Refuses help

Jorb

My mother-in-law has Alzheimers and still lives alone but in a senior apt community. She refuses to let us take over and help her with finances although we do have power of attorney for medical and our son was given and accepted the financial power of attorney. In the past when we've mentioned she needs the help, she has told people that we are going to put her away and take all her money. A counselor, being a mandatory reporter, actually made a police report and of course the investigation revealed nothing. It only hurt us badly. To make this short how do we go about convincing her that she needs the help, needs help with meds, etc. We already had to have the state take away her drivers license because she was dangerous on the roads. Thanks- we are very stressed out and bewildered.

psg712

Does her community offer assisted living? It sounds as if she needs that additional support.

Sadly, you are not going to convince her that she needs help. Her disease will not let her understand that. It is good that powers of attorney are already established so that you can legally take action to help her. If she's struggling to handle meds and finances correctly, you will have to step in to take those over for her safety.

Emily 123

Hello Jorb, and welcome.

The attached may help.

understanding-the-dementia-experience.pdf

In Alzheimer's, the disease affects how the person takes in, processes, and retains all information. That'll cause gaps in their memory of months to years that they won't be aware of, because without memory there's no sense of time passing. That can cause your person to be unaware that they're having problems (anosognosia)—they think that things are going along as always. You won't be able to convince them of more recent events. They may even think you're trying to lie to them if you give them examples of what they've done, because they don't recall it. Even if they do have insight about their losses they may forget quickly and you'll be tempted to try to reason with them again and again, to no avail.

They have their own reality and it's ok to meet them there—you don't have to force her to acknowledge her disease and agree there's a problem in order to make changes, you just need to set up safeguards to keep her safe—That's two different things. Let go of needing her to understand, as the disease prevents her from doing that. In a perfect world she'd agree there are issues and endorse what you need to do, and that would feel great, since she'd be signing off on decisions that remove her autonomy. But the reality is that you need to make these decisions for her because, even though she may look and talk like the old MIL, she's struggling to do even basic tasks. And having to make these decisions that she may disagree with will feel unpleasant and contrary to how we've all been raised. It's tough, and it stays tough*.

Identify the goal (MIL's physical, emotional, and financial safety), and work around the disease to achieve it with the least upset to your MIL.

While it doesn't feel good to be less than truthful, often that's the best way to cushion the changes with the least upset to the PWD. By this stage it's starting to become 'out of site = out of mind" and so It will help you to remove triggers that might cause confusion or conflict—for instance, all bills and financial reminders should be routed to the POA, email needs to be filtered down to the contact list only and monitored, a caregiver might be introduced as a struggling friend who needs to make a little extra money rather than a person who's there to make sure she takes her pills. It may be time to consider a move into at least assisted living with MC as a backup.

[*Second guessing the decisions made and guilt are normal for the family caregivers & tremendously stressful, especially if the PWD gets angry about what needs to be done, so stay supportive of the decisions that have to be made by the person(s) who ends up being the primary day-to-day-caregiver(s).]

H1235

I agree with everything that has be said! For example you might tell her you found her a better apartment. This better apartment would be assisted living. Maybe there is some kind of problem with her apartment, or this new apartment is closer to you and your husband or her grandson. I agree with forwarding all bills to the DPOA. If she doesn’t get the bills she probably won’t miss them. If she does ask, just say you will look into it. If you tell her she is not capable of managing her bills anymore she will probably be mad and upset. Not being truthful seems wrong, but if the truth upsets her isn’t that wrong too. Confusion and paranoia are common with dementia. If she has been diagnosed I wouldn’t worry about her accusations amounting to much(Other than hurt feeling). Under standing the dementia experience that Emily gave you should help. I have attached a staging tool that may also help.
Bottom line is you need to make the decisions to keep her save( even if she is not ok with it) because she is not able.

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/6372d16ea4e02c7ce64425b7/t/63f7b80d80d8aa3e3aa4a47d/1677178894184/DBAT.pdf