Today's ingredient is a tough one. Making the decision to put your loved one in a facility.
Making the choice to move a loved one from your home into a facility can be an emotional and financial nightmare.
There are so many logistical questions; not to mention the guilt.
How can I do this to them? They took care of me and now here I am dumping them off with strangers.
How can I blow through all of their life savings for this?
Will there be enough money?
If there is no money, how do we pay for this?
Is there a facility near me?
Is there a GOOD facility near me?
Why am I not strong enough to keep doing this for them?
Why am I not good enough to keep them safe?
Don't I love them enough?
These are just some of what I hear when I'm talking to a family member that is going back and forth between home care and placement in a facility.
Typically if you are the person who has been caring for your dementia stricken loved one, caregiving is in your bones. My bet is it is not the first person you have cared for nor will it be the last. This being the case, it can almost feel like a failure to even think about placing them. You feel like you are giving up and not doing what you are meant to do.
Most likely this is a battle you have waged over and over in your head hundreds of times before it finally just became glaringly apparent that you were out of options.
Maybe they made you promise before they got sick that you would never leave them in "one of those places".
Maybe you made a promise to yourself to always look after them.
But now it is getting too hard.
Dementia is a disease you never understood but now know way too much about.
You've watched every Teepa Snow video and called the Alzheimer’s Association 1000 times but you still can't keep mom from falling on the floor or get dad to eat anything but chocolate.
You have lost your husband and missed out on so much time with your kids. Now you fear you are losing yourself too.
The amount of sleep you get totally depends on the amount of sleep she gets. Once you are up it is just a constant exhausting race to get even the simplest of things done.
They won't toilet in the toilet so your carpets and their sheets need cleaning every other day.
Getting them in the shower is nearly impossible and once it does happen it is an hour long battle just to get them washed up.
Meal time is another struggle. Either they hate what you made or they forget you fed them a half an hour into TV time.
Family members who said, oh yea, take dad in, I'll be right there to help you, haven't shown their faces in years. When you ask someone- anyone to come and sit with them for even an hour all you hear is crickets. Your caregiving "village" has been abandoned.
You are wiped out.
Ya know what, that's ok. Of course you are wiped out.
You are trying to do what a whole group of us do at a care facility. Not only are there multiples of us on each shift, we also get to go home in 8 or 12 hours. We get to have a breather. We get to sleep, eat and play with our families. To even compare the running you are doing as one person, to what we do with many is a very unfair comparison.
A good facility can provide your loved one with some pretty amazing things.
We are able to offer meals with multiple options because we have cooks that cook them.
We are able to offer them help eating each meal because we have people paid to feed them.
We are able to bathe or shower them on a regular basis because we have people trained to do that. We also have more than one of us. So if your dad hates one caregiver's face that day we simply bring in another that he is more comfortable with in the moment.
If they urinate on the floor or soak their bed there is somebody to clean it up.
We have a beautician to do their hair and an activities person to do arts and crafts.
We can play games and watch movies with them.
We can walk with them, talk with them or hold their hand. We can help them feel safe when they are scared.
They also have other people to socialize with. This is such an important piece. Even if they are at a stage in their disease that makes socializing as we think of it nonexistent, sometimes just having the other faces around can be very calming.
All that being said, I work in a facility and I understand your fear.
Although ours is one of the great ones, there are some out there that are not so great.
Those not so great ones have given us all a bad name.
It's pretty typical that the bad egg gets all the attention while the good ones carry the load and no one speaks about them.
I feel like this is the case here too. A few bad eggs have ruined it for everybody. Now everyone is scared to death to let their relative live in a facility because they don't know what kind of care they will receive.
Since you can't be with them 100% of the time it is terrifying to leave them.
Usually by the time they have gotten to the stage of dementia that is requiring round the clock care they can no longer tell you how things are going either.
To calm your nerves you have the ability to interview as many places as you want. You can visit 5 or 25 until you feel like you've found the best place for your loved one.
You can touch base with the Alzheimer’s Association and get their recommendations on the best places and the worst.
Once you have them admitted, you can do surprise visits or just come and stay as long as you'd like.
You can put a nanny cam in their room and check in from anywhere you are.
The best part of all this is that while mom or dad is getting all this care do you know what you'll be doing?
Sleeping
Eating
Traveling
Playing cards
Watching movies
Fishing
Swimming
Visiting your grandchildren or
Just doing anything you darn well please.
You will finally be able to do for yourself again and know in your heart that you did the absolute best for your loved one as well.
You cared for them in your home for as long as you were able. When you were no longer what was best for them, you put your pride aside and found them a place that was.
No matter which way you decide or when you decide it, I am so proud of you. You are doing a terrific job.
If in US, you can always call the Alzheimer’s Association 24/7 Helpline (1-800-272-3900) to vent, get advice, &
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