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Mom can barely use a basic, landline-only phone, with service through communityphone.org. She calls at least every week or so that her phone / the service doesn't work. (It works. Trust me, it works fine.) She does not have voicemail (she can't understand how to use it). She gets a million scam/spam/telemarketer/robocall calls a day. We can - for a fee, of course - get a spam blocker on her account. The ONLY other vendor in Arizona that offers a landline-only, LTE phone service is Ooma, but I don't know that they'd be any better, though they're much less expensive. Anyone dealt with them?? If she absolutely cannot use a basic, bare-bones, old-fashioned phone, then it's past time for another living situation. Psych/neuro eval scheduled for Feb., but I don't know if we'll make it that long...

It sounds like mom is trying to get your attention all the time. If she is using the phone, and calling on it, just ignore her.

You may be catering to her to much, and mom is just giving you busy work to do.
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Like already said, your mom is now well past the time of being able to live on her own if she can no longer figure out how to use a simple landline phone.
What's going to happen if she has an emergency or someone is trying to break into her home? How will she be able to call for help?
You don't need to be waiting until February before changes are made in her living situation. I would start now looking into assisted living facilities for her that have memory care units attached for when she gets worse.
Your moms overall safety is far more important at this point than what kind of phone you should get her don't you think?
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RunningOnFumes Nov 10, 2024
The thing is, she actually CAN use the phone. She calls people all the time. If you call her, she answers every time. Her caregivers and the phone company have tested it, over and over again, and it works perfectly. We have bought her two new phones, and she just says they're "broken." But then uses it daily. As for assisted living... been there, done that. She was miserable. She hated it, hated everyone in it, everything about it, called it a prison, called the caregivers "the guards." For a year, we listened to tearful rants about how much she hated it, and we finally just gave up and moved her back home with home care aides - all of whom she despises and blames and complains about. And she goes ballistic at the thought of a supervised care home of any kind, telling anyone who'll listen that we kids (and it's mostly directed at me) "just want to dump her in a nursing home and sell her house for the money." I don't want and wouldn't take a penny from her for anything ever, and never have. The state can have all of it, for all I care. I agree - she needs to be in a supervised setting, her house sold to pay for it until she has to go on Medicaid. The last three years have been an unmitigated nightmare. She's 90; her sisters lived to be 96 and 99. At this rate, I'll be dead before she is. But I am just DONE with the weekly phone calls about the allegedly broken phone, and thought MAYBE presenting her with a different phone, different system, there'd be some relief. Silly me...
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I'm curious is your mom living alone? ?

If she can't use a phone , she shouldn't be.

But the only thing I can think of is a Alexa, connected to a cell phone, and mom can say , call ...... And it will make the call for her.
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southernwave Nov 10, 2024
We did that for my MIL with the google one and she forgot about it when she fell last time. It’s just that she hadn’t used it on so long that we all forgot about it.

I doubt OP’s mom would remember to use it I guess it wouldn’t hurt to try.
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