My mom has Alzheimers. She lives in assisted living just ten minutes from my house. I bring her to my house a few times a week. She is in heaven when she is there. We put puzzles together, she talks on the phone to her brother and sister, we read, have coffee and hang out together. I always take her back before her dinner time and she goes willingly, thanking me for the day. I have found that if I take her back after dinner, she gets really confused and is not sure she belongs there. I have to convince her that she lives there. She gets really scared. I learned that if she sits with everyone at dinner, she sees that they all know her and she adjusts easier. The caregivers tell me my mom is a different person around me. It is not possible for my mom to live with me full time. Am I doing more harm than good bringing her to my house and loving her up the way I do? Is it keeping her from adjusting to assisted living? I keep asking her care givers and they keep telling me to continue what I'm doing, she loves it so much. She looks for me constantly when I'm not there. My mom has never been on medication and does not believe in conventional medicine. She had an unwitnessed incedent in assisted living that required her to leave the facility and get on a drug regiment. She is currently in a nursing home associated with the assisted living facility. She was a vegetable when I saw her. She went in the facility walking, feeding herself, toileting herself, and dressing herself, and now she can do none of them. I insisted they get her up to go to the bathroom because she would cry if she had to go in the diaper they put her in. I'm horrified, desperate and not sure where to turn. I found an assisted living facility that has a seperate dementia building that I'm hoping to move her into. This one uses redirection and has trained aides to take care of residents wtih dementia. They did an evaluation on her and won't take her unless we can get her to do something on her own. The nursing home told me because my mom has never used medications, she is super sensitive to them. She is showing signs of getting stronger but is still not able to walk or feed herself. She is talking and has shown joy and love when I was there last. The caregiver told me she got upset when I left. Again, I am torn. I feel responsible for her aggression and aggitation. I know she wants to be with me but there is no way I can do that for her. Would she be better off forgetting me? I don't know what to do......
It sounds like your mom has sundowner's syndrome. That's when our elderly parents who have dementia become agitated in late afternoon through the evening. Have you tried taking her back right before dinner? Making sure she's there and settled in by the time they are serving dinner?
Your mom seems to get a lot of joy out of being at your house and being around the family. I wouldn't discontinue that just yet. There may come a time when it's too difficult on her, where she may become agitated and more confused but she doesn't seem to be there yet. Play with the timing a little more, see if her confusion and fear ("I live here??") lessen if you take her back earlier.
With dementia the symptoms and how it affects our loved ones is constantly changing. We no sooner get used to one way of dealing with things when something else pops up and we have to rearrange everything again. Be flexible. Your mom will continue to change and decline. All you can do is try to accommodate it so you keep her agitation and confusion to a minimum. And no, I don't think it would be better if you left your mom to forget you. I don't think she would forget you.
If yes to both, then I'd suggest you make yourself part of her daily routine to reinforce the work the professional staff are doing with her. Don't take her out, and do try to stick to a predictable pattern of visits and activities within the NH. Ask the staff for advice about what you can do that would most encourage her. See how it goes for a little while - it's reasonable to expect she'd make progress, and you can take stock again. But don't stop visiting her: you'd be miserable and she'd lose important stimulation, apart from the pleasure she still gets from seeing you.
Don't give up on her. You deserve to have as much quality time with her as you wish. Love is a powerful force. Your love is important for her.
My mom had a UTI over a year ago and before I moved her to a retirement home.
She accused me of awful things, said I had called and "ripped her heart out". I was in tears. Thankfully my niece recognized the problem. I had to just wait for her to finish the antibiotics to see her get better. She still depends on me for a lot, but thankfully she knows me. Good luck with your efforts. I wish I could make my mom that happy. She forgets family gatherings just hours after getting home. Breaks my heart.
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