I am a 30 year old only child of two only children. My parents have both passed away as well as my other grandparents. My 88 year old paternal grandmother is my only remaining family and I am hers, so her care has fallen to me. Since this August she has had 3 back to back UTIs. She has been in the hospitals for falls with utis 4 times in the past 12 months. After the most recent episode in which her neighbors had to come get me because they could hear her inside her house but she couldn't get to the door. I went and she had her phone right beside her but wouldn't call for help (was also an issue when she had a medical alert button she wouldn't push it when needed). The dr at the hospital does not think she can safely return home. They sent her to the nursing home for skilled care. With the most recent UTI she had major incontinence issues and massive confusion. Usually once she is on antibiotics for a few days the confusion improves, but this time it hasn't. The PT at the nursing home says she has no safety awareness and if she starts to fall she just falls and doesn't try to steady or catch herself. We don't have a close relationship to begin with, and she is fiercely independent. Today she called me and told me she needed to call a bank in a town she hasn't lived near in 15+ years because she had been robbed and they had taken all of her checkbooks. She never had any checkbooks with her in the facility, but was adamant that someone had taken them. It's frustrating to not have anyone to bounce ideas off of, because no one around me has dealt with this. I'm also exhausted after being my mom's primary caregiver during her final months of stage 4 cancer and am still dealing with selling my parent's homes and belongings. Any advice appreciated.
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Definitely consider leaving her where she's at, where she can get proper care and live safely. If you send her back home, it's just a matter of time before some crisis hits and then the decision to go into the nursing home is taken AWAY from her. Having something done under crisis conditions is never optimal. That's what happened with my folks (I'm an only child too); my dad fell and broke his hip while living independently with my mom. Rehab refused to release him back to IL and he had a choice of either staying there in their long term care section, or finding an Assisted Living residence that would accept him (and my mother). So I had to scramble like crazy to find them an ALF, move them............ugh, it was too much, in reality.
Make the wisest decision you can NOW, while cool heads prevail, and while choices still exist. Don't wait for a catastrophe to strike before getting her into long term care.
Good luck!