Since this past January my 96 YO mother decided that she was going to sell her condo in Scottsdale, and move back to Ohio to live closer to us as traveling back and forth more frequently was inconvenient for us, and would likely become needed more often as she aged.
Her thought was that she could still live independently in her own apartment and we would be close by if needed. We went out to visit and talk the logistics out in middle Jan. and as we spent 2 weeks out in Scottsdale it became apparent that although she was living by herself she was just barely getting by and she wasn't able to or just didn't care to, eat regular meals with enough nutrients to sustain her, hygiene wasn't a major consideration as showers were few and far apart.
She just wanted to sit in her Lazy boy and watch MSNBC with her TDS (Trump derangement syndrome), (she still cannot get over the dems losing the presidential election) and has high hopes that the Russian collusion investigation is going to prove that Trump and the Russians stole the election.
My wife is an RN/certified case manager for a major insurance company, and has 22 years experience as a working hands on nurse, plus close to 5 years as a case manager working with Medicaid/medicre patients. She is one of the most caring people you'd ever meet and assessed the situation with my mother, and decided she wasn't safe to live alone and she was at the extreme edge of failing at living alone.
Make a long story short, the condo sold in 4 days, we hired a moving company to move the cherished possessions to a storage unit here in Ohio. We told her she was going to be coming to our home to live (not a popular decision with my mother). Our long term goal is to buy a larger home with enough room to have her furniture with her, and something of a mother in law suite.
First thing as we get her to Ohio is she is malnourished, dehydrated, and has upper GI symptoms. Her muscles have atrophied because of her sitting in the damn Lazy Boy for the last 4 years. This requires numerous trips to the ER, the doctor, we had to get a home health care team of 2 physical therapists, a skilled nurse, and a bath aide. We have also had a psych nurse, and a nutritionist in to further assist in the rehab. The good news is her weight loss has turned around and she is probably twice as strong as she was when she got here. The doctor and nurses have diagnosed her with depression and she is on anti depressants at this point. She has a bad knee walks with a walker, and was fitted for a leg brace roughly a year ago and until the PT insisted she wear it, the brace just sat in the bag unused.
She has totally screwed up her financial situation by refusing to file federal tax returns near as we can figure out since 1994-95. We have retained an attorney to try to file back returns, but have almost no records to reconstruct her finances. Although we have gone out of our way over the last 6 months there is no appreciation at all for our efforts, only chronic complaining about anything and everything.
One avenue we have not done as yet, is family counseling, this is probably coming up shortly as my wife and I are about at the ends of our rope.
She is quite well as far as not exhibiting symptoms of Alzheimer's or dementia, and is able to manage her monthly finances as far as getting the bills in the mail, reconciling her checkbook and sending out the payments on time.
Now to get to the crux of the situation, my mother has turned our home into a battle zone. She is ready to complain or argue about most anything at any time. I'm just wondering if others have experienced anything similar and how you got through it without mass applications of alcohol
...…………..LOL
Just throwing this out there to see if we could have overlooked something obvious that has worked for someone else.