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Alzheimer's is complicated
15 years ago
Just going to ramble about my father and the extra work it all causes, don't mind me, hehe...
A few years ago, my father was diagnosed with either Alzheimer's or dementia (they aren't really sure which). He's happy enough, and seems to take care of himself just fine, it's just like there's a disconnect between his brain and his mouth. He can't properly express himself vocally. You always feel like you're coming in on a conversation in the middle, and he uses the wrong pronouns all the time. Anyway, my sister is a hospice nurse, so she takes care of the medical side of things, and I'm an analyst so with power of attorney I take care of the financial side of things. He's pretty well covered!
Problem is, he's got 5 cats, and they are pretty much his world. Other problem is, he lives on a fairly remote hill in town, and we're always afraid he'll leave a stove on some day or have some other accident. Just this year, he didn't understand that the smoke detector was going off because he burned some toast. He called me, and was barely able to explain what was going on, just mentioned something was beeping. I finally got over to see, and it wasn't a clock or anything like I had thought, but the detector (which he removed from the ceiling in order to shut it up). Imagine if that had been a real fire! Anyway, us kids are a bit worried about it all...
SO, since an assisted living facility would most likely not let him keep 5 cats, and it's horrendously expensive to have someone move in with him as a caregiver, we decided to use some of his funds to upgrade a large addition to my sister's house, and eventually have him move in with her so she and another caregiver friend of hers can be close by. My sister says eventually he'll need help doing everything, from bathroom to dressing and such. He's not to that stage yet, but having the apartment available and sitting there waiting will let us move him on a moment's notice. I'm really glad she's in the line of work she is, it makes it a lot easier to cope with his future! The apartment will be a full-sized one, complete with a small kitchen, bathroom, and laundry room, and almost as big as the house he's in now, so that will be nice, and a good investment once he passes away and my sister sells the house.
Being in charge of the financial side of a construction project the size of this one (over $100K) has been insane, though. Mainly working with my father's bank and financial adviser trying to work out where the money will come from. We have an excellent general contractor handling all the individual contractors, and that's made things much easier (my sister and I still get to have lives of our own). Ugh, but now we're cashing part of IRAs, and worried about his tax bracket, and finally I'm having to try and process a short term loan for the last payment (the place is about 1 week out from being finished) and trying to collect information on his assets when he doesn't know where the papers are and doesn't even understand what we're trying to do for him.
Our big remaining question is this: when to move him? It will be all finished and sitting vacant, just waiting, in a week or two's time. One of the things he holds on to is his regular routine, and that will be thrown into a tizzy having to leave the house he's known for the last 10 years. He still even drives, at this point, and very well (he was a book salesman for over 20 years and traveled everywhere by car) as long as he sticks to the routes he knows. But, in his mind, nothing's happened to warrant him moving, and I really don't think he'll "get" the reason he has to move. We almost wish something minor *would* happen, to make it obvious he should move. But it really seems silly to wait until that actually happens, and not very responsible either. Anyway, I've found some local Alzheimer's family support groups that I may drop by, fairly soon, because this can't be an uncommon thing: uprooting someone who is too old to live alone so isolated. I'm sure people have tricks for explaining and handling it, right? We shall see. Any advice from people out there who have gone through something similar would be appreciated though ^^
Anyway, that's what's going on in my life lately, can't wait until the financial side of all this is all done and I can go back to just watching his bank account for shysters who might try to take advantage of him over the phone (and believe me, they're tried, with "offers" and "oh just give me your credit card number"). Poor guy answers almost all the charity mail with some cash in an envelope for them, and so he's on almost every list out there for every cause.
A few years ago, my father was diagnosed with either Alzheimer's or dementia (they aren't really sure which). He's happy enough, and seems to take care of himself just fine, it's just like there's a disconnect between his brain and his mouth. He can't properly express himself vocally. You always feel like you're coming in on a conversation in the middle, and he uses the wrong pronouns all the time. Anyway, my sister is a hospice nurse, so she takes care of the medical side of things, and I'm an analyst so with power of attorney I take care of the financial side of things. He's pretty well covered!
Problem is, he's got 5 cats, and they are pretty much his world. Other problem is, he lives on a fairly remote hill in town, and we're always afraid he'll leave a stove on some day or have some other accident. Just this year, he didn't understand that the smoke detector was going off because he burned some toast. He called me, and was barely able to explain what was going on, just mentioned something was beeping. I finally got over to see, and it wasn't a clock or anything like I had thought, but the detector (which he removed from the ceiling in order to shut it up). Imagine if that had been a real fire! Anyway, us kids are a bit worried about it all...
SO, since an assisted living facility would most likely not let him keep 5 cats, and it's horrendously expensive to have someone move in with him as a caregiver, we decided to use some of his funds to upgrade a large addition to my sister's house, and eventually have him move in with her so she and another caregiver friend of hers can be close by. My sister says eventually he'll need help doing everything, from bathroom to dressing and such. He's not to that stage yet, but having the apartment available and sitting there waiting will let us move him on a moment's notice. I'm really glad she's in the line of work she is, it makes it a lot easier to cope with his future! The apartment will be a full-sized one, complete with a small kitchen, bathroom, and laundry room, and almost as big as the house he's in now, so that will be nice, and a good investment once he passes away and my sister sells the house.
Being in charge of the financial side of a construction project the size of this one (over $100K) has been insane, though. Mainly working with my father's bank and financial adviser trying to work out where the money will come from. We have an excellent general contractor handling all the individual contractors, and that's made things much easier (my sister and I still get to have lives of our own). Ugh, but now we're cashing part of IRAs, and worried about his tax bracket, and finally I'm having to try and process a short term loan for the last payment (the place is about 1 week out from being finished) and trying to collect information on his assets when he doesn't know where the papers are and doesn't even understand what we're trying to do for him.
Our big remaining question is this: when to move him? It will be all finished and sitting vacant, just waiting, in a week or two's time. One of the things he holds on to is his regular routine, and that will be thrown into a tizzy having to leave the house he's known for the last 10 years. He still even drives, at this point, and very well (he was a book salesman for over 20 years and traveled everywhere by car) as long as he sticks to the routes he knows. But, in his mind, nothing's happened to warrant him moving, and I really don't think he'll "get" the reason he has to move. We almost wish something minor *would* happen, to make it obvious he should move. But it really seems silly to wait until that actually happens, and not very responsible either. Anyway, I've found some local Alzheimer's family support groups that I may drop by, fairly soon, because this can't be an uncommon thing: uprooting someone who is too old to live alone so isolated. I'm sure people have tricks for explaining and handling it, right? We shall see. Any advice from people out there who have gone through something similar would be appreciated though ^^
Anyway, that's what's going on in my life lately, can't wait until the financial side of all this is all done and I can go back to just watching his bank account for shysters who might try to take advantage of him over the phone (and believe me, they're tried, with "offers" and "oh just give me your credit card number"). Poor guy answers almost all the charity mail with some cash in an envelope for them, and so he's on almost every list out there for every cause.
I will say when we moved my grandpa he was a farmer, very set in his routine, and there was an incident with him that caused him to have ot be moved into a home. He was at that point staying with my grandma at their house, and due to problems with a recent surgery he had received damage to the brain that accelerated his condition. There is no good time to move them, if you move them while they are able ot remember their routine you will break your heart and theirs. If you wait till they can't, you run the risk of something bad happening to them or those around them.
if possible ease him into staying at her place on visits? isntead of hole hog moving him over right away. Have him stay there once a week for a while until it's part of his routine, then slowly increase the frequency of it, it might be extra work but it means when he does fully moveo ver it's not completely unfamiliar. Just my 0.02cents