Mental Decline & Dependency/Coping With Aging Loved Ones

That's good news, Walter. I hope she stays that way, too.

Yes. I hope your mother can stay comfortable and at peace with herself.

I wish the same for you.

Thanks - your good wishes are very much appreciated.


Mother just was taken down in the main hall, watching the 'Karneval' perfornace. (She had been in the local dance corps as a young girl/woman.)
I avoided that she saw me - otherwise my visit had been an excuse to stay in her room .. (They nurses placed, however, on of the volunters aside her wheelchair, just in case she really didn't want to stay.9

I'll see her this evening .... because aunt might have to go in the hospital (waiting for the doctor's visit and decision) ......

Same here Walter.

Amen from me too.

Swimpy, I'm sorry I didn't reply to this before. I remember...
and you're right, her recognition of you may vary. Hard days.

Walter -I'll be thinking of you and your mother next Wednesday. I hope everything goes smoothly.

As for the bed rails thing - they refused to put them on Bob's bed, but the nurses had a fairly good approximation with rolled up pillows.

It hasn't happened again, osso. I make sure I get right up close to her when I first arrive so she can see my face. That seems to help. she's an amazing woman. Just when I think she's going to fade away, she perks back up. Last time I saw her she did her little grandma jig again. She hasn't done that in quite a while.

Thanks, Tomkitten - it really went out pretty well (okay, with some minor this' and that's, but such wasn't health related).
Operation didn't last longer than 30 mins, no full anaesthesia was needed (though everything was prepared for it) .... and mother didn't remember the stay in the hospital when she was at the home two hours later.


(Hoping, Tomkitten, that everything is fine with you!)

Got the order re bed rail from the guardianship court today: "limited personal freedom" is allowed for two years (and can be extended then). No ned for an extra guardian in this legal procedure for my mother (what usually is done), since - according to the judge - "because it's obvious that the actual legal guardian does his job extremely responsible".

I should copy that and to send it to my sister ...

Nice one, Walt.

Of course, just what we would have expected!

Mother wasn't feeling good this morning - so they called the doctor.
He didn't find anything serious.

When I visited her in the afternoon, she was in the "sitting room", in her wheelchair. Mother, once she noticed me, wanted to go back to her room. When I tried to convince to stay there a bit longer (she had only been out of bed, in her room, for a couple of minutes), she wanted ... to go shopping, have a ride in the car (to some places where we had been decades ago ... or have a walk in the park.
It was quite warmish today (8°C) and a bit sunny as well. But windy, if not stormy (so that the smoking ladies stayed indoors and had to open the door to the yard any odd minutes - which might looked quite funny).
So, when mother noticed the actual weather she asked me to drive her back to her room. (Which I didn't, but to that said sitting room.)

By coincidence I met her doctor in the home. He explained that this "bad feeling" most certainly was related to mother's general feeling ... regarding her being being nearly 90, kind of 'tired' ... ...

Hang in there, Walter, and thanks for sharing your experience with us; it will help us when our time comes.

mebbe someone could drop it off anonymously on your behalf?

Walter - hope things worked out well for your mother. I'll be in Berlin next week, will call you to see if you and Mrs Walter plan a trip in that direction.

Mother is doing ... well, fine, considering all and everything.



I might come for one day - it's not too far away - but not both of us and not for longer.

So mother (nearly = some minor adjustments have to be done) got new prosthesis by now.

Meanwhile, the home thinks that she should move to another room, where mainly seniors with dementia live.
All the previous time until now, mother lived in a "normal" room, on her own, with a balcony, at the far end of of a side building.
She had "to change" lifts to get to her 'mother ward', where the 'sitting room' is, a place, nurses are taking her since weeks to meet others.
It's the same ward my aunt lives - but she would get her room in a different part and stay during daytime in a different 'sitting room' to my aunt's place.

Two points, however, made me judging against it: it's a double room, and mother never liked to be up there with "the old and ill" persons.

So my 61 year long knowledge of mother and the good and helpful intension of the home lead to the compromise that mother now and then is taken up the that ward and her feelings/behaviour etc is closely watched.
And then we'll talk and decide again.

The double room situation freaks me out. To go from your own home with multiple rooms to sharing one small room with a stranger is unforgivable.

Mother didn't use many rooms in our house the last couple of years, and thus wasn't feeling really uncomfortable with the one, small room she has since two years now.

But she never liked to shar a room with others. (Last year, when she was for weeks in the hospital, the situation was a bit different since only double rooms were close to the nurses' office.)

But I really don't know - she has changed some of her attitudes quite a bit - sometimes, however, not at all but even became more stringent in others.

It started Friday last week and culmated (I'd thought) on Sunday, when mother wanted vehemently to go home ...

Yesterday, it became worse - she made a kind of 'revolution' in the sitting room because she wanted to go in her room and bed. (The nurses had tried to get her up for time since today she had had her final dentist's visit.)

This morning, she was as 'normal' as usually. Didn't want to walk to dentist's (in the wheelchair, of course - it was cold, but sunny) but to take a taxi (distance is less than ½ mile).
Since she always liked being driven by a taxi ...

She was accompanied be a student nurse (in the last year, and one of her favourites). All went well until suddenly she made 'her revolution' in the dentist's practise, too.
The dentist finally (spare me to give the details here, too) send them to her GP/intenist, who