Frustrated

KC Mom

I live 3 hours away so I visit my mom once a month. My sister and aunt insisted my mom live by/with them. However, they still have an expectation that my mom can care for herself. My mom does function in some ways at a fairly good level but doesn’t shower, put on clean clothes, or consistently take her meds. I used to be a caregiver. I have tried to convince them to get her a caregiver. They refuse. I try to give them suggestions and tricks to help get my mom to do things. They refuse. I tell them how important a schedule is. They don’t do it. It’s really hard because as a former caregiver, I know some things would help and give my mom a better quality of life.


I’m grateful for my aunt and my sister
but frustrated as well. I just don’t know how to reach them. I feel like they are just burying their heads in the sand about what is really going
on.

M1

Welcome to the forum. Key question, does anyone have power of attorney for your mother? If so, then that person makes the decisions when it's obvious that she can't. If this has not been addressed, you need to see a certified elder law attorney as soon as possible. It matters when there are family disagreements like this.

harshedbuzz

KC mom-

Hi and welcome. I am sorry for your need to be here but glad you found this place.

This is a difficult situation and one that is hard to parse in a short post.

Normally, when a "drive-by" relative questions or criticizes the care of a loved without doing any heavy-lifting, hackles here are raised. To the people living the 24/7 realities of dementia care, armchair quarterbacking is generally met with knee-jerk resistance even when the advice was sound and coming from a truly concerned source.

I had this with my mom caring for dad. I wasn't long-distance but I didn't live with them but could see daily that many of mom's care-strategies made her situation worse. And she would not listen to my endlessly researched suggestions. So, I lined her up with a local support group of peers who repeated everything I'd suggested with the result that she took it to heart. Later, I was on the receiving end of criticism from my dad's brother (he lived 10 minutes away and deigned to visit every 6 weeks for 45 minutes) who was clueless about what was going on with dad despite having lived through dementia with his own FIL years before.

Is your caregiving experience specifically in dementia-care? I ask because PWD are like no other assignment in the world. Sometimes even the best caregivers let things like showers, a fresh outfit and healthy meals slide because of the anxiety insisting on these things causes the PWD. Sometimes it's about choosing one's battles.

Thats said, if mom's care is truly substandard-- she's suffering from skin breakdown from fungal infections, UTIs from not being kept clean, etc. you need to decide next steps. You also need to consider whether the situation is potentially dangerous to mom-- do they leave her alone when she needs supervision, does she have access to meds, the stove, a car that could end badly? Do you enact the POA (assuming you are it) or go for guardianship on the basis she's being neglected knowing it is the nuclear option around which your family will implode and that you might not succeed?

The other piece to this is whether your mom's dementia is being used in some way. Are either of these women somehow benefitting from having your mom with them? Is her sister on a fixed income collecting board or allowing mom to pay for food, rent, utilities? Is mom's sister firing on all cylinders herself? Is your sister living with mom rent-free or allowing mom to fund her life? Is your sister using mom's care to avoid or delay her own launch into an independent adulthood-- a career, her own apartment, etc?

There's a lot to unpack here.

HB