Once again mum has missed an appointment, no matter what appointment it is, mum either goes into a rage over something or nothing or just flately refuses to go as according to her there is nothing wrong,. I have tried not to tell her until an hour befor in the hope she will not have time to think about them but that doesn’t work either, I have tried being nice or firm but still no luck even tried to get mum out with pretence of shopping or visit a cafe for tea and cake ......nothing works what Can I do. I phoned Dr surgery today and told them mum was being aggressive as she didn’t want to go but all that was said was to phone for another appointment....what will happen if she’s really poorly...I give up
Appointments
- Thread starter sue_1
- Start date
Firstly look after yourself. I say this from experience. It's a hard thing to do as there is a compulsion to help the PWD. I don't know who decides when someone has lack of capacity but it's hard dealing with someone who is adamant they are fine when it's so obvious they are not.
hi @sue_1
I fear the others may be correct, tough as that is to accept
personally, I might write to the GP outlining why your mum needs to be seen by her doctor, what you have to do to try to get her to the practice and exactly how she responds to you, proving the you are taking your care of your mother seriously ... then point out that your mum's dementia is responsible for her reactions and makes her a vulnerable adult for whom, as you understand it, the GP has a duty of care and you'd be grateful if s/he would make a home visit because you are concerned about your mum's health
at the very least your letter should be noted on your mum's records
I fear the others may be correct, tough as that is to accept
personally, I might write to the GP outlining why your mum needs to be seen by her doctor, what you have to do to try to get her to the practice and exactly how she responds to you, proving the you are taking your care of your mother seriously ... then point out that your mum's dementia is responsible for her reactions and makes her a vulnerable adult for whom, as you understand it, the GP has a duty of care and you'd be grateful if s/he would make a home visit because you are concerned about your mum's health
at the very least your letter should be noted on your mum's records
I am sorry but that is all the reaction you will get from the receptionist. Shedrech's advice is excellent and it is very similar to what I had to do.
My dad was also very anti the Dr's and I could not get him to go there for any reason, it took an incident with the Police, a letter from me detailing all my concerns and a telephone consultation with a Dr explaining the situation in more detail and telling them how concerned I was, to finally get a Dr to agree to do a home visit. From then on they were very accommodating.
So far I haven't had problems getting mum to the GP as long as she thinks the appointment is for something she's concerned about. I hijack them for my own agenda if need be. Getting her to anything that involves the mental health team is proving impossible though.
With my mother-in-law she always had home visits from the GP the memory clinic or any other professional. Admittedly she did have mobility problems but what my husband did he phoned the GP and explained his concerns about his mother's behaviour which to be fair to the GP did prompt another home visit.
As other posters have said you have to wait for a crisis to happen my mother-in-law refused to go outside her own house for nearly two years. Towards the end of that time we realized that she needed full-time care but we also realized she would have refused to go . We had to wait till a crisis happened an emergency when she went into hospital and we seized that opportunity to find residential care. Not an easy situation
Just a thought, I once got my dad into the Dr’s for his flu jab by telling him the appointment was for me. I didn’t tell him where we were going, we just happened to be walking past when I said to him I have to pop in here. He said he’d wait outside but I told him I might be a while and it was cold and I needed his help. It worked, I got the nurse to play along and he pretended to give me the flu jab then offered to do dad.
We changed doctors surgery, and the first thing they said was that when we come in for an appointment we can use a empty room to wait in rather than the general waiting room. This has made a big difference and makes going to the doctors a lot easier. Perhaps your doctors are not aware of the problem of coping with someone with dementia.
