What can you do with 85 yr old with COPD harasses, is nasty, dismissed every caregiver in this house? With no caregiver, all I hear is we need someone to clean, launder, transport. I watch her quality of life go down as her stubbornness and hatred grows. Her primary is angry with me because she is 40 pounds overweight, but it's the only time she's not abusive.
Great big warm hug! You are such a trooper and you need to do what works for you and forget about pleasing her. She lives to be miserable.
Tell her primary that he can take her for a month and then explain how to do it better.
Sadly, people with dementia often are not agreeable. They may dislike a lot of things that are for their own good. They can be agitated, unhappy and resistent to care. Sometimes, medication helps.
The weight issue is tough. Her doctor likely blames you, because you buy the food and prepare it. Some people with dementia lose weight, while others gain. It's a difficult thing to address with everything else you have going on.
When Mom stopped driving I set boundries. One day a week for shopping and errands. We went out to dinner once a week. Appts made at my convenience, I still worked. She eventually lived with me. I was lucky, the woman I hired to bathe her was someone she knew. My Mom was easy to care for but it was the unpredictability of her Dementia and the incontinence I could not handle. I am a planner and like order. Can't happen with someone who has Dementia. I also overwhelm easily.
You will not be able to reason with Mom. If you need someone to clean, hire them. If you need someone to watch Mom, bath her whatever do it. I am not beyond threats. Tell her if she won't allow an aide, then you will need to consider placing her in an AL. Depending on where she is in her Dementia journey, she will understand or not.
Someone, on the forum suggested that aides be introduced as friends. Maybe just visiting the first couple of times. Or "helping" you and little by little u can back off.
If her behavior is really getting you down, then placing her may be what you need to do.
Things don't get better with dementia, either, they only get worse. The anger grows and the abuse is likely to get even uglier. In Memory Care, she'll be with others her own age to hang around with, and she'll be cared for by a team of people who work 24/7 to do so. My own mother lives in Memory Care and gets excellent care there, I'm happy to say. When she runs out of money to private pay in 2021, I will apply for Medicaid to fund her stay in Skilled Nursing, if she's still alive (she's 93.5) There is no way I'd be willing or able to care for her in my home because she has way too many issues for me to handle, plus she's got a very negative and nasty disposition. I would never subject myself or my husband to such a thing.
Wishing you the best of luck finding alternative living arrangements for your mother.