The doctor does talk to her as well, but she does not remember that part. We have been to two Drs now. She will not go back to either. She is in denial and knows she is havingmemory problems. She ordered some expensive pills on the internet, they are not working. She is getting worse and dpends on me for financial and care needs but continues to become more and more nasty towards me.
I think you are approaching a time when in home care is no longer manageable or sustainable.
It sounds like it is time for mom now to accept the help of several shifts of workers with several folks monitoring her on each of them. And time for you to have a life.
Let Mom live alone and stop helping her .
You can call the County Area Agency of Aging , they can send a social worker to your Mom’s residence . When I did this the social worker asked my mother a bunch of “ What would you do if …….” questions . My mother was not able to come up with any plans for the hypothetical situations . The social worker determined she was not safe to live alone . The social worker was willing to come back with a “ strong man “ to remove my mother from her home and place her in an assisted living that I had already chosen . The social worker arranged a day and time with the assisted living to bring my mother for admission .
The social worker and her helper were supposed to return in 2 weeks to bring my mother to assisted living . However my mother ended up in the hospital before that . I then told the social worker at the hospital what was going on and she spoke with the original social worker that I was working with . The assisted living was able to get Mom’s room ready a few days early and Mom ended up going straight to assisted living from the hospital via medical transport because Mom would have refused to get out of my car .
Maybe your Mom is not as far along yet as my mother was with Dementia , but it doesn’t hurt to have the social worker come out and put Mom on the radar .
We are now dealing with my MIL still living at home with undiagnosed Dementia . She is also being stubborn . She can barely walk etc , needs assisted living . Unfortunately during her recent hospital stay for a fall , we tried “ unsafe discharge “ but it didn’t work . The hospital social worker felt she was still “ lucid “ enough to make her own decision to go home , even if it’s a bad decision . She went to rehab and the social worker there would not return any of my husband’s calls . We live 4 hours away . Mother in law is now home again. We will have to keep waiting for the next event that lands her in the hospital , or wait for her to get worse and call the Agency of Aging . We are currently working on drafting a letter to send to her primary care physician . My mother in law said she recently had POA papers drawn up ( finally ) but we haven’t seen them . It would not have helped anyway yet , as the hospital and obviously the rehab felt MIL was still “ with it “ enough , ( which she is not) . She is good at promising to make changes at home , that she never follows through on . like a stair lift , an aide and grab bars in the shower , use a walker , etc . She can be convincing to strangers . But with us , her reasoning is gone and some memory problems are there . She thinks she will get better . She thinks she does not fall often , which she does etc .
If she does have dementia you won't be able to "convince" her of anything. You are the only perso who can change. Dementia prevents her from doing that.
So, unless you can convince her to assign you or someone else as her PoA, then inserting yourself will only delay the inevitable: a court-assigned 3rd party legal guardian who will then take over all her care and decisions.
Otherwise, you may consider guardianship for her if she refuses to assign a PoA. This can be expensive and time-consuming -- and you need to be certain it's something you want to take on. Her behavior won't get better, only worse.
She probably needs meds to take the edge off her nastiness. If you are her Medical Representative, you can send a message to her doctor asking about meds for this. You may be able to pull off a therapeutic fib with your LO since she's already taking pills from the internet.
If you need to get her back to her doctor, you can tell her she gets to have a free Medicare annual wellness check (this is an actual thing). Stop making her going to the doctor about forcing her to accept her cognitive impairment. She needs a physical first to be prescribed meds for anything. You can send her doc a message to give her a cognitive exam and put the results/diagnosis in a letter that can be useful to her PoA or for guardianship.
I wish you success in getting her the help and care she needs.
What if you stopped providing financial aid, transportation, and whatever else you are doing?
The nastiness won't stop. You're right, her symptoms are those of dementia. You can't cure it, no pills will cure it, no doctor can cure it, and she's going to need more care than you can provide. You're working yourself into a deep hole. Please don't let it go on, for her sake and yours.
You can stop doing everything for her. You could call 911 if she falls or attacks you when she's being "nasty" or wanders away. She'll be assessed in the ER and that's your chance to get her into a place where she'll have 24/7 care (not provided by you). That might be your best plan.
I wish you luck in finding her the help she needs.