One aide in Mom's nursing home keeps offering to do "private" work for my her on weekends...in the same nursing home. Weekends and holidays are always short-staffed at this place, but has anyone ever hired a private nurse to supplement the nursing home staff? How does the nursing home administration handle that?
I guess my concern is that this aide works for the nursing home right now, so how can she go in there as a "private" nurse on the weekends?
But what I did do about a month ago, was hire a nursing student to stop in and check on Mom up to 5 times each week. I'm paying her $20 per visit to stay for one hour, assess the situation, and email me a report on what's going on. This is how I found out, for example, that Mom had tried to get out of her wheelchair last night and cut her leg. I'm not sure the nursing home would ever tell me that.
Mom is paralyzed on her left side from her stroke last August, so she needs assistance doing almost everything. She can operate the call button, but sometimes it falls away from where her right hand can reach it. And sometimes Mom just can think straight enough to know what to call about.
To those of you who give care at home, I salute you. I don't have the patience or the knowledge to do that myself, even if I didn't live 800 miles away (I fly in about 2 times per month). I don't even know how I would get her to where I live. So she's stuck in the nursing home and I'm stuck managing her care from a distance. A few relatives that live near her do drop in occasionally, but I can't count on them to notice anything or let me know if they do. All that talk about "establishing a care network" kind of falls apart eventually. That's why I hired the student nurse to send me reports...and I specifically instructed her NOT to help the nursing home staff because I didn't want the place worried about liability issues.
Mom hates it there, I don't blame her, but I've had to tell her its the new reality. Four months ago she was living alone, going to exercise, driving her car, having a beer occasionally, and then the stroke took that all away. But she's 88 and having a hard time accepting her current limitations. I guess I am too.
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