So, as is written in my bio, I have the two kids, and the husband, and I've got guardianship of my Mom. Mom is 81, and has dementia issues, and has had for 4 years now, and Dad has macular degeneration, and there's not much more that they can do to help him keep his vision. He has the "wet" type, which robs people of their vision fastest, and most thoroughly. It's very scary for him, and I've been watching him pretty closely, looking for signs of depression, because he can't read the newspaper any more, he can't really enjoy watching TV much, because what he DOES see is jumping around in his field of vision, making it not really that relaxing of an activity. He can't see to play cards, or board games, so he says he doesn't like them. Guess he'd rather be thought of as a grumpy old codger than as "the blind guy". I don't know how to help him. It's frustrating, because whenever I suggest something that might be helpful, it's always too expensive for him. I suggested that we could get a magnifying screen for him to be able to read the paper. Medicare would help pay for some of it, I've got brothers that belong to the Lion's club, they could probably help get him one, but he won't do it. I've suggested other things that might make his life easier, but he won't do it. UGH! Like he's said all his life, you can sure tell an old Norwegian, but you can't tell him MUCH! He's also got hearing issues, AND he's not remembering things like he used to, either, so when you tell him something, he only hears about 3/4 of it, if you're lucky, and then he'll only remember half of THAT, so OY!

We moved them into an assisted living facility back in the beginning of January. They'd actually moved out of that physical building 20 years ago in May, when they were offered the position of Care Takers at the Huntington House apartments by Bob Thompson, the director of the Housing Authority in town. They moved out of this duplex and into Huntington house, and now, we've moved them back there. It had been owned by a good friend of Dad's, and we lived there for Oh, I don't know, 2 or 3 years, back in the 80's. Between then and now, the OTHER half of the duplex had been involved with a fire, and the Woman who owns another Home based assisted living facility around the corner bought it, completely gutted it, removed the dividers between the two halves, and turned it into a 4 bed adult family home. When I got wind of the place, I was SO excited! Took my oldest brother, and we went to look at it, and other than the fact that Mom and Dad have separate bedrooms now, it's as close to ideal as we could POSSIBLY have found! The place is perfect. Or almost perfect. There are a couple of things that might be "better" for them, but really, is ANYplace EVER perfect?

The day we moved them to the new place, Mom fell in the bedroom at the old apartment. Don't know how she got in the room alone, with so many of us there, but she did, and whammo, down she went. Then she fell again at the new place mid-month, and then fell again on the 31 of Jan. That one resulted in a bleed on her brain, and a week long hospital stay, and now she's in a local nursing home for rehab. I try to get there every day, because I know that residents of nursing homes who have regular visitors get better care. I also don't ever go at the same time, two days in a row, so that I'm never "expected", so that I can get a good sense of how she's being treated.

Well, Monday, we decided that since there's a possibility that she'll be going home sometime next week, that we should maybe take her back for a visit first, to see if the caregivers that work there think they'll be able to "handle" her now that she's got even more cognitive issues, etc... so I went to pick her up at 10 in the morning. I got there a little early, but only like 5 or 10 minutes. Didn't expect anyone to rush around and accommodate me because I was early. I'm just like that. When I was coming in, the CNA that usually works in the wing Mom is in said, "oh, she's down in therapy right now." So I figured they wanted to get her therapy done with before she left for the afternoon. No big deal. I went to the therapy room, and she wasn't there. OK, maybe we missed her in the transit, no big deal. SO I head back to her room, and the CNA is about 30 feet ahead of me in the hall, and she says, "Well! Delores! How did you..." at that point, she realized I was behind her, so she quit talking. I get down to her room, and she's on her bed, and her wheelchair is nowhere to be seen. I turn around, and one of the physical therapy workers is literally jogging up the hallway with Mom's chair. At the time, I figured, "Oh, there was something wrong with her chair, they brought her back to her room, took the chair, fixed it, or replaced it, and were now bringing it back to her"

On Tuesday, Mom had a doctor's appointment in Marshfield, with the Orthopaedic surgeon who did her shoulder replacement a couple of years back. It showed that it was dislocated on her films from the fall, so he wanted to look at it, and see if there was anything more HE could do to "fix" it, or at least make her comfortable. She's not in pain, it's just dislocated, because she refused to follow through with her therapy, and there are virtually no muscles holding it in place at this point. the only thing to do would be to re-do the ENTIRE surgery, and that wouldn't guarantee anything. She's not in pain, so they're going to leave it alone. (THANK GOD!)

When I took her back to the home after her appointment yesterday, the nurse and the CNA just casually brought up the fact that Mom had, "the other day", but they MEANT on Monday morning, she had slipped away from PT, "walked" her wheelchair down to the door to the stairway, got OUT of the chair, pushed open the door, WALKED up the steps, Opened the door at the TOP of the stairs, and walked down the hallway to her room, and laid herself down, without anybody knowing she was on the move. I have to assume, after watching her walk, that she HAD to have been unsupervised, and on her own for at LEAST 10 minutes. THAT, to me, is COMPLETELY unacceptable! And when I talked to the ombudsperson, she said that unfortunately, stuff like that happens all the time. And because she DIDN'T get hurt, there's not a whole lot I can do about it. It's VERY frustrating. And there are so many other things that have happened there, like medicine errors, and just generally not for them knowing where she is when I go to visit. One person will say she's in therapy, they'll say she's getting her hair done, they'll say she's back in her room. It's very frustrating!

Thanks for listening.