[David Jones]

We recently had to take mom out of her house and move her into an "independent" living facility. I personally think she's to much for them and can see her going into a more nursing home setting. She has vascular dementia and is slowly going blind from a non-cancerous tumor, along with a cataract in one eye and an eye that had the cataract removed without getting the vision back due to her vascular issue. 68 years of heavy smoking does that. We briefly discussed moving her in but realized that we couldn't keep up with her. I had the "talk" with her a few months ago and I have to tell you that telling your mother that she's got to leave the house she's been in for a couple of decades is not for the faint of heart. She's now basically forgotten her house and the smokes she enjoyed all those years are not even a distant memory. She's forgotten. We have to call her to tell her to go down to get up for 8am breakfast at the cafeteria and a lady that lives above her stops by and takes her to lunch and supper. A bath? I think she'd never take one but my wife makes sure she does every couple of days. Talk about complaining.....mom DOES NOT like to get a shower. Ever tried coaching a nearly blind dementia patient through changing the TV channel via telephone? I've made the 2 mile drive a couple of times just to rescue her from her TV.