Life update time...
Sooooo... lessee.
To those of y'all who know what's going on, you've heard me blether about my mom and her troubles endlessly, so you don't need background.
To those of y'all who DON'T know... My mom, who is 82 years old, is a severe Alzheimer's patient living in an assisted living facility (ALF). She just recently hit a precipice in the disease just like the docs said she would, degenerating into really horrendous paranoia and agressive behavior. And, also followint the predictions of her doctors, the staff at her ALF have finally said that she can't live there anymore. They aren't a locked facility; she isn't safe there, and the staff and patients aren't safe from her (you wouldn't believe an 82-year-old with a walker could be physically capable of injuring a full-grown male nurse; wrong-o.) The place has a swamp and a creek behind it and a huge highway out front past the lawns, and the outer doors are never locked due to the fire-code.
So. Today was Der Tag, the day the ALF had scheduled a meeting to fork over the official Mama-Has-To-Move notice; I got the lowdown on it from my younger sister, who attended with other family members and my mom. We've been worried about her being institutionalized; so after a lot of looking around and online research, we (mostly my younger sister) found a nursing care place that not only specifically handles elderly dementia patients, it doesn't use a ward system-- she'd have her own apartment. Not only that, she has a friend of many years there. So the trick was to convince my mom to *want* to move, because otherwise the ALF had plans to invoke the Baker Act and get her shipped off to the Florida State Psychiatric Hospital... not, I repeat, not something any of us wanted to see happen. As weird and scary as my mom's gotten, she's still Mama.
Therefore we've all been talking to her. A lot. And apparently it finally did sink in, because-- well, the long and short of it is that, so long as she doesn't attack anybody or go into another screaming violent fit or try to get the other elderly types there to instigate a riot (which she has actually attempted), she can stay there for a few more weeks while the new place sets up a room for her. She's on a waiting-list, but she's first up; hopefully it won't be long.
Anyway... this is a huge, huge relief; the other possible outcomes of today's meeting were an involuntary week-long psych eval at the local hospital, or her being bodily kicked out into the loving arms of her family (and we DO love her, but we're not doctors. She needs 24/7 med monitoring-- you think we know what meds she's supposed to get, out of the dozen or so types that she takes every day?) or a quick transition to a temporary facility, i.e., a ward-type nursing home where she'd be sedated to keep her out of trouble. My workplace deals with places like that; I don't want to see my Mom in one.
So; good news all 'round. Maybe a bit less worry about my family, a few less sleepless nights (if I wasn't the insomnia queen before I damn well am now) and a more hopeful future for my mom. Maybe a bit less stress for me too. For all her faults, I love her, and I don't want to see her unhappy. Alzheimer's is a disease; I try to remember that, and to remember that it's her illness that makes her say what she does or do what she does at times... not the woman who raised me and taught me how to live.
Right; there's the update. Next time I post here, it'll hopefully be something happier, okay? Right now I'm just really, really relieved. Thanks for putting up with my angsting recently; things are better, and with any luck they'll keep getting that way. ^__^
To those of y'all who know what's going on, you've heard me blether about my mom and her troubles endlessly, so you don't need background.
To those of y'all who DON'T know... My mom, who is 82 years old, is a severe Alzheimer's patient living in an assisted living facility (ALF). She just recently hit a precipice in the disease just like the docs said she would, degenerating into really horrendous paranoia and agressive behavior. And, also followint the predictions of her doctors, the staff at her ALF have finally said that she can't live there anymore. They aren't a locked facility; she isn't safe there, and the staff and patients aren't safe from her (you wouldn't believe an 82-year-old with a walker could be physically capable of injuring a full-grown male nurse; wrong-o.) The place has a swamp and a creek behind it and a huge highway out front past the lawns, and the outer doors are never locked due to the fire-code.
So. Today was Der Tag, the day the ALF had scheduled a meeting to fork over the official Mama-Has-To-Move notice; I got the lowdown on it from my younger sister, who attended with other family members and my mom. We've been worried about her being institutionalized; so after a lot of looking around and online research, we (mostly my younger sister) found a nursing care place that not only specifically handles elderly dementia patients, it doesn't use a ward system-- she'd have her own apartment. Not only that, she has a friend of many years there. So the trick was to convince my mom to *want* to move, because otherwise the ALF had plans to invoke the Baker Act and get her shipped off to the Florida State Psychiatric Hospital... not, I repeat, not something any of us wanted to see happen. As weird and scary as my mom's gotten, she's still Mama.
Therefore we've all been talking to her. A lot. And apparently it finally did sink in, because-- well, the long and short of it is that, so long as she doesn't attack anybody or go into another screaming violent fit or try to get the other elderly types there to instigate a riot (which she has actually attempted), she can stay there for a few more weeks while the new place sets up a room for her. She's on a waiting-list, but she's first up; hopefully it won't be long.
Anyway... this is a huge, huge relief; the other possible outcomes of today's meeting were an involuntary week-long psych eval at the local hospital, or her being bodily kicked out into the loving arms of her family (and we DO love her, but we're not doctors. She needs 24/7 med monitoring-- you think we know what meds she's supposed to get, out of the dozen or so types that she takes every day?) or a quick transition to a temporary facility, i.e., a ward-type nursing home where she'd be sedated to keep her out of trouble. My workplace deals with places like that; I don't want to see my Mom in one.
So; good news all 'round. Maybe a bit less worry about my family, a few less sleepless nights (if I wasn't the insomnia queen before I damn well am now) and a more hopeful future for my mom. Maybe a bit less stress for me too. For all her faults, I love her, and I don't want to see her unhappy. Alzheimer's is a disease; I try to remember that, and to remember that it's her illness that makes her say what she does or do what she does at times... not the woman who raised me and taught me how to live.
Right; there's the update. Next time I post here, it'll hopefully be something happier, okay? Right now I'm just really, really relieved. Thanks for putting up with my angsting recently; things are better, and with any luck they'll keep getting that way. ^__^