I’m actually feeling a tad overwhelmed. Mom’s dementia was recently diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. She seemed to take a turn for the worse in October and since the beginning of November has really crashed it seems. Home Care was giving her 30 minutes 2x/week for a morning shower. I took her to Emerg one day last week and they did what’s called a GEM (Geriatric Emergency Management) Assessment and the doc and nurse said both she and I need more support. I called the home care people to assess her again and they have now agreed to 30 min each a.m. and each p.m. 7 days a week for showering, dressing, hearing aids, putting her compression stockings on. They also told me that she is now considered what they call here in Canada as a ‘crisis placement’ which means she is eligible for a top of the list position in a long term care facility. I haven’t told her that my husband and I have been running around looking at different places to figure out a short list to take her to see as yet. She and I are heading to Mexico mid-January where she will stay for 3 weeks with another family member bringing her back home. My husband and I return to Canada on April 4. We found her current Senior’s Residence the same way. We picked 9, short-listed down to 3 and that’s where she has been for the last couple of years. The only thing is we are feeling a bit misled with the current place as we asked at the time whether she could stay through ‘end of life’ management. They had told us yes, but it turns it they don’t have a locked floor; you just pay them privately for personal care on top of her already pricey monthly fee, so it’s an a la cart menu; e.g. if they have to remind her it’s mealtime, that costs $8.75 plus tax which includes bringing her down and returning her to her suite after each meal, etc etc; medication giving costs $240/month but more if she doesn’t come to the nurse’s station to receive, rather than them come to her. We are going to suck up whatever extra costs are involved till we come back in April.. I don’t want to see her put into a new place and me not be there to support her as I currently spend 3 or 4 days a week with her and she is depending on me more and more. It is just hard watching this once independent vital 90 year-old, once vital and independent woman not be able to find words, not remember names, looking so frail, having incontinence issues, lose so much cognition.