Sunday, February 21, 2021

GUY’S GOTTA TALK ABOUT…Alzheimer’s #35: Did Placing Mom and Dad in a Care Facility Hasten Their Deaths?

Dad’s diagnosis of Alzheimer’s stayed hidden from everyone until I took over the medical administration of my parents in 2015. Once I found out, there was a deafening silence from most of the people I know even though virtually all of them would add, “My _____ had Alzheimer’s…” But there was little help, little beyond people sadly shaking heads. Or horror stories. Lots of those. Even the ones who knew about the disease seemed to have received a gag order from some Central Alzheimer’s Command and did little more than mumble about the experience. Not one to shut up for any known reason, I started this part of my blog…

Did placing Mom and Dad in a care facility hasten their deaths?

The short answer is, for Mom, hmmm. They were living in the condominium they’d purchased seventeen years earlier when Mom started her precipitous slide after having a hip replacement in October of 2014 and refusing to do the prescribed exercises...and being just plain...older than she was the first time they'd replaced it. They moved into an Independent Living/Assisted Living/Memory Care facility (after long, arduous discussions, arguments, and confrontations…that was a horrible time I have no desire to recall let alone relive…) in September of 2015. Mom passed away in July of 2016. Dad moved in the same day as Mom, then passed in February of 2019 – 10 months for Mom; 3 years, seven months later…Short answer for Dad, is he probably lived LONGER going there…

First thing I’m going to note is that when I started searching Google for this essay, the FIRST thing that comes up (sometimes for two pages!) are ADVERTISEMENTS for nursing homes, assisted living facilities, and memory care facilities.

My parents were in a top tier facility, (then) half of the place was senior independent living. The other half was (then), two floors of assisted living and one of memory care. (Today, an entire wing of independent living has been added, and a second floor of memory care…)

There was underground parking, a spa and swimming pool, gourmet dining, barber/beauty shop, stunning appointments, a full activity program, a chapel with regular services, a medical clinic sent someone to the facility every other day, there’s nothing Mom and Dad DIDN’T have!

And yet they died eventually. Mom passed first and my brother and wife were “on watch” the moment she died. Dad? He was actually alone. I got the call from the facility while I was working (high school counselor), and I left to find him silent, in his room.

It was NOT a surprise; me and my siblings had been holding “death watches” for two weeks after he had a bad fall and reportedly’d had a small stroke. That was the beginning of his long slide. After a hospital stay, we’d allowed him to be placed on hospice care in order to get meds and frequent care (NOT 24/7) the facility wasn’t set up for that; but we wanted him to die in a familiar place. Mom died in her bed. We’d had to get a hospital bed for Dad for several reasons as well as rearrange his room to accommodate it and clear pathways for him to be able to see the TV and for us to sit – and to keep things as “normal” as we could.

Ya know…this has stirred a whole, Helluvalot of crap in me. I’m going to stop now and come back next week. Sorry…

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