Dad owns part of the house and wants to be home. I don't know, maybe he should be, with the right set of nurses and day care people. im on vacation and got a call from the alf that they caught him with bags packed and a suitcase filled. he was only going to be for a month but just doesn't seem to connect. I am way to connected; he seems like part of me or me of him. but my husband said I have become a different person and so has he. I struggle daily with a final decision---force alf on him or bring him home with help. he considers me his only contact to the world and yada yada yada....
is there a third choice that I am missing?
the just started psychological tests and found his memory very short but his mind sharp... it must drive him crazy. but no one has put him on any meds....
?
Then you have to weigh how much time you will commit to his care either being there or arranging others to be there. Your husband is a consideration and how willing he is to support you and your dad. If life in the home is all about his needs don't bring your dad home if he will be a source of conflict.
We only get one father, we only have a period of time with him. I chose to make my dad's last years as cheerful as possible and in the home he built for our family. It was never easy--it was always worth it. I would never have been comfortable outsourcing his care to nursing home or ALF. It is a personal chose
to a large extent. The restrictions on my life were more than compensated by
the knowledge he was were he needed to be.
Give it thought and prayer. Assess his health and abilities as they are now. His abilities will decline with age but he may have little time left. Often wanting to be home (packing his bags) are their way of saying they see the end coming.
Take care.
Your husband said you have changed, and I'm sensing some codependency building between your father and you. If you have access to a therapist you may want to consider discussing the whole situation with him/her. It is an inevitability that our parents will die. If you and your father's lives are so emotionally enmeshed, it may be a comfort to HIM, but you need to consider what it is doing to you and your husband.
Granted we live longer and such care is needed for longer periods, but I never
thought of providing it as a burden, that I would not survive and continue my normal life pattern post his death. Knowing it is a part of the natural order of life, like raising children (also very time consuming and life changing for 18 yrs) I
just accepted the reality and worked around it. But I knew it was best for him and I did put his needs before mine in the short run. However, I would not be happy if he was in a nursing home when he could be here. It is the pattern to place the elder in a home early these days but I think it will change over time because Medicaid will not be able to carry the load of 79 million baby boomers--we will break the system. The new catch phrase is having the elderly "age in place" as long as humanly possible. Families and single people like myself do need support to care for an elder and still be able to work--much like woman in the early 1970's needed day care for children to be in the workforce. It is a new need due to the extended life span of Americans. The old pattern of nursing home placements hasn't caught up to the new reality.
Good luck with your decision but nothing is perfect. Just take it one day at a time, plan what is able to be planned--life isn't able to be planned in most cases.
There are companies that offer Independent Living that have much nicer communities,
but we needed to acclimate Mom by taking her to lunch there with a closer, which seems a little underhanded, and it took several showings, etc. My sister and I were -convinced- she needed AL, but that wasn't the case. Go to a hospital and ask for a discharge planner, and they had brochures which had price and feature comparisons of the different facilities in the area. The philosophy practiced by these outfits is "aging in place". The activties are good, so is socialization, and they are way less expensive that AL. Good luck to you !
Why don't these discharge reps offer this with their regular list they gave me when we left... is it more expensive or something?
From what you've said, it seems that perhaps your choice is not so much a matter of forcing your father into anything as it is allowing YOURSELF to be forced into servitude without limits.
God bless.
ps. the post before me of the concept "aging in place" was always in our family until their departures to be with the Lord.
If Dad really wants to stay home, and he has the resourced for paid help, do that for as long as you can, but I think he'd be better off around other people, not isolated at home (either his or yours). I'd insist that he give AL a try. Move him in for a trial stay. Do at least a month or he won't adjust. Make sure you get a commitment of support from the staff to help him adjust.
My dad and I were truly best friends and I'm grappling with the trust he had in my decisions. It will take a while for me to sort this all out. I had medicaid attendants in our home so I could continue teaching for the 4 years he was here. I retired last year to look after him as his health declined. Now I feel like I'm in PTSD. One of our hospice social workers told me it was time for me to be his daughter and not his caregiver, so we could reset our relationship before he died. I think that was valuable advice. Now, I have made it through Christmas with my children and grandchildren and I am looking around the house at my dad's things and missing him. He did have a glorious funeral that he and I planned so that was helpful. There are just so many aspects of our relationship that I probably took for granted but I know will never be replaced. Yep, I'm rambling....I just think care facilities are tricky. I have several wonderful years with my dad but I should have sought an alternative earlier, I think, as I feel so exhausted emotionally and physically and there are so many roles we all play that the pressure to kick it back in is expected, but I just want to keep crying my eyes out every day like I have since I placed him in the care facility. It's difficult to know when it's time for an elderly parent to move to another setting. I should have made that decision before the nights became so crazy that we both looked at each other in shock at the 6:00 am coffee time. He couldn't remember what had happened overnight and I had difficulty rallying to forget it. Precious times, but too emotionally exhausting to justify keeping him here so long. Maybe my perspective will change next week. I hope it does. I still have to retrieve his things...and all the Christmas decorations...from his storage area. Anyone struggling with decisions for elderly placement needs to set parameters of how far you can go before your brain and heart get too intertwined. Peace.
There are several caveats:
It's not cheap, but it's cheaper than most facility-related costs. It can be a royal pain to find the right caregivers (I always suggest going through personal referrals from friends or family, first, if possible, rather than through an agency). As far as I know, no insurance covers home caregivers (don't get me started: how stupid is THAT?), so the family or the elder needs to be able to pay for the services.
Family needs to be able to 100% trust the caregiver for the health and care of the elder. If you don't or can't find someone to trust, don't bother .. it will only add to your stress levels. And, in this case, the acceptance of trust has to be on a rapid track: ie, earning of trust time should be long enough to validate them, and short enough that your worry levels are eased and everyone can go on with their lives.
There is another potential solution. There's a program in many states called P.A.C.E (Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly) where a medicaid approved facility provides ALL medical care to the patient, with an at-home focus. Do a google search at Medicaid dot gov for details for your area.
Best wishes on a suitable outcome for your dad .. and let us know how it goes?
LadeeC
Only you can make this decision. It wasn't a tough one for me to make because I wanted my husband home with me. I couldn't bare to think of him being away from me. I do realize this is not your husband but one of your parents.
If you go with Homecare, make sure you go with a qualified/reputable company. I was there when Homecare was there. I had Homecare from 12 - 6 A.M. and I was in the next bedroom, down the hall from my husband and the caregiver. I would check on them both regularly. I couldn't help but do this. I didn't want anyone sleeping while watching my husband. Some people might say this would defeat the purpose of having Homecare. Even though I didn't get six hours of sleep, I was still able to get some sleep with Homecare so this was good. My husband recently passed away and I'm happy that he had Homecare and Hospice in the end. I heard several horror stories about ALF and NH. I knew this wasn't the route I wanted to go with my husband. I felt that he deserved better. Also, he didn't want to to go to ALF or NH. I honored his wishes. I'm still proud of myself to this day. Others tell me how devoted I was to my husband. The most important thing is that I believe he would have done exactly the same for me if the tables were turned. God bless him for loving me like 150+ %. I still weep daily because I miss him soooooooooooooooo much but I know in my heart that I did all that I possibly could for him and now he can rest in peace and I have peace of mind. I can only speak from my heart. I hope that my answer to your question is of some help to you. God bless you!!!
Sincerely,
RUBYINRED
In re to ALF, our Clients who are in ALF, for the most part, are very happy. It has enabled them to maintain some of their independence, while having someone oversee their ADL's and maintain their safety as well. Granted, nothing is perfect. Your parent could just as easily fall and be injured in an ALF as they could in their own home (or yours). Staff are trained for just about any situation imaginable, and provide all types of care, most of which is not very appealing to family "caregivers".
The feedback I've received from our Clients, for the most part, is they do not want their children caring for them, especially when it comes to bathing and toileting; it is much more acceptable for them to have this type of care come from a trusted stranger, such as the Caregivers at ALF's, than family.
When we get older, dignity and respect are everything, and to be able to help your elder maintain that is huge.
Another thing you must remember is that once an elder reaches the point of cognitive impairment, such as Dementia, they are no longer able to make sound financial decisions, manage their medications, or even choose wisely what they will eat. So to expect them to make sensible decisions regarding where they live is not reasonable either. You may want to take a moment to consider what your parent, in a right state of mind, would instruct you to do. It may give you some clarity and peace of mind in your decision making.
I have found an organization called Aging Care Advocates. For a fee ($500)? they will gather all information and talk to dad, all the doctors and all involved (including me) and make the decision for me. I am finding out more about it -- meeting a rep on Monday after my conference to get the Aid and Attendance going. I have gathered most of the options, but to determine the validity of those options would take a good amount of time and level headedness, and if these people turn out to be legit, it would be the best $500 I ever spend. They sort of act, as I can tell, like my management company does for my rental property, finding the renter, qualifying them, collecting the rent, keeping the needs clear. That costs me 5% of the rental income and very well worth it, even if the rental house is still upside down in the mortgage amount. we probably would have sold it by now except for the management co. Anyone ever heard of the Aging Care Advocates?
My mom lives in independent living very near me, but I do everything for her. She can still take her meds and fix the food (heat it up) that I bring in for her. I do all of her business stuff and fix her meds and bring her food (she can no longer get down to the dining room). I do her laundry and take her anywhere she needs to go. It's a lot of work for me, but she has her independence and I have my own life in my own place. This works for us. Good luck with whatever you decide. Just understand there is no perfect solution. Every option has pros and cons.
I can certainly see the attraction of delegating the whole process, not least that it creates a cordon sanitaire around the decisions that get made so that you don't land all the blame for them; and I'd also like the sound of an objective evaluation of the options; but don't part with your money until you've asked lots of questions from the nastiest and most suspicious parts of your mind.
I couldn't agree more with Blannie's point - there isn't going to be a perfect answer, and there's no way of predicting how you and your dad will feel on any given day, about all the different possibilities. But maybe you and your husband could work on some red lines that mustn't be crossed, and factor those in? Good luck, I hope there'll be some attractive options soon x