Hello all,
I wondered if I could draw on your collective wisdom.
My MIL was diagnosed with alzheimer's about 6 months ago. She's 81 and has been showing symptoms since April 23.
Her main symptoms are short term memory loss. She lives alone and can wash herself, dress herself, cook, buy food. Her mobility is good. No other serious health conditions.
She has a carer once a day. They don't need to do much as she is physically able, but they check she is throwing out old food, check if she needs shopping (there is a supermarket in sight of her lounge window, literally a stone's throw from her front door) and just check on her and do a bit of washing up if needs be.
In the last three months she has taken to calling my husband, her son, several times a day. This has escalated to her getting passers by and neighbours to call on her behalf too.
The cycle seems to be, the carer comes in the morning. This seems to over stimulate her, agitate her. Either way she will often make her first call just after they have gone. Although she can't remember they have been. She is obsessed with calling ambulances. All the calls are based on getting us to call an ambulance for her, or her telling us she's already called one, or she's waited for a stranger to pass her house and asked them to call one.
The paramedics arrive, assess her, see she is ok, apart from the anxiety, calm her down and leave.
Sometimes they take her to hospital. The hospital usually take the view of 'there is nothing we can do for this woman/nothing physically wrong with her' and she gets sent home the same day. No overnight stay.
This month this has escalated to her being kept in hospital overnight. There was a mix up with discharge paperwork that meant she was in hospital for over a week. Yesterday, the paperwork was finally corrected and they discharged her.
Except, despite complaining she didn't want to be in hospital (after spending months calling ambulances to get them to take her to hospital) she refused to get out of the hospital transport vehicle. Hospital transport called us saying that they were at her house but she was refusing to get out vehicle. This went on for over an hour. Eventually they managed to persuade her.
Whereupon, her social worker got called and had to go to her house. She absconded, whatever that really means we don't know yet, and she created such a scene and was taken back to hospital because that is what she wanted. The social worker says she is nowhere near the stage that she needs to be in residential care. She is asking to stay in hospital.
So now she's bed blocking again and we are at stale mate.
The idea was that her care at home would be upped from one care visit a day, to four. But that was never given the chance to start, because she created such a scene at discharge.
Has anyone experienced this sort of thing?
My husband thinks she might also have vascular dementia although this has not been confirmed (she'll often complain she is dizzy, she has high cholesterol etc).
What would next steps be?
I wondered if I could draw on your collective wisdom.
My MIL was diagnosed with alzheimer's about 6 months ago. She's 81 and has been showing symptoms since April 23.
Her main symptoms are short term memory loss. She lives alone and can wash herself, dress herself, cook, buy food. Her mobility is good. No other serious health conditions.
She has a carer once a day. They don't need to do much as she is physically able, but they check she is throwing out old food, check if she needs shopping (there is a supermarket in sight of her lounge window, literally a stone's throw from her front door) and just check on her and do a bit of washing up if needs be.
In the last three months she has taken to calling my husband, her son, several times a day. This has escalated to her getting passers by and neighbours to call on her behalf too.
The cycle seems to be, the carer comes in the morning. This seems to over stimulate her, agitate her. Either way she will often make her first call just after they have gone. Although she can't remember they have been. She is obsessed with calling ambulances. All the calls are based on getting us to call an ambulance for her, or her telling us she's already called one, or she's waited for a stranger to pass her house and asked them to call one.
The paramedics arrive, assess her, see she is ok, apart from the anxiety, calm her down and leave.
Sometimes they take her to hospital. The hospital usually take the view of 'there is nothing we can do for this woman/nothing physically wrong with her' and she gets sent home the same day. No overnight stay.
This month this has escalated to her being kept in hospital overnight. There was a mix up with discharge paperwork that meant she was in hospital for over a week. Yesterday, the paperwork was finally corrected and they discharged her.
Except, despite complaining she didn't want to be in hospital (after spending months calling ambulances to get them to take her to hospital) she refused to get out of the hospital transport vehicle. Hospital transport called us saying that they were at her house but she was refusing to get out vehicle. This went on for over an hour. Eventually they managed to persuade her.
Whereupon, her social worker got called and had to go to her house. She absconded, whatever that really means we don't know yet, and she created such a scene and was taken back to hospital because that is what she wanted. The social worker says she is nowhere near the stage that she needs to be in residential care. She is asking to stay in hospital.
So now she's bed blocking again and we are at stale mate.
The idea was that her care at home would be upped from one care visit a day, to four. But that was never given the chance to start, because she created such a scene at discharge.
Has anyone experienced this sort of thing?
My husband thinks she might also have vascular dementia although this has not been confirmed (she'll often complain she is dizzy, she has high cholesterol etc).
What would next steps be?
