Mom from IL to AL to MC in one month

I’m so thankful to have found this forum. Our family has been going through a rough patch with Mom and I find myself coming here often looking for comfort so thank you all.

Back story (warning…it’s long) : My mom (87YO) has suffered from mental illness her whole life. She has been hospitalized at least 5 times in her adult life for major depressive disorder and bipolar disorder. Her last hospitalization for that was 20 years ago but my childhood was affected in a big way (I’m 54). With that said my mother has seen psychiatrists and geriatric psychiatrists on and off throughout her life and taking meds on and off. Mom’s dementia symptoms were recognized 7 years ago after a medical emergency. She was initially diagnosed with Alzheimer’s but now they think she may have mixed dementia (on top of her major depression). She had lived by herself in a low income elderly apartment building and was able to qualify for Medicaid. She had an aide come in twice weekly to help her during the day when my sister and I couldn’t. It was a good arrangement and appropriate at that time. In July of this year mom had a fall while at home alone at night. She was able to call me but was in really rough shape when I arrived. I called an ambulance and she was brought to the ER She broke her nose and suffered a concussion. The ER kept her under observation status for 2.5 days and released her because they “had no beds”. I fought the doctor, social worker and hospital administrator to keep her but they refused. They claimed that she would just need rest and there would be visiting nurses scheduled daily to check on her. We had a rough month and noticed mom’s cognitive decline (behaviors more than memory) even as her body grew stronger. Her PCP and neurologist were of no help which was really eye opening. My sister and I continued to keep close tabs on her by going in the evenings to ensure she ate and took her meds and bathed (after having an aide there with her during the day) . It seemed to work for a time but we knew we couldn’t keep up with it long term. My sister is 65 and works two jobs and I work FT and have a husband (that commutes) and two active kids. We had been on the lookout for AL for a long time and found a lovely group home that we visited together and accepted Medicaid LTC vouchers. Mom liked it and agreed to move there within three weeks. Mom moved in and was so happy. It seemed like the perfect fit. Fast forward 6 days and we received alarming reports that mom was telling everyone she was getting picked up to move out, calling the staff names, going into other resident rooms to snoop and throwing her clothes away. She would call me everyday and ask if I was on vacation. We knew there would be an adjustment period but she really wanted to live there intially so we wanted to try to make it work. They had an in house psych NP that visited weekly and put mom on a low dose of Trazadone to help her sleep. Fast forward 5 more days and mom had wandered from the house 3 times in one day and the staff couldn’t stop her. She told us that she heard us calling her so she went to find us. It’s a rural area so the police were called on the last elopement because she couldn’t be found (she went to a house down the street). We were told to come and get her because the staff can’t keep chasing her. The AL had residents with dementia, but because of the wandering, that was a big no-no (understandable). They said once she is stabilized with some medication she could return. My sister and I went immediately and called an ambulance with the intent to see if we could get her admitted to Geri Psych while she was in crisis mode. She was brought to the ER. (Different ER than after her fall). The hospital geriatric psychiatrist held her in the ER in a private room for two nights and observed her. He said because of her mild nature, she did not really qualify for admission for an psych eval because she was not violent, and he recognized that what she needed was to be in long term care. Because she was already Medicaid qualified the social worker at the hospital was able to find her a bed locally at a lock down memory care facility. Mom has been there for just under a month and hates every minute of it. She has her moments of clarity throughout the day, but continues to have delusions. She believes that she has cancer in her brain, she doesn’t. She thinks my 14-year-old daughter is a nurse there. She said she wants to have all of her teeth pulled out and that they don’t give her medication. Initially she tried to escape multiple times a day. She once put on one of the nurse’s jackets and bag and headed to wait by the elevator. The memory care facility is quite dated and frumpy, but clean. So far the staff has been great. Every nurse or LNA I’ve encountered can tell me things about her off the bat without even looking at their notes and seem to really pay attention. One of the nurses even texts me updates four or five days a week and I check in with them every visit. My mom has always been a neat freak and a bit of a snob. She thinks the place is a dump, but we feel she is getting decent care and there aren’t many lockdown memory care facilities that accept Medicaid in our area. Our hope is that once she is more settled, not so angry, and not exit seeking that she can move into the regular population in the nursing home upstairs which is much more lively. I’ve been visiting twice a week and my sister has been visiting twice a week as well. Our plan initially was to make sure she had a visitor every day, but mom is so miserable that our visits are very short because she gets extremely upset. Every time she sees me, she says, “when am I leaving” about 20 times and “I thought you out of all people would help me.” Which is a gut punch because I’ve been “spinning my wheels” for her for a very long time. I’ve made lifelong choices based on living near her and being available because of her history…and now dementia. I dread visiting her and feel really guilty about it. I really try to keep in mind that she is scared and knows she’s in the final stages of her life as she knows it. I’m not sure what advice I’m looking for, I just needed to vent!