Guilt over my Mom who wants to live independently. Any advice?

If she is Stage 4 and you have POA, you need to place her immediately. What she WANTS is irrelevant. She needs to be someplace safe and looked after 24/7 and that is more than just one person can do. She requires more help than you can give so why do you feel guilty? You didn't do anything wrong.

How was she diagnosed as having “Stage 4 Dementia”?

If that diagnosis is legitimate, it means that she does require “management” to be safe and live whatever should be her “best” life.

”Dementia” is comparable to “pregnant”. You either HAVE IT, or YOU DON’T.

Either way, as her “child”, you may all or partly responsible for her physical welfare. But you ARE NOT, and CANNOT BE responsible for how she FEELS about what you do or do not do on her behalf.

“Dementia” MEANS that neither her logical thinking brain NOR her emotional feeling brain are working correctly, and dementia, THE ILLNESS, is PROGRESSIVE and UNTREATABLE.

What she wants, what she expects, what she likes or doesn’t like, what she thinks about her own circumstances, ARE NOT YOUR RESPONSIBILITY OR BURDEN, and you cannot allow your guilt to be what motivates your decision making.

If, as you pursue safe, humane, and ESSENTIAL CARE for her, she has tantrums, cries, acts clingy or “more dependent” on you, HER behaviors will do nothing but make YOUR efforts harder.

I have had to place TWO women who had been the center of my life since my birth. The hardest part of that process FOR ME, was realizing that the people I had loved and been cared for and trusted WERE GONE, and that those two people needed ME to care for THEM.

Do your research. Find out what services, care settings and geriatric resources are available to you, then pick those that will work best for her and for you AND USE THEM.

AND THAT IS ALL YO CAN DO. If she acts in a way that is so distressing and disturbing to you that pushes you beyond YOUR TOLERANCE, GET HELP FOR YOURSELF, and stick with it until you are able to see yourself as being able to do the best you can, but NO MORE THAN YOUR BEST.

In geriatric management there are often NO GOOD CHOICES, and it becomes your job to choose “the best of the worst”. DO THAT.

Finally, use her financial resources, if you can access them, to do for her what she needs. Find out. Do NOT “quit everything”. You are an independent human and a caregiver, and her decisions about your life are clouded by dementia, and should NOT be accepted by you as doing a good thing for either of you.

Do the research and know how to get what she needs without sacrificing yourself. If you can do that, this situation CAN get better for you both.

No one can make anyone else happy. Your mother refuses help; doesn't initiate phone calls. She is responsible for her own happiness.

If you have POA for your mother, you need to place her in a Memory Care Assisted Living Facility whether she 'wants' to go there or not, and she'll be safe and cared for 24/7 by qualified caregivers. She'll be fed, her meds will be administered to her, she'll be bathed, and she'll have no decisions to make. That's how it has to be for an elder with this level of dementia at play. It's not safe for her to be living alone, and she's not capable of following instructions you give her, or using the microwave, etc. Of course she's 'not as sharp as she used to be'..........she has stage 4 dementia! She's in denial, as most of the elders with dementia are, and will never admit there's a problem going on. What you need to do is to take the bull by the horns (if you have POA) and place her; sell her house to finance the costs, and let the chips fall where they may. If there's a 'royal battle', so be it. The staff at the Memory Care can guide you accordingly; this is not their first resident who's being sent their against their wishes. Trust me on that.

My mother did not want to live in Memory Care either, but she had no choice. I had to move her there from regular Assisted Living when her mobility issues along with moderate dementia became too much for the AL to handle. She insisted there was 'nothing wrong with her' but there was. She was not capable of managing her apartment any longer in AL, so there was no other choice BUT to move her to a shrunken down world where there'd be no decisions for her to make anymore. She wasn't best pleased about it, but that's life for an elder with dementia that's advancing. A no - win situation for ALL concerned.

Wishing you the best of luck getting your mother placed now, before an accident happens.

Your mother sounds like she is suffering from a treatable condition called depression.

Has she been seen by a geriatric psychiatrist for a workup? Has she been prescribed antidepressants and won't take them?

I would not be the food and med police. Visit with, tell her how much you love her and let her make her own decisions about what to treat with meds.

You are more valuable to her as a child than as an enforcer.

PennyBob, I'm moving this further information from the psychiatrist up here:

"Totally denies depression, but yes she is depressed. We are giving her medication for it, but I don’t think it’s working. We’ve had the work up done by geriatric psychiatrist. He pegged her as a controlling, manipulative little thing. We have gone over her results with her several times. She refuses to acknowledge. I feel sorry for her. She’s totally screwed if something happens to me. It’s a helpless feeling."

You don't get ant results by going over a psych report with a dementia patient.

She is not going to change her behavior. However, if YOU change YOUR behavior, something will change.

Your mother seems to have your cornered.

If you leave that corner, will she simply stop eating and drinking and taking meds?

Perhaps.

Thn she can be hospitalized for self-neglect, declared incompetent and placed.

That might be a good change.

Is there an Adult Day Care available locally? My mother was against AL or ADC but was finally talked into trying ADC. She liked it: riding on the bus to get there and seeing others for a few hours and riding the bus home again. I also think the experience of attending ADC as provided by a local AL/MC gave her a more open mind and relieved a lot of her fears about moving into the MC.

Here's a quick way to stop the guilt. Are you the only family member? If you have siblings, what do they do? Are you the one who does all the caregiving? If there are others and they leave it all up to you, you have nothing to feel guilty about.

And even if you ARE the only family member left, you STILL have nothing to feel guilty about.

Mom should not be living alone.
Mom does not have the mental capacity to make decision for herself.
If you are POA YOU are the one that needs to make decisions for her that will keep her safe.
If Memory Care is not an option then 24/7 caregivers would be the other solution.
It does not matter what she "wants" it is what she needs.
You say she doesn't cook. What about the morning she wakes up and decides that she does want to cook? What about the evening she decides to go for a walk...and does not know how to get back home? What about the battery that needs changing or the bulb that is burned out and she falls from a chair or ladder...when would you find her? (although this could happen with or without dementia)
Since she has dementia you don't have to wait for things to fall apart before you make a decision. If she did not have a diagnosis and were legally able to make decisions then yes you have to wait until something forces a change.

My mother lived with my father in senior living. She had vascular dementia and was very mean to my father even threatening him with harm. He had a serious neurological disease. I knew that he could not take much more so I moved him in with me and mother into memory care. I didn't tell her where we were going just that it was a place that would make her feel better. Yes, I know I am a terrible person. Anyway, she tried to escape at first but in a few days calmed down. My poor father had tears in his eyes as I took her away, but lived for over three more years and she about two. Sometimes you have to be the one making decisions.