Welcome back Karl and first off, kudos for taking such great care of your Mom!
My hubby's mother (he too is an only child) had Alzheimer's for about twelve years until she passed away a little over a year ago. Part of that time - before she was officially diagnosed - she lived independently in a city 600 miles from us. Over the course of about two or three years, we must have made two dozen emergency flights to unscramble one mess or another that she had gotten herself into...including a fight with a neighbor that landed her in jail! (Only later did we realize that the weird behaviors and unexplained combativeness were symptoms of her disease!) Then MIL lived in Assisted Living for awhile until she began to wander and they feared she might wander out of the unlocked facility. Then she moved in with us for a while. I quit my job and tried to work from home so I that could be with her during the daytime. Hubby took over in the evenings and we put a pressure sensitive alarm in her bed and another alarm on her bedroom door so that, if she got up during the night, it woke us up. That worked as long as all she needed was supervision and reminders and "redirection." But then she got to the point where she needed more hands-on physical help than we could provide (she was a BIG woman) and and we had to move her into a Memory Care Facility. Like your Mom, she actually loved it and lived there quite happily for almost six years. Unfortunately, the cost ate up her entire savings and, while Hubby and I supplemented things for awhile, we eventually realized that we had to stop spending OUR retirement savings on her care...so we had to move her to a Medicaid facility for the last couple of years of her life. Not nearly so good.
They took good care of her physically but provided little or no mental stimulation or "social life." However, by that point, her mental capacity had deteriorated to the point where I don't think she was really even aware of her surroundings anymore.
Meanwhile, my stepmother was also diagnosed with Alz. My Dad, who has major health problems of his own (congestive heart failure, pulmonary fibrosis and T2 diabetes), became step-mom's sole caregiver, looking after her 24/7 by himself for seven years until it finally just became way too much for him. His pulmonary fibrosis requires him to use supplemental oxygen at all times and he had gotten so weak physically, he could no longer walk more than about 100 feet...much less look after a physically healthy wife with Alzheimer's who often behaved somewhat like a rambunctious four-year old child! The final straw was when she decided to reheat coffee while Dad was getting a shower...and set the Mr. Coffee carafe directly on the burner on the stove! Needless to say, the carafe broke and its plastic handle fell directly onto the burner, melted and eventually caught fire. Dad came out of the shower to find the house full of thick black smoke and stepmother sitting 10 feet away from the stove watching TV and apparently unaware that anything was amiss! Not at all good for his lung condition! Fortunately, he got the fire out and the two of them safely outside. But...
I wanted to move them both here to TX where I could look after them but my stepbrother, who has POA over her finances, absolutely refused to allow any of her money to be spent hiring daytime caregivers to help out or even to assist with her living expenses if she moved to Texas. In his mind, she had a paid-for home in NC, so why should she spend ANY money living anywhere else? Nor was he willing to even help pay for caregiver help for the two of them. In stepbrother's mind, if Dad couldn't manage, then DAD was the one who needed help so Dad should pay for it 100%. In his mind, his Mother was "a little forgetful sometimes" but, if it weren't for my Dad, she could still manage living by herself with no problems! This despite the fact that she had scored a 14 on the MMSE several years previously and had clearly declined since then.
Dad moved the two of them into a care facility in NC for awhile. (Her in the Alzheimer's wing and him around the corner in the Assisted Living Wing) with Dad paying the freight for the both of them...to the tune of almost $10,000/month! He then took Stepbrother to court to get the court to order him to take over paying for his mother's costs using HER money. Soon as the court required stepbrother to start paying, he started bitching about how unhappy his mother was there and finding nit-picky things to complain about regarding her care until he finally talked Dad into letting him take stepmother out and back home, supposedly to live with him and his wife.
Dad was left alone in the assisted living facility 30 miles away from his wife (the only reason he was in NC at all) and unable to drive himself, so he couldn't even go visit her. With all of his children living half a continent away and busy with jobs and spouses and families of our own, Dad spent almost two months there without a single visitor...feeling useless and forgotten. Even tho my brothers and I called him daily, he went into a deep depression, stopped eating, and lost nearly 25 lbs. And he wasn't overweight to start with.
When I got a call that they wanted to put him on hospice because his weight loss, combined with all his ongoing health issues indicated that he was probably within 6 months of dying, I put my foot down and insisted he move back to TX with me. He stayed with me for a few months, regained the weight he had lost, perked up emotionally, and then decided he wanted to have his "independence" again. We found him a little house less than 5 miles away, right across the street from a Dollar Store, and he now does fairly well on his own - doing most of his own cooking and cleaning, and walking (albeit ever so slowly) over to the store to shop for small items. I look after his finances, take him shopping and to church and to his doctor's appointments and try to help him have at least a semblance of a social life...and my brothers and his grandkids are close enough that they can come see him at least occasionally. And, since there is no way he can travel by himself anymore, I fly with him back to NC for visits to see my stepmother as often as possible. BTW, almost immediately after my Dad moved back to Texas, my stepbrother moved my stepmother back into an Alzheimer's Care facility (a cheaper one) because, according to him, she "suddenly" took a turn for the worse and became "impossible" for him and his wife to deal with.
Anyway, all that is just to say I TOTALLY get where you're coming from. When it comes to our parents, we muddle through the best we can, quite often setting our own lives totally on the back burner yet never quite feeling like we're doing enough.
I am so glad that you are getting a little bit of your life back! You deserve it. At least Hubby and I have had each other to lean on through everything. I honestly don't know how either of us would have survived if we'd each been single. ENJOY you upcoming vacation secure in the knowledge that your mother is safe and well-cared for. You're a good person and a very good son.
I'm glad you're back on the forum and I look forward to getting to know you as you drop the excess weight and take back your health!
Re-Newbie
But that is all water long under the bridge now. In retrospect, I'm glad I did it because it gave me an opportunity to get to know the woman raised my dear loving husband - while her personality was still intact even tho her memory might, at any given moment, have been wandering in some other decades. And during her more lucid times, she shared stories with me and Hubby that I'm sure we'd never have heard under any other circumstances.
that is awesome.
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