The local agency on aging wants to have my mom stay in the local Assisted Living for 2 weeks while her only bathroom is being renovated. I halted the project using my POA because I didn't like the idea. I was able to look over the Assisted Living and I think my mom would do better there than in the Nursing Home. They said they would have to see how she does, but if she needs too much help, the only choice would be the Nursing Home.
The bathroom needs a complete renovation to make it 'accessible' which would cost her Medicaid Waiver program about $15,000. I've been reconsidering after a home care agency refused to take my mom as a client because of her bathroom, she needs way more help than she should. My mom can't be in the house during the renovation, but I would want to be available to check on the contractors during the day and keep an eye on them.
It sounds like the cost of the temporary stay could be included with the cost of the renovation. Her caseworker wanted to know if I would want to stay with her at all, take meals with her, etc. I don't know what the answer should be.
As it is, she flat out refuses to go to the Nursing Home but she might be somewhat open to the idea of Assisted Living as long as I promise her that she won't just be left there. I'm thinking that maybe if she sees some people she knows and enjoys some activities with them she might be okay there but then I might be wrong.
I really don't want her to return home so I have to continue to be her slave and care for her, but the agency on aging has the expectation if they are putting money into making the house more 'accessible' that she stay in her house as long as possible.
If I just walked out and left her alone, she would likely lock the doors and refuse to let anyone in. APS would have to bust the door to gain entry then haul her to the nursing home in restraints. She doesn't get around by herself very well at all, she's fallen several times with her walker, she doesn't leave her medic alert button on, she would get her medications mixed up and either take too much, not enough, not at all and/or take them at the wrong times. She wouldn't eat because I've had to show her how to work the microwave several times and she doesn't get it. She couldn't take something hot out of the oven and use her walker at the same time. Right now she needs help getting from her chair to the bathroom and then to the kitchen table and that's her day.
If I just drop her off at the Nursing Home, she will demand to go home then the staff will be calling me to take her back home and I'll be stuck caring for her again. With the bathroom renovation, at least I could get a home care agency with more availability.
In the unlikely event she wants to remain in Assisted Living, I'd just leave her there regardless of what her caseworker says.
Few people buy a house looking for it to be accessible already, especially if the only truly accessible feature is a bathroom.
....because you are 100% right, and I'm 100% in the same boat. I feel like tossing my stepmom into a care facility, where really, they cannot actually "care" for them all in the same way family would, is a death sentence. And I sign that I'm a bad daughter after all.
OP, I'm really sorry for you. But I think jkm is right. So very sorry.
What happens if they renovate the bathroom and your mom has to move in six months anyway? Are you stuck for repaying any of those costs? (I have no idea how Medicaid works.)
I can tell you now that she's not going to like AL if she's thinks it's temporary. I had the same hopes when I had to move my folks to an independent living cottage at a retirement community while we did their bathrooms, and they hated every minute of it. My dad was on the board of trustees for this place, they knew people who lived there, and they were miserable every minute they were there.
They ate in the community dining room only once, because the other residents were rude to them for not being "qualified" to be independent living residents. (It was a community for retired ministers, and my parents were not ministers. My dad had only made sure those coots had a place to live by working on their board raising money for 10 years, but hey...)
We tore out all three of their bathrooms and remodeled them, and the one truly "accessible" bathroom still really isn't all that great. We just took out a coffin-sized bathtub and put in a shower instead. The three bathrooms cost my dad about $80,000, and guess what -- that accessible shower was never used once. My dad, who was perfectly healthy when the construction was done, died six months later, and my mom, for whom the bathroom was renovated, had to be moved to a nursing home. (Guess which one?)
Sorry for the novel, but I'd just be firm and tell your mom that her bathroom can't be renovated, and she is no longer able to live in her home. Sometimes life doesn't go the way we want, but all the tantrums in the world won't change the facts.