@grrranny
I have a horror story about what happened to my Mother-In-Law. She had her daughter in charge of her care. She got so she couldn’t live by herself anymore. Not one of the kids took her in. My husband and I did. They informed us that we should call hospice. Immediately we knew that wasn’t needed. I worked with her to get her strength back. She had gotten so that she couldn’t even get out of a chair because they bought her one of those electric recliners that lifted you out of the chair. In general, she was very weak, but she recovered her strength quickly. They had done a lot of other stupid things. One of which, she had dental work that was extremely difficult to daily remove and replace. It should have been fixed! She thrived at our house. We had one problem that made it impossible for us, two full-time truck drivers, to care for her. I spent the entire time trying to remedy the situation.

She would get up at night to use the bathroom. When she did, she sometimes fell, and you would have to take her to emergency to make sure she didn’t hurt herself. One of the many things she did was when I bought an alarm that attached to her shirt and when she got up, the alarm would go off. She would take her shirt off and get up without setting off the alarm. Fast forward and regrettably we gave notice and she went to her other son’s house. Wasn’t there long and he put her in a nursing home. While she was there, we believe one of the attendants broke her jaw attempting to take out the dental device. Kaiser wrapped gauze around her head and sent her back to the nursing home. She had a DNR in place and one of the boxes that someone checked was that they could withdraw food and liquids. By the time we were told, it was too late. When she finally passed, she looked like a dried-up piece of leather.

All I can say is choose wisely who you decide to oversee making decisions. Like someone said, if you are frail, that could be a reason not to have CPR. Or living with certain attachments like a feeding tube. My dad had a feeding tube at home, and we used a lift to take him out to the living room daily for the last year of his life. He and the family enjoyed every minute of it. He had an amazing personality and sense of humor. We kept him at home to spend time with him and because he would not be able to defend himself in a nursing home or hospital. We were with him 24 hours a day while he had was there. It was hard on us to be there, and we brought him home and did everything that would have been done at the facilities. Not everyone can do that, but we were blessed with that ability. My dad always wanted full code, and he didn’t want to fill out a DNR. We decided that the only thing we were against was CPR. As frail as he was, it would have broken every one of his ribs.