Hi - we were able to bring mom home from rehab after 5 months of being in a rehab / hospital / rehab after a fall and other numerous health issues that came up. She is now slowly able to ambulate but I am noticing a difference in her cognitive abilities. She is a bit more confused and does not remember things easily.
Question is - have any of you noticed this after a loved one's stay in a rehab? Do they get too used to having someone there to do everything that they get a bit lazy mentally? I am trying to figure this out and why it could happen?
If you did see this occur with your loved one, did it improve?
So grateful we were able to get her home. We do have a video appt. with her primary doc and therapists coming but I also wanted your personal experiences.
Thank you!
In most cases it's a decline that does not improve. However, depending on the cause, and the care after, the decline may be stable for a time or reversible in a wide range, from staying the same to improving to better than it was before!
I don't believe people get mentally lazy to what would be called "cognitive decline" just from not doing things for themselves or thinking for themselves. They may not learn some things that would make them more independent but they will not develop cognitive degeneration. That's my theory.
Give mom some time and the chance to reacclimate herself back home and I'll bet you'll see a marked improvement in her mentation. That's my hope for you.
It’s hard on her as she’s always been independent and was a caregiver herself until she was 82. One step at a time 😊
Her cognitive function was intact, and her general tests indicated that she was in unusually good health for a woman her age. She was hospitalized for 2 1/2 days, told her doctor that she wanted to go home, and he released her.
I stayed with her a week, and she then “threw me out”, and she lived by herself until at 89, she fell and broke her hip, and from then until her death at 95, required full supervision.
Try to be as objective as you can. Sounds like you’re making some good decisions on her behalf.
The one change that most often IS as a result of institutional care is the one that occurs sometimes after administration of anesthesia. That may be temporary or permanent.
Sure wish I had a better answer for you, but it comes down to "who really can know".
In 2014, my (then 88 yo) dad had heart surgery and was away from home 3+ months with his hospital and rehabSN stays. When we brought him home he told me he was scared to leave, because these facilities felt like “cocoons” to him (his word). I suggested “prison” but he said cocoon was a “nicer” word. He had forgotten how life was- outside the cocoons - and was afraid of what would be expected of him when he returned home. He had gotten a kind of dementia there with hallucinations (like while I was talking with him he reached out tried to grab ahold of a “cake that went flying past you, didn’t you see it?”). Lol. That kind of stuff went away once he was home but overall he was never as sharp as before his surgery.
Recently my 92 yo mom went in and out of hospitals and rehabs due to extremely high anxiety & pain. Because she already naturally self-limits, these cocoons exacerbated dependency issues. She went straight into AL from rehab and has been in AL for 6 months. She’s now able to function cognitively and be more normal in her thinking. There has been decline that’s permanent though I wonder if that is due to the high anxiety and mental breakdown she had.