I am a only child, cared for mum for a year and half, for 40 hours a week. She doesn't go anywhere without me, we go to the Alzheimers Cafe's 3 times a week and trips out etc.... She can't manage her drugs very well, so I give them, but otherwise she is safe to live on her own. However, from me leaving at 5pm at night and going back at 9am next morning and at weekends she is lonely. Hardly any family or friends and she is abrupt and can't understand why I can't go more at the weekends. I am married, live 12 miles away and I need weekends to clean and garden and time with my husband. So I am fed up, depressed, tired, and need a solution... I keep putting it off, but I think the time is coming for a better solution. Mum is deteriorating a little, but I worry about the dark nights, mum stressed because she doesn't like being on her own, locking doors correctly, turning gas fire on and off, eating and drinking etc.... She eats when I am there and we go for fish and chips once a week and other places and I cook. But when I am not there I suspect she eats crisps and biscuits and cake - the odd sandwich. She is a very independent lady (50's lady). Her house and garden is her palace and although she has a gardener now, she still cleans around the house and I do the hard jobs. She loves clothes, but has lost 3 stone and moves her clothes and belongings around the home and can never find anything and I get the blame. So ideally I would like mum to have a flat or nice room in a place where she is safe and can have meals and carers if she eventually needs them, but is there places like that. I feel the care home is too much yet, but a flat or bungalow, would be no better - she still would be vunerable.... She isn't going to be happy with whatever I say - she refused carers, befrienders and any strangers....
What next? Mum lives in her own home, has moderate mixed dementia - but is lonely!
- Thread starter Earthangel
- Start date
Oh and one more thing.....
Do you shut the door, when the horse as bolted, or make sure something awful doesn't happen before. I would never forgive myself, is mum was robbed, attacked, or even worse raped. You here so many awful things in the news and I am worried mum could open the door to a stranger, if she thought she was alright to do so. Mum like most Dementia sufferers thinks she is alright, and makes every excuse in the book and blames me for everything...... it isn't her?
Do you shut the door, when the horse as bolted, or make sure something awful doesn't happen before. I would never forgive myself, is mum was robbed, attacked, or even worse raped. You here so many awful things in the news and I am worried mum could open the door to a stranger, if she thought she was alright to do so. Mum like most Dementia sufferers thinks she is alright, and makes every excuse in the book and blames me for everything...... it isn't her?
My mum is in sheltered extra care, sometimes called assisted living.
It means she has her own flat, but uses the lunchtime restaurant and goes to alot of the available activities. Carers come am and pm to give her tablets, and as she won't clean they clean weekly. The care package is in 5 hour chunks, from just a call button, to 20 hours a week. My mum has 5 hours a week and the cleaning is a separate bill but by the same carers.
It may suit your mum based on what you say. Nothing is ideal and leaving her house will be a wrench but there is only so much of you.
This website had all the ones local to me and I found the one my mum is in from it.
http://www.housingcare.org/elderly-uk-assisted-living-extra-care-housing.aspx
It means she has her own flat, but uses the lunchtime restaurant and goes to alot of the available activities. Carers come am and pm to give her tablets, and as she won't clean they clean weekly. The care package is in 5 hour chunks, from just a call button, to 20 hours a week. My mum has 5 hours a week and the cleaning is a separate bill but by the same carers.
It may suit your mum based on what you say. Nothing is ideal and leaving her house will be a wrench but there is only so much of you.
This website had all the ones local to me and I found the one my mum is in from it.
http://www.housingcare.org/elderly-uk-assisted-living-extra-care-housing.aspx
My mum has morning and evening carers to make sure she has taken her tablets. Have told her lock the door, but her latest is she doesn't wash her dishes and leaves then to pile up so eventually my sister or I but it's the carers who do her washing up. It's almost become a little like the mad hatters tea party where they move round the table to get clean dishes
Oh Earthangel, your situation sounds to similar to how mine was. When my dad died nearly 3 years ago now, mum struggled on alone in the house. She was rattling around and like your mum, not eating, just lived on biscuits and cake. I would buy her yogurts and fruit and stuff she could just eat without cooking but it would just get wasted as she wouldn't eat it. I too was caring long distance 90 mile round trip 4-5 times a week. Before dad died I was caring for him too, so 8 years in total I did that trip. I felt wasted, burnt out, depressed and at my wits end. Mum hid stuff in the house and then phoned the police and said she'd had break in. I got a call to say CID were dusting for fingerprints!!!!! Sounds funny but at the time it wasn't. Needless to say they found mums 'stolen' purse, gold chain and tv remote in the house! My brothers, all 3 of them are useless and let me get on with it all with little or no support and would not support me trying to move mum. She was adamant we'd have to carry her out and she would die if we moved her. Had tears, threats, screaming like a banshee. In the end I didn't want mum to go into a care home but that was really the only solution as there is a lack of self contained units that will take dementia sufferers. So hubby and I sold our house, talked my brothers round about selling mums house and we bought a bungalow and moved mum in with us. Been in 18 months now and mum is still alive, she didn't die and she walked out of her house without a murmur!! We used mums money to buy the bungalow as my one of my brothers was so worried we were going to fiddle them out of their inheritance!!! Too bloody thick to realise what we're doing is saving their inheritance!! 
We have converted the garage to make a bigger bedroom, shower room for mum and it will be ready within 2 weeks. I'm not suggesting you do the same, not every can. We had the opportunity and too it. For the most part it works really well. I have a carer an hour a day 7 days a week to shower and dress mum and that makes a huge difference to me. Explore all the avenues open to your mum and make the best decision you can for her. Above all else do not feel guilty, you have done so much for her and once she is safe somewhere, you will feel more relaxed and can get your life back on track. I wish you all the luck in the world xx
We have converted the garage to make a bigger bedroom, shower room for mum and it will be ready within 2 weeks. I'm not suggesting you do the same, not every can. We had the opportunity and too it. For the most part it works really well. I have a carer an hour a day 7 days a week to shower and dress mum and that makes a huge difference to me. Explore all the avenues open to your mum and make the best decision you can for her. Above all else do not feel guilty, you have done so much for her and once she is safe somewhere, you will feel more relaxed and can get your life back on track. I wish you all the luck in the world xx
