My mother can no longer stand unassisted. We have her in a hospital bed with a bedside potty. Sometimes she can use her wheelie walker or other times we put her in the wheelchair but we try to keep her up and about as much as we can. Transferring her from bed to potty to chair etc seems to hurt her (everything hurts her, putting lotion on her leg hurts her, it could be the coldness or just the strangeness, but her knee jerk is "ow") so it's really hard to help her up from the potty, to dress her, to get her back into bed at night, etc. Today she's terrified of me, some days she's scared of my dad. We are getting home care starting next week but my dad is skeptical that they'll be any better at it than we are. I don't know what to expect. We haven't ruled out a nursing home but this is the situation we're in now because everything snowballed much quicker than we'd anticipated. Does anyone have suggestions or experience with this? The fear of us? The transfers themselves? She's even scared of riding in the wheelchair sometimes. (We're using techniques for standing and situating her in bed that the aide and nurse from hospice showed us.) I'm trying to do what's best for her, but I'm not sure what that is anymore, or how much longer I can spend everyday focused solely on her, especially when she's scared of me. Thanks for any input.
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As I remember it, when your mother is taking against you for some reason the instinct is to stay out of her way as much as you can; but actually if possible do the opposite. Spend more time with her *not* doing anything to her - not transferring or washing or dressing etc. etc. Otherwise you do become the Bad Cop who only ever turns up to do something she doesn't like.
And, of course, don't take it personally. Whatever has got into her head, or whatever is hurting her, it isn't you or your dad. I'm sorry you're going through this, I know it's hard.
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