84 y/o dementia, some memory issues, serious depression, anxiety hip replacement, PT/OT/ST nothing is helping her leg strength. Drs say ongoing UTI, compliance, med management, and isolation. Will this get better? We go take her out to eat, out to drive, just out. Staff helps, I’m out of ideas.
This forum has helped, tell me what next?
The isolation I think you mean being in a room at a home? Or does she live with you. If she lives with you then research to be done in your area. If she is in a home I can let you know what I did to get my mom to come out of her room and join in, go on excursions etc. hard work, took 6-8 months
I play Go fish with her rules.
Connect 4 her rules
i have photographs to put in an ongoing photo album
old photos a yr books to reminisce
wine and cheese eve 4 pm white wine small sherry type glasses, berries best crackers and cheese
there is a path out the front it’s red stamped brick. We go on red brick road adventures. Pick leaves, flowers, look at gardens, bugs. Walker in tow with sit downs inbetween
i played bingo at the nursing home with them
i went back to hometown in Oklahoma bought books of literature for like a 6-10 yr old plus photograph books of Pryor from the 40s-50s.
i read her chapters of the Oklahoma older children adventure books.
We make tea together. It’s her job, I assist😏.
All the best.
It is so horrifically painful to see, and you long for respite. You think that there is something YOU can do to make it better, to change the course of it. I think that is unlikely. You take her out to eat? To a drive? Blessings upon you because for me, in this condition, it is the only thing I would truly love. Take me for a Burger King; take me for a drive; let the animal therapy visits commence. I am out of ideas as well at that point.
I am so sorry. Not everything can be fixed and the good and decent caregivers are the ones so desperate to fix it, so wanting to believe there is something that might. Treasure the time you have. If you have pictures take them in one at a time. Show them to her. Ask her to "Tell me about Uncle Henry". You might get some stories you can treasure, because I sure have some about my Dad's Uncle Henry (Think Illinois after the covered wagons; thing so many rattlers in the creek that he walked out in the a.m. lifting them and cracking their spines by the dozens.)
These are their lives. Long lives for some of our elders. And YOU are there. Still hoping to make a difference. It doesn't honestly get better than that.
If it brings pain, then weep (it's the proper response) but remember, too, these were long, whole, full lives with their measure of beauty and pain.
They did strut their hours upon the stage. Ask her. How did you wash clothes? Did you sew? What did you cook?