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How do you deal with the Guilt of placing someone in Assisted Living?
Caregivers: Dementia | Last Active: Jul 30 2:35pm | Replies (13)Comment receiving replies
@slhayton Oh, so many of us have been there!
I remember my Mom and Grandpa crying together almost 50 years ago when they had to move my Grandma, then with my father-in-law, my Mom, and finally watching my sister and brother-in-law and his siblings (so 5 of them try to manage) caring for his Mom & ultimately deciding a care facility was best.
If someone has not been the "in the trenches", they cannot possibly understand the frustration, the exhaustion, the isolation, the sheer volume of work to keep doing it every day. And in the end, it "takes a village", and that village is often in an assisted living or skilled care situation.
Maybe you can try to look at it another way, like my sister and I finally were able to do with my Mom. Mom's assisted living staff became part of our "village" Having them with her, dispensing meds, providing meals, doing the cleaning and laundry, helping her shower, freed us to manage the other parts of her care - medical appointments, managing her bills, getting her hair done, bringing her little things like her favorite cookies (that were often lost in the exhaustion of day-to-day.) So, you are now the executive, and they are your Mom's staff, and you can look at it not as "failing" but as recruiting a team for Mom.
This is not to say there won't be some bumps in the road as she and you adjust to this new normal. She may want to go "home" and just needs to be repeatedly reassured "this is home now" - point out her favorite things - pictures, pillows, etc. You and she may be unhappy that staff does not always do things your way, or as quickly as you would like. As long as they are keeping her clean, safe and healthy, not ignoring her meds or leaving her behind, just calmly reassure her. Any discussion with staff needs to be out of her hearing. Here, your mantra could be "Just because it's not done my way doesn't mean it's not done right."
Sometimes now, if I sit back and reflect, I think a lot of my sense of guilt was concern about what "others" thought - my siblings, her siblings & friends, my friends. In the end, they don't matter! Just Mom's well-being and yours.
Do you have a clergy person, a counselor or a close and understanding friend you can talk to?
Replies to "@slhayton Oh, so many of us have been there! I remember my Mom and Grandpa crying..."
I had my mother for 2.5 years, I worked full time and as her illness got worse, I had to face the fact that the care she needed was beyond my ability to provide. During this period, I had cervical surgery to cut a space in my spine to take pressure off the spinal cord (12-hour surgery)
and 3-month recovery, and then anterior cervical surgery to remove disks and place a titanium bar in my neck (another 12 hrs. of surgery). I developed a stomach ulcer during this period so surgery was postponed. Just a snapshot of the stress and physical condition I was in. AT first my mom balked at it, but she accepted it. She made friends in the nursing home and when I could drive again I would stop on my way home from work. I was glad that the nursing home was only 6 miles away. I knew it wasn't perfect but she was well taken care of - better than her being alone all day at my house
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@sueinmn - Beautifully stated and shared! Thank you.
With our mother in "Personal Care" my sister and I are dealing with the same issues, concerns, struggles. I don't have any advice for now from our experience other than to do the best you can, with genuine concern for the welfare of the person, guided by love for them in your heart. We are not responsible for the condition/s they are suffering from, but we can do 'our part' to try to reduce the impacts.
What I - and my sister, I believe - also struggle with, to keep it brief for now, are that neither of us have family of our own, just a partner or spouse. Who will step up to take care of us?
Without going into it further here, we made our choices in life, but some of it was a reaction to what we grew up with (i.e., NOT wanting the misery of a relationship our parents had, choosing to NOT have children, thereby not having a codependent relationship with those children or others to the extent of robbing them of their happiness and their identity).
So in our mid-60s, we find ourselves helping that remaining parent, those expectations, and yet still struggling with our own growth issues that will pretty much never be resolved or resolvable.
I hope - for my sister, and I - that we still have time to get through and beyond this to live our own lives more authentically. We've spent our lives in this struggle, not getting much further with therapy and meds. Sometimes, even with the best of efforts and resources, there just aren't any answers, let alone resolution.
My best to everyone on this journey.