Mom with Anosognosia and lives in a health-care desert

cmdet

Good afternoon. I'm new here. My mom will be 81 years old next month. She finally saw a neurologist last week and he ordered bloodwork (done), EEG and MRI. I live 3 hours away and do take time off to take her. I have a sibling who lives in her town, but is no help whatsoever. I even believe they are verbally abusive to my Mom.

I should clarify that she is fairly early stage (still dresses herself, plays on her ipad) Does not cook or drive.

I get so frustrated when I visit and she yells at me for doing things that help her. I cleaned out her fridge and she nearly bit my head off. It was disgusting. I sent her some 'Mom's meals' from the company so she can just microwave them, but she is forgetting to eat. I am not sure if I should hire a home aide a few times a week just so she eats and can have some personal interaction. It will be nearly impossible to find someone where she lives. Years ago when she broke a knee cap, i couldn't even get HHC services.

Any advice is welcome. TY in advance.

elhijo

Hello Cmdet,

This is going to be hard for you to accept but you will either have to transfer your mom to live in with you and pay a caregiver to take care of her while you work. Or you will need to place her in a facility and pay someone outside the facility to come in and check on her several times a day -keep in mind that the people who work for those places have a financial incentive to tell you everything is ok if you are a remote caregiver. But people whom you would pay out of your own pocker have a fiduciary relationship to you -not the facility- so they are much more likely to tell you the truth about how well your mom is doing. Some facilities don't like outside help coming in to take a look/help the elderly, some do. I'd contact an elder care lawyer to see what the law is on outside help coming into a facility and if you have a right to have this. If you call the ALZ number here or search the website you may find a list of elder care attorneys who are compassionate and can provide services at a discounted rate. Contacting an elder care attorney in general is a really good idea at this point as he/she can give you just general guidance on what the law is regarding your mom, especially if there are relatives in-town who are verbally abusive to her and may want to place her in any old facility just to be 'rid of the problem' basically.

Unfortunately, your loved one is declining and will need help. Basically someone has to live with her 24/7 from now on. There is a third option. Maybe a different relative can come live her your mom but even with this you will still need to hire someone to assist that relative as caring for someone elderly is a full-time job especially at the early stages of the disease when the elderly are still combatitive due to Alz. Honestly, as the disease progresses she may need to see specialists more often and based on where she lives this will be unfesiablee. My advice is to move her to a bigger city where there are many hospitals/ in-home health agencies/ etc. to choose from.

BUT… before you do this, be forwarned that out-of-pocket nursing homes can charge up to $800 a day, yes a day. That's how much a nursing home quoted me to my face. It was a nice place and was very clean and gave a surprisingly good vibe but I didn't go it, even if I had the money for that I still woudn't do it. So, before you move your mom out of state contact either an elder care attorney or the Alliance for Aging and see if your mom could qualify for Medicaid in the present state where she lives in as Medicaid can help offset the costs of long term care tremendously. If you move her to live with you and you're in a different state, it may affect her Medicaid qualificatin. An elder care attorney would knowmore about this. From past experiences places that take Medicaid tend to be worse than those that are private pay, but there are some descent places that will take Medicaid, you just have to look. Here in Florida there seems to have been a lot of reforms with the elderly due to numerous scandals so places that take it seem to have gotten better.

And congratulations to you for caring so much about your mom. Sounds like her staying in a health-care desert just isn't feasible for her anymore. Now it's a question of finding out the best place/setting for her and how to go about paying for this. An elder care attorney and the Alliance for Aging should be good places to start (every state has an Alliance for Aging, Google them and you'll find the number).

Godspeed,

elhijo