Mental Decline & Dependency/Coping With Aging Loved Ones

Think you've covered all your bases there, Dys?

They at least hope that she can walk in some time ... as bad as before.

She had to use a walker/stick before already, but mostly forgot it. (As she tells people who phone her that she walks on her own through the hospital's park .... since weeks.)

Now mother will be released from the hospital to the home on Monday - if the wound doesn't weep anymore.

I asked the ward's doctor this evening, why a stay on the neriatric ward was cancelled.
The reason is quite simple: the have a waiting list, and mother had only got an "emergency bed" due to her bad blood. But since the test results are (more or less) normal by now and since she has a room in a senior's home ...


Today, mother was again saying she felt very bad.
Personally, I think (as a social worker and her legal guardian) that somewhere deep down in her brains she recognises that "at home" (where ever that might be) she'll be alone, on her own, no nurses looking at her any 20 minutes, no doctor four times per day ...

As her son, I felt totally miserable, how she was suffering, how weak she looked .... and that the social worker could have such ideas.

That got regulated when I drove home


I've got the results of the medical classification for my aunt's 'care level' in the (mandatory) long term care insurance, too: she is very high (by points) in level 2. (Levels are from O [zero] to 3. The insurance pays up to 75% of costs for the home [aunt gets a bit more than 50%]. The higher the level, the more is being paid for the (needed) help.)

How is your mother today, Walter? Is she still moving on Monday?

Last week, mother was really very .... disoriented, to put it mildly.
Not only the blood results were better, from Friday onwards mother was feeling (and acting) a lot better, too.

However, I had the impression that now (that was on Thursday/Friday) she somehow knew that ... she was ill, wasn't able to walk.

What I interpreted as "I don't want to leave the hospital [now]" became quite true yesterday (Sunday) when she asked me if she would leave next (this) week, who was going to help her, who would teach her walking ...

Her room in the home is at the farthest possible end away from the nurses' room, in a wing with fitter seniors.
So, they wanted to move her on the ward where my aunt is.
After some discussions about the various pro's and con's they agreed with my opinion to try it at first in her room.
Everything was prepared for today ...

... but when I asked yesterday evening a nurse if all was on schedule, she replied:'in the books: yes, but I wouldn't bet a penny on it re your mother'.

So today ... mother has got an inflammation. Which means that she will stay at least this week in hospital. (She didn't seem to be upset about it when I talked with her in the morning.)

Hoping matters have improved since Walter's last post....

Actually I'm also hoping for a favor: Walter, you recall that in the various legislative / judicial moves following the DDR dissolution at some point the Bundesgericht decided that all private properties taken over by the Russian armies should be returned to the original owners, but anything taken over by the German communists legally belonged to the German state - the sole exception being properties belonging to Jews.

Do you have a link to that decision (in German)? I would appreciate it very much - have been wading through thickets of impenetrable legalese all weekend and see the experts are divided on the constitutionality of exempting one group from a general rule, but there was no appeal. Thank you very much.

I'll search for that later

Things have indeed improved. Namely in such way that it isn't an inflammation: the wound still isn't closed, and the deputy head surgeon thinks that the home might not be able to take care in such a way as a hospital can.
So mother will stay for a couple of days, until they'll sure that she can't get an inflammation.

This is good news indeed - I know I also speak for many others in saying that.

And thank you also for promising to look up that decision!

This site gives a good overview over all BGH-decissions.

Here is an essay about the problems.

In google books (page 254 et sqq) you find informations about Jewish property.

Thank you so much - perhaps I should explain I've no interest in jewish property per se, just in the legal basis for exempting one group from a general rule; in bankruptcy laws, eg, it is the case in most countries that any assets are allocated first to daily workers, then prorated to other employees, banks, bondholders, unsecured creditors and so on. Btw, I'm working on the restructuring of a legal entity - in case you didn't guess.

Whether I've any questions on the mass of material you very kindly located will depend on how long it takes me to read it - about twice the life of the known universe is my guess, but dum spiro spero

Listen carefully, you &I(^$%#@$#): unless you shape up I'm gonna come over and start reading to you EACH AND EVERY ONE OF THOSE GERMAN LEGAL DECISIONS and I'M NOT GONNA STOP until you finally say "uncle". Got that? Good.

hey helen, what's shaking?

Nothing, YET, I just just giving you fair notice in advance

I'm glad you mother is staying a bit longer and that she seems to be alright with that idea. Isn't the capacity of the elderly to rebound amazing?

No-one will give any prediction when mother might leave - she is sure that all told her, she'll leave tomorrow.

Since Saturday/Sunday, mother has kind of difficulties to recognise me: at first it was her bad eyesight, then I spoke with a different voice, then ...
Today, it was all together - "but of course I knew that it was you who was coming: you used the door bell twice [as we did at home when children] ...".

She doen't suffer at all, which is important, and she feels very well with the doctors. therapists and nurses, which is as important.
And she forgets within seconds that she had psychic just before (those moments seem to rare now).

The professor (head of all surgery departments [and acting medical director]) decided that mother goes home tomorrow morning.
(The nurses feared that it might get difficult to persuade her ... but I would have been there without asking: I need to give allownce to fix her on the ambulance's stretcher, I suppose, besides to convince of miscellaneous... .)

The visit in her room was the shortest within all those eight weeks: mother was totally confused when she had to go where and where my bed was and .... Besides that she has asked the nurses for a bedpan, but actually not she but her neighbour needed one. Her neighbour needed on urgently, but didn't want to ask the nurses, and could leave her.
So, I tried to explain all and everything to my mother, explained her bed neighbour that she could as she wanted .... since she has a catheter all the times she's there, explained my mother again who was going where and that I didn't want to sleep in her bed, explained the catheter ... and left after a good laugh with the nurses.

Tomorrow will be - perhaps a day with good surprises.

Good luck, Walter. It's most likely that your mom will have better days at home--and eventually some bad days, of course. I'm just glad that she'll have some home days. And I hope that arrangements for her home care prove adequate.

Thanks, JLN! (But it's not home where she'll go - though she wants to go there - it's THE HOME where the ambulance will drive her )

Up to now all went really very well.

The ambulance was a bit late, but she didn't bother it - mainly because I didn't wait with her.
Liked at first the idea, to go to "Hous Mary" ("It's very nice there!"), but was surprised when arriving ... about the building .... about the room .... about that she should stay there.

And when she was told that she'd been there already 1½ year, and she remembered that "all was my fault" - I left, will be back in the afternoon.

Her family doctor has to look at the wound daily, she has to be x-rayed any couple of days and, of course, a lot of physiotherapy.

We'll see.