while driving and would not give them anything but name rank and serial #. It went downhill from there.
We tried nurse visits, etc but he ended up in a high security dementia facility after he made a dummy from his clothes and tried to escape the regular nursing home after lights out.
I wish we could have done more for him but there was zero cooperation on his part and little recognition that he viewed us as any different from the Nazi camp guards.
Love the spirit of your grandfather.
My father-in-law thought he was the President, and all workers in the facility were his cabinet. He couldn't understand why they weren't responding to his call to "scramble the warships"!
Biden thinks he's the president too. Sometimes. Sometimes he thinks he's Corn Pop.
Kek
Lol yes it was good to see but you can imagine why he was a problem for us to take care of and had to go the route he did sadly
That's what anybody should do when stopped by an occupying army.
Yep. Reverted right back to his training.
State police were cool tho. They called my dad at like 1 or 2 in the AM. "Are you related to this man?" "Yes." Explained situation and kept him there til dad got there. He was just sitting on a chair, hunched over like a little kid.
He looked at dad and said "oh, you're with the fuckers now?" Dad said it was the first time he ever heard him swear.
The cop in charge understood, he was going thru same thing with his dad. So there are good ones out there. He had even lost his wallet and damaged his car on this trip but no citations or anything were issued. All in all a very human bunch at that station that day/night.
most likely caused by vaccines or other poisons offered us by our captors.
Could also have been all the exposure to aluminum etc during the war. We have his POW cup, where they would give him his spoonful of watery soup. It was an old tin can, and he had attached barbed wire to it as a handle. At some point he gave away the spoon, which was worn flat from trying to get every last drop. I have often wondered being as old as it is and from German origin if it's not soldered with lead, as the joints are very visible unlike modern tins. Had started life as one of their fake milk tins or "klim cans" as the POW slang went
Yes, I understand.
The Cabal doesn't allow for families that take care of seniors to have enough money to do it oftentimes. I'm not sure how much they compensate a relative caregiver but its a small amount.
Often people resort to trying to find an affordable live-in caregiver. The trouble with that is affordable and fair to the live in doesn't work.
He hosed the non family live in or visiting situation by constantly thinking they were stealing. When they finally took his driver's license, which was an act of God bc he even had the Dr fooled, we found notes on his phone book where he had tried renting cars.
He had destroyed his with enough reportable accidents that insurance would no longer cover as well as some unreported accidents I'd rather not speculate on.
He would come home from a drive with trim missing, once with the webbing of a lawn chair stuck in the front rim. No idea what happened and I'd rather not know. He's been gone 16 years now.
My mom, God bless her, is very healthy. I took over her medical care years ago and now that she is in her eighties, it is paying off in spades. No vaxxines, a clean diet, and the only Rx she takes is for her thyroid. I have her on some good supplements as well. She is as sharp as a tack and has the energy of someone half her age. I pray I am that lucky when I finally get there. She doesn't look her age either. Currently she is taking care of her sister that is almost ninety and still at home. If it was not for my mom being there, her own kids and grandkids would have killed her with the Covid jab. My aunt was made to watch all the videos I sent my mom - many of which had been posted on this forum. Those videos convinced my aunt she was not going to allow anyone to jab her. Thanks pedes. You all helped save a life.
Great job! Thanks for sharing...
I have to thank a whole lot of pedes that post links to videos that are important. I could not have done it without all of my frens!
I worked in a nursing home for 9 months and couldn’t take it any longer. It was “deficiency free,” but in the first week I saw at least 3 blatant violations. I am sure the DON was sorry she hired me! I reported the following to her and she asked if I was gunning for her job: within the first two days I observed chunky potato salad given to people on a puréed diet, kitchen staff placing food on dishes with their bare hands. The next was a personal infection control violation: dirty linen was placed in covered trash cans, with contaminated gloved hands it was wheeled to laundry and clean linen placed on top of the same lidded trash can. Employees returned in same gloved hands. Patients might wait 2-3 hours before cleaning and changing out of soiled diapers-this was a staffing issue because 1 aide cared for 25-33 residents. I also saw a nurse who always seemed to quickly pass her medications, while I was always lagging behind. When I asked others how I could improve my speed, they told me they suspected that one nurse only passed medications to those residents who were alert and oriented! Appalling! Even worse, no one reported her to the best of my knowledge.
Until your loved one sets your house on fire accidentally.......
Ahh now I want to rewatch The Sopranos🐸
They steal the person's every LAST CENT, and when there's none left, they mysteriously die.
sad but true.
It is easy for people to be judgmental when looking on the outside. In my own case, we had no choice but to put my dad in an assisted living. He was cognitively ok, but thanks to severe arthritis and rotator cuff injuries and a hand disorder that rendered his hands useless, he was, physically-speaking, a 200-lb four month old baby. I physically wasn't strong enough to get him in and out of bed, etc. And to make matters worse, he was difficult and uncooperative. For example, he was incontinent and would refuse to wear diapers and pee all over my furniture. My dad was also a drama queen and enjoyed starring the pot and creating problems. After I had enough, my sister tried, and she couldn't manage him, either. The assisted living facility we put him in was great in terms of most of the staff being loving and caring, but the bureaucracy of those places (much of the bureaucracy is mandated by the state) is a nightmare.
I've been in this for the better part of ten years now. Dad passed four years ago at 90 with Alzheimer's. Still taking care of mom...and the poop thing? 😳.....yesterday she got my shirt, arm, bare foot(yeah I wore sandals)....but hey, we laugh about it. Well, she did anyway 😒. So how is everyone else doing?
Let me tell you from experience -- it's better to have loose stools than hard, stuck stools. 'Nuff said!
It just goes to prove that you can get used to anything! It builds character. 😂
There are many examples where a family member genuinely cannot safely take care of their family members. I say this as someone who works in nursing. I often work with dementia residents and they do become a danger to themselves and need constant 1 on 1 care. Where you are right is that the nursing industry itself is entirely backwards. The industry does not look at the residents as people but rather as a number. Facilities constantly prioritize having a head in a bed rather than judging on whether or not they can be cared for by the staff in the building. Residents do constantly get ignored and staff consistently get away with doing nothing in nothing because the industry prioritizes having a number of staff rather than quality of staff. The amount of training and requirements to take care of family is far from professional. The work itself is not hard but when the bar gets set so low you’re getting so abysmal people. I have so many stories of horrible staff members and many examples of blatant sexism against me due to me being a male in the industry. All in all the facilities especially the smaller ones do care about your elderly but it’s the way corporate dictates how you take care of these people is what really degraded these residents. During lockdowns i got so many write ups for actually trying to treat residents with dignity and respect.
I frequently say that one of the silver linings with Covid is that we can no longer turn a blind eye to cracks in society. Health care in general is a giant crack, and another is elderly care. My dad was in a great facility in terms of loving staff (well, before Covid; after covid the staff was less consistent). If the staff could have run things the way they saw fit, it would have been an excellent place. But they were hamstrung by nightmarish state bureaucracies and corporate ownership guidelines that simply don't work well. Both health care and elderly care are issues we have to tackle as a society. There are better ways and we have to demand the better ways are implemented.
Yes. I don’t believe corporate is 100% at fault. It’s the nursing staff too. So many nurses get such a sense of superiority and like they know better than anyone and everyone and in reality they usually don’t. So many of my coworkers over the years have been some of the dumbest people I’ve met and I don’t understand how that’s even remotely acceptable to be taking care of our parents and grandparents. I’ve been at many facilities in multiple states and it’s unfortunately the same in every single one. Even during my first days of schooling for nursing the instructors would flat out tell you that none of this makes sense and you will not be doing any of what we tell you. I remember me and the one other man in the class just looked at each other and that look spoke a thousand words. Don’t get me started on the whole covid fiasco with nursing. I’ve so far managed to avoid the vaccine but man they’re still consistently pushing. On a semi unrelated note i actually had a resident who i would go spend time talking to who they all treated like he was insane but the man was right on the money with a lot especially pertaining to covid. He was the only resident who outright refused the jab and they ended up kicking him out and would have rather had him homeless. He was actually a frequenter of this site along with another lady who unfortunately did have early stages of dementia so anytime she would try and talk about anything pertaining to the industry or Q related she would be brushed off.
All in all the nursing industry does not care about your family. They do not care about their needs. They use their faux empathy and make it “look” good but in reality they just care about keeping a head in a bed and racking up as much money as possible and would be damned if they let any negative image prevent them from doing so. It’s so sad.
In college, I was a nursing major specializing in geriatric care because old people are fun - no bullshit with them. Working in a nursing home, I realized, at least at this home, that people were in the facility because they needed the extra care. Their families visited and the staff was very nice. Most of the the patients had some sort of dementia or Alzheimer's with a comorbidity. They needed meds besides basic care. I won't judge anyone who feels that their family member needs a nursing home. Caring for these patients is like caring for an infant only these "infants" can hit, bite, get angry and lash out. Loved the work though.
Yes, but the risk of poor quality care and abuse is very high. I think subsidizing senior care within the family, where able, is a good option when possible. The amount of financial aid to be a caregiver is abysmal.
Of course, run by insurance companies to bring back their insurance payouts at ten times their cost.
I remember when my dad's parents had to live in nursing homes and assisted living for a long time because none of their 7 children could or would take care of them. (In my family's case we simply had no room and we were strapped for cash because my siblings and I were all still in school, otherwise I think my dad DID want to care for them). My grandparents had saved up a lot of money during their lives, probably over $1 million, and it was ALL spent on assisted living in less than 8 years. It really is a scam.
sad tale.
FFS, the money goes to pay for nurses, laundry, food and a host of other things. Yes $7500/month is a lot but $550 wouldn’t cover shit.
Im in no way trying to say they should be charging 550 a month.
My wife had 15 patients at night, while 1st and 2nd had 10, that's when fully staffed. A lot of the medical care is billed as additional charges to medi-xxxx.
There is a lot of abuse from family members as well. Physical, financial. Sometimes, ALF/NH are the better option for the senior.
I have experience with this, and if there's one piece of advice from what I learned that has incomparable value it is this...
For elderly people, a UTI (very common for people soaking in piss for hours at a time) can present with symptoms very similar to dementia and bipolar disorder. Once someone in a home presents anything that can be misconstrued and diagnosed as psychotic or even be seen as just "bad behavior" they'll be put on seroquel and adovan, and will never be taken off until they die.
Cranberry pills stops UTIs fast and prevents recurrence.
It's basically the same treatment done to active children, drugs.
I admire the Spartans, and their striving for a beautiful death, in battle, doing their best for their mates and homeland, and not withering away as a burden.
Yes, in many countries it's very prevalent. In the USA its
This makes me think about how I live my life. I am frugal, live below my means, save and invest. My neighbor blows every dollar, lives for the moment, pulls equity from his home, taking loans for new cars, boats, snowmobiles, etc. He will have nothing in retirement.
After my mom had a stroke, she needed to be in a nursing home. They took every cent she had saved a lifetime for, then the government stole her car, house, personal items through estate sale.
Who is the smart one? The person that lives a moral life taking self responsibility or the person throwing caution to the wind that knows they will receive the same care and not have to pay for it.
I feel like such.a sucker....
Same. Altho at the rate things are going I'm sort of planning on it as a viable strategy. Sink the system in my old age.
I never made big money working, but retired from FT work at 55, worked 2 out of the next 4 PT, and moved abroad living on savings for 3 years. Came back to US and started my age 62 SS, went back to work at 63, and at SS income cap by mid-July... and will stop working until next year.
I built a house in my wife's country, so I have provided help for her old age. I have spent most of my savings during all of this time. My needs are simple and I have no one to leave money to. My wife is 11 years younger, works, and spends her money like water... the house is enough.
Your neighbor is not smart just worldly. Sad about your mom and how they drained her dry. People need to enjoy life a little or get those assets into the hands of their descendants early on. Few do so.
I have 1 year of my costs of living in liquid assets, which with my SS would last two years. Keep my FICO scores high, so CC as a backup. I'm no longer trying to increase savings but will work and spend that money to enjoy up until the earnings cap each year.
I'd rather not give the medical world my money fast or slow.
My Mother was in the rest home for one month before she passed. $12,000.00
They are a competitive business just like any other.
The employees are expensive, providing all the meals, and I imagine they have to pay huge insurance premiums for possible malpractice claims etc.
Buyer beware.
Don't even get me started on the huge waste and theft problems... LOL
My wife was a CNA for 5 years 15 patients normally, if short, 20. Of her 15, 9 were in diapers, and 3 needed a machine to lift the patient up. Dayshift and second shift 1 CNA to 10 when at full staff.
Great share!
If only nursing homes were vibrant, loving places without FWA rampant. If they were lovely places with open visiting hours and provided our golden populations with the best care and food. Wouldn’t that be cool? Until that day comes, perhaps it be better the elder stay with their kids. No way I would put my mom in a home.
I’d let my parents live with me as long as I didn’t have to change diapers wtf lol
😂🤷🏼♀️ hey man they changed yours!
Many people would choose to live among family and possibly die sooner than live warehoused and alone because the medical community can keep the body alive regardless of many physical and mental issues, its business after all...
Your clothes get divvied out to other patients, and your photos and momentous go in the dumpster if no one comes to claim them.
Yes… its a sad state right now. All I was expressing earlier was the what if? Like more of a utopian what if.
Can u hire people to come change diapers only? I don’t wanna do that when mine get old
Unless you were a 100+ lb baby when your parents changed your diapers, I think it's not an equal equation.
But it's nice to see the devotion you have to family.
There seems to be a lot of judgment here, especially for people who are going the nursing home route. I think a bit of empathy is called for, along with the reminder that every situation is not the same. And if you haven't lived the lives of those you're judging, you can't really know the situation. It's wonderful that so many people have the ability and desire to take care of their parents themselves, though.
I will admit it's a very emotional topic for me personally. I appreciate your input too.
Yeah wen u were a cute little baby !
I would bring my parents to live with me and pay for home health & respite care. They didn’t send me away when I was difficult to care for as a baby and child, or kick me out when I was a mouthy teenager. Who am I to do that to them?
Please read through the comments in this thread, there's a lot of great info shared here.
And add in your loved ones being largely ignored & uncared for at least to flat out abused at the worst.
We are grateful that my deceased father in law had the foresight to plan well for my mother in law. He left the resources for her to be able to live independently in her own home. I am an RN, and I hired an LVN and two CNA to provide supportive care as her dementia diagnosis progresses. I assumed care of her after another family member was more focused on her resources and doing a poor job actually looking after her. I know that's a common story, and it's sad. My mother in law has no idea that she has a staff of 5 looking after her. She thinks some of my friends stop by every day to see her. That's exactly what I wanted.
Don’t forget that get to take everything before you go in.
They don't LET you take care of your parents. My mom had a stroke at the beginning of corona when the lockdown was ordered. They took her by ambulance to the hospital and eventually discharged her after trying to convince us that she should be DNR but we opted for feeding tube. Eventually she was allowed to have it removed. She will be 92 this year but she's in a nursing home. They get her up at the crack of dawn and have a schedule of daily events with NO NAPS. When she was here all we did was watch squirrels and sing hymns and nap whenever she wanted. But I couldn't lift her or keep her from having constant accidents. Plus, after the stroke she required so. many. drugs. Before the stroke she took ZERO Rx.
Not to mention, the people working in these places don't really give a shit and treat the patients badly (not all though).
why did nobody get arrested for breaking into a nursing home and rescuing their loved ones?
people should never complain about nursing homes UNLESS they are willing they themselves to keep their elderly in their own homes which is a 24/7 job of unending tasks......its extremely difficult.....there is no rest....its not like a cuddly little baby that you can clean up in a minute or less ...and the fact faces you ever day that it will never get better, only worse, until they die.
A lot of nursey homes are into satanism. We had a house next door to us when I was a teenager and weird shit happened there. The elderly tried to escape all the time.. So sad. I was too young to understand what was going on and my mom oblivious.. They rented rooms out and unsuspecting families trusted this.. so sad.. one night at 3am my sister heard weird chanting and looked over the brick wall fence and saw the satanic ritual with the candles and pentegram thing... she was freaked out... our dogs even freaked out... Everyone needs to really inspect what is going on with their elderly.
All that profit, and some decided to still kill them to try to drive the covid point home.
They do it all for criminal activities to take the rest of their money before they die, Medicare fraud, ballot fraud…it’s all a scam
The trouble with nursing homes besides sucking up huge amounts of money, is the murder, manslaughter, and abuse going on.
My wife worked in a Nursing Home with 3 out of 4 star rating. Previously they had changed the name because of a staff member getting a non-senior patent pregnant
Dr's who visit nursing homes tend to be the least successful doctors, similar to having a public defender. They work for a temp agency type situation.
A patient went out on a day cruise and returned to the nursing home not feeling well afterward. Vital signs were terrible, but the nurse called the lady DR. He said to check them again in the morning. Lady dies, 911 should have been called and both the Nurse and DR are guilty of neglagence.
That is why I wonder when all those patients became sick in the nursing homes, why didn’t they call 911 and send to a hospital (not that hospitals would have taken measures to help them survive, because there are good and not so good hospitals. There are hospitals out for money too.
In your case the nurse and nursing home should be sued. Proving the doctor said that is another story, unless the nurse documented a telephone order verbatim, and then it is still iffy.
Why was there a non senior patient?
Nursing homes are not just for seniors...
Nasty tricks, put 2 diapers on the patient, then when wet only pull out the wet one... no need to wash the patient.
By the way, in poorly managed facilities the staff wastes or steals a huge amount of supplies.
Every case is different, but in general nursing homes suck.
I was in it for 12 years. Got quite the education in the process. It was to the point that I knew how to do things a lot of doctors and nurses didn't -- like how to put on and use a wound vac.
Yeah, the poop thing....been there, done that! Baby wipes are your fren. Keep the faith, fren!
Hats off to you!
There are kids that run away from their narcissist parents/family.