I need to get someone into the home when needed so I can take care of personal business. I would like to know how to evaluate a care agency to know if I can trust them with Mom's care while I am gone. I would start with the recommendation from the hospital social worker. She said I should stay here the first time to see how they are.
Any thoughts?
Mom gets very confused. Today is a bad day. She says she fell and wants to go to the doctor. She didn't fall and seems as well as any other day. When I tell her she didn't fall she wants to fight with me. This is the hardest part of being her caregiver to me.
Mom is sleeping a lot of the time. I don't know if this should be a concern, or if it is a normal process for stroke recovery.
Now that the visiting team from the hospital are no longer coming, I let her sleep in the morning until she feels like getting up. This is usually between 10:30 to 11:30. Then I make us something to eat and give her medications. Sometimes she then helps with something in the kitchen and then says she has to lay down or she just wants to lay down after taking her pill
My Mom has been diagnosed with “dementia without behavioral disturbance.” I have learned not to argue with her or try to correct her too much because whatever she thinks and says is real to her. She is not going to accept something that is contrary to what she thinks is real just because someone says so.
We had a nice pork roast dinner for Christmas. Mom helped prepare the roast for the oven, peeled some potatoes, cut the carrots, and prepared the asparagus. The dinner turned out excellent.
All I want for Christmas is for my Mom to know that I am her son and that I love her very much.
I don't think I will get this, but it is what I want.
John
Yesterday I took Mom out to get 2 of her prescriptions and pick up ice cream. When we got back home in the driveway she refused to get out of the car because she said it wasn't her house, she didn't live there, and wanted me to take her home. No amount of reasoning would change her mind. She has lived in the house for 20 years. I got a neighbor who lived across the street for 17 years to come and talk to her. She said she didn't know him and wasn't buying his story.
The attempts to get her t
Mom and I had a good week. The visiting nurse and PT started this week. We talked a lot and things generally went well. There is confusion mixed with the talk, but otherwise it was okay.
Yesterday she wanted to go outside because it was a nice day. I took her up to our mail station in the wheelchair to get the mail. Everything was okay when we got back. We had dinner and talked a bit. All of a sudden something snapped and she said this wasn't her house. This is a recurring scenario that I th
Mom had an appointment with her PCP this afternoon. I have been concerned for some time about her low heart rate. Her previous PCP didn't seem concerned about it. The heart rate always tested low since before her stroke. I am talking about anywhere between 32 to 48. At her appointment today I brought up the heart rate numbers that I documented along with the BP. The nurse went and got a heart rate monitor. It test very low. Then they did an EKG and sent the results to the cardiologist department
I feel like the Home Care Team has become the Home Invasion Team. They are passing each other in the doorway coming and going. I have been told by most of them to look into bringing in more people. I told them that there have been more people in this house in the past 2 weeks than in the past 20 years.
Yesterday Mom had what I would call a good session with the Speech Therapist, but it became emotional when Mom started talking about her brothers and sisters and she started crying. It took a
Everything seemed to be going good today. Morning shower. PT at noon. Then Mom took a nap before going to the doctor. She said I should wake her 10 minutes before we are going to leave. We went to the doctor appt. and got some good info and a change in BP med. Then we stopped at my house and picked up some things and got the mail. When we got home everything changed. She said it wasn't her house and we shouldn't be there. She wanted me to take her to the right house. I got her to eat some dinner
My Mom is 88 years old. That may seem like a long time, but it is never enough for someone you love, respect, and admire. You don't know how much time you have or when what you do together will be the last.
I just didn't know this the last time we:
went out for a pizza
planted the tomato patch
went grocery shopping
got corn at the farmers' market
pruned the spruce tree
cooked Sunday dinner
ate hot soup until out noses ran, then laughed like crazy
talked things over
Most of all
Mom came home 1 week ago today. It has been a tough week adjusting to the homecare team, and tweeking things in the house.
After constipation last weekend the rehab said to give her a stool softener, but this proved to be too much and she got "pooped out" on Thursday and I stopped giving it to her. On Saturday morning she was very groggy and so hard to wake up that it was scaring me. I called the homecare team and the nurse came out. She called the doctor who decided to cut the dosage of her
Mom is coming home on Tuesday 8/26. The insurance company decided she has been in rehab long enough. Mom is going to love it. She has never been away from home this long in her life(6 1/2 weeks). Every day she wants to go home. She just says "Let's get our stuff and go." She cries at night and calls my name. She will be so much more comfortable in her familiar surroundings.
Panic is starting to set in on my part. I think I have everything in place. Her new wheelchair is supposed to be at the
I am doing family training with Mom. We are walking with the walker, doing transfers from the wheelchair to walker and vice versa. We practiced getting into and out of the shower using an extended bench, and going to the toilet. I have been going to the toilet with Mom for about 3 weeks and she is getting much better at it.
The rehab center wants to do a home evaluation, which is fine with me to get any recommendations for what I should have or get done. The problem I have is that they want
My Mom had a hemorrhagic stroke on July 11, 12 days after turning 88. She spent 5 days in Doylestown(PA) Hospital before being transferred to an acute rehabilitation facility for 2 weeks to have speech, occupational, and physical therapies. She was then tranferred to a sub-acute rehabilitation facility for further therapy where she has been for 2 weeks now.
She is responding fairly well to the physical therapies. She is walking over 100 ft. with the walker. She can get dressed with some assi
