Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Yes and yes dementia will confuse the person as to what their abilities are. My dad has been unable to walk for going in two years but every once in a while, more and more often he want to get up and go for a walk. So I play along for a while sometimes, try to help him up then when he can't I say maybe later. Then he soon forgets. It's better than arguing about it.
Wow, $1600 monthly in pet care. I would be making more a month just doing care for two people wanting that service in a month than what I am bringing home. A lot more enjoyable too, less stress and like animals better than people sometimes, even if it involves scooping litter. I assume it's billed through the assisted care place to be that much.
As for the cabin. Just take out personal stuff and anything you want to keep. A lot of vacation homes like that are sold with all the furniture, equipment, even kitchen stuff so you don't have to get rid of it all. Might even be preferable for new owners not to have to buy/bring all that stuff anyway.
That works out to $45/day and I added incorrectly, it's about $1300/month. It's billed through a pet sitting company. I used to have a petsitting business before I started my dog training business. I charged $20/visit with a minimum of 2 visits a day for dogs if the owners were out of town and 1 visit a day for cats. If you dispense meds, you can charge more. We also boarded pets in our home (which was honestly easier because we didn't have to drive all over the place) and charged $45/night for that. It was more fun to have them in our home, too. Dog walking/pet sitting can be very lucrative. So can dog training.
I had the same reaction as Izzie about the cost of pet care. More than the cost of the nursing care? That's pretty incredible.
All Nurse Care does is send in a CNA to make sure he takes his pills twice a day. They help him shower twice a week. It's $9/visit for the pills and $12.50 for the shower assistance. Keep in mind that Nurse Care works with probably 75 residents out of the 100 folks who live there. At just one visit a day for 75 residents, that's $4725 a week or $20,475/month. Just at my dad's facility. Many residents need 2 or even 3 visits a day, so Nurse Care can be expensive if you let it be. We fill his pills, he can still get himself to bed and he can walk to the dining room to eat.
$45/day isn't unreasonable for pet care. I wish we could take the animals for him, he won't let me take the dog and I can't have the cat here because we train dogs in our home and some of them are cat aggressive. I can't risk the cat being injured or killed, which would be horrible. I love cats, I just can't have one anymore.
… It is eighteen months since my mother died and although I sometimes miss the person she was before the dementia, I never miss the person she became. It was the most incredible relief when she passed away as she had never wanted to end up like that. But euthanasia, which would have been her preference, is not legal for dementia patients anywhere in my country.
Spot on. Only people who've been it and watched the slow 'decline' of a loved one can truly understand.
I swear, I am still so traumatized (sorry, but that's honestly it) by my mom's descent into dementia that a year after her death, I still don't miss her. I mean, I miss the beautiful healthy mom I used to have but I had already grieved over that loss. She had a stroke about 15 years ago that she recovered fairly well from, but she was never the same after that and just became gradually more and more eccentric till finally, the last two years of her life, she was absolutely hell on wheels. She did not go gentle into that good night, but I never figured she would. And then the last six months of her life, she was absolutely pitiful. It was so terrible to watch, and even more terrible to feel so responsible for such a wreck of a person. This was not my mother.
I think I did mention here though that as she reached the end of her life, I saw someone emerge that I had never seen before - the little girl she was so long ago. And this little girl was precious. It broke my heart in a way because I knew this little girl had never been appreciated or even really loved - I knew my mother's mother was mentally ill herself and was dismissive at best. And this little girl inside my mom, the person my mom REALLY was at one time, didn't deserve to be ignored or abused. This was the "raw material" inside my mom. How different things might have been if this little girl had been cherished. But by the time my dad came along, it was too late - she had already been irreversibly damaged. I think he saw glimmers of this little girl from time to time too, and that's why he loved my mom so much, but I never saw her till the very end. I'm glad I got to see her, and it made carrying the brunt of her care at the end worth it in a way.
It's all done now and she's gone. Maybe one day I will be able to forget the years of care and of TRYING so hard to help her, to reach her, to protect her from herself, I don't know. I think those years permanently scarred me.
I swear, I am still so traumatized (sorry, but that's honestly it) by my mom's descent into dementia that a year after her death, I still don't miss her. I mean, I miss the beautiful healthy mom I used to have but I had already grieved over that loss. She had a stroke about 15 years ago that she recovered fairly well from, but she was never the same after that and just became gradually more and more eccentric till finally, the last two years of her life, she was absolutely hell on wheels. She did not go gentle into that good night, but I never figured she would. And then the last six months of her life, she was absolutely pitiful. It was so terrible to watch, and even more terrible to feel so responsible for such a wreck of a person. This was not my mother.
I think I did mention here though that as she reached the end of her life, I saw someone emerge that I had never seen before - the little girl she was so long ago. And this little girl was precious. It broke my heart in a way because I knew this little girl had never been appreciated or even really loved - I knew my mother's mother was mentally ill herself and was dismissive at best. And this little girl inside my mom, the person my mom REALLY was at one time, didn't deserve to be ignored or abused. This was the "raw material" inside my mom. How different things might have been if this little girl had been cherished. But by the time my dad came along, it was too late - she had already been irreversibly damaged. I think he saw glimmers of this little girl from time to time too, and that's why he loved my mom so much, but I never saw her till the very end. I'm glad I got to see her, and it made carrying the brunt of her care at the end worth it in a way.
It's all done now and she's gone. Maybe one day I will be able to forget the years of care and of TRYING so hard to help her, to reach her, to protect her from herself, I don't know. I think those years permanently scarred me.
That is so heartbreaking. I'm sorry.
My mom died in 2013 from a massive heart attack. She was completely on mentally, she died just after midnight and I had spoken to her earlier that day. She was happy, laughing and telling me about her day. Then she was gone. Took me 2 years to actually accept it because we spent so much time together. I missed picking up the phone and calling her to chat. But she died quickly, with no or minimal suffering. I don't think I could have stood watching her lose her memory and physical ability (she walked 3 miles every single morning).
My dad is a different story. My husband and I take care of him, because that's what my mom would have wanted. He was never nurturing, he never hugged us (nicely, he liked to bear hug us so hard it was painful), he never told me, as a daughter, that I was pretty. He competed with me my entire life, anything I did, he did better or at least tried to. So yes, I have a lot of resentments towards him and my upbringing (he did take good financial care of us), but he needs someone to care for him and we do. He never really had any love in his life, so I'm sure that's why he didn't know how to express love to us. It's sad and part of the reason we take care of him, too. His own bio son has pretty much rejected him, until we wanted to move him to a place that would provide him better care. I'd be happy to pass his care over to bio son, he doesn't want it. And I won't desert my dad (step dad) because he needs us more than ever right now in his life. And my mom would want me to.
My mom died in 2013 from a massive heart attack. She was completely on mentally, she died just after midnight and I had spoken to her earlier that day. She was happy, laughing and telling me about her day. Then she was gone. Took me 2 years to actually accept it because we spent so much time together. I missed picking up the phone and calling her to chat. But she died quickly, with no or minimal suffering. I don't think I could have stood watching her lose her memory and physical ability (she walked 3 miles every single morning).
My dad is a different story. My husband and I take care of him, because that's what my mom would have wanted. He was never nurturing, he never hugged us (nicely, he liked to bear hug us so hard it was painful), he never told me, as a daughter, that I was pretty. He competed with me my entire life, anything I did, he did better or at least tried to. So yes, I have a lot of resentments towards him and my upbringing (he did take good financial care of us), but he needs someone to care for him and we do. He never really had any love in his life, so I'm sure that's why he didn't know how to express love to us. It's sad and part of the reason we take care of him, too. His own bio son has pretty much rejected him, until we wanted to move him to a place that would provide him better care. I'd be happy to pass his care over to bio son, he doesn't want it. And I won't desert my dad (step dad) because he needs us more than ever right now in his life. And my mom would want me to.
This made me tear up. It's so difficult to show love and affection to a parent who never gave it to us. My mom was like that. My dad used to say "Sleeping with your mom is like sleeping with a bicycle." That's the truth of it from a child's perspective too - she was simply not physically affectionate nor did she ever SAY anything affectionate. That being said, I do believe she tried to show her love to people, because I do think she felt it. She just really, really, really didn't know how to express it verbally or physically, so instead she would do things like always dressing her kids really well, keeping a neat house, etc. My mom tried to be a good person and that always went a long way with me.
This made me tear up. It's so difficult to show love and affection to a parent who never gave it to us. My mom was like that. My dad used to say "Sleeping with your mom is like sleeping with a bicycle." That's the truth of it from a child's perspective too - she was simply not physically affectionate nor did she ever SAY anything affectionate. That being said, I do believe she tried to show her love to people, because I do think she felt it. She just really, really, really didn't know how to express it verbally or physically, so instead she would do things like always dressing her kids really well, keeping a neat house, etc. My mom tried to be a good person and that always went a long way with me.
Exactly how I feel about my dad. My mom was very affectionate, and extrovert (whole 'nother story about how intimidated I was by that as an introvert), brought me my love for animals and she CARED about everyone she met. Truly cared.
I can't imagine living with a mom who wasn't nurturing. That had to be so hard.
BTW, I don't know if anyone remembers the drama from just over a year ago, when my dad's bio son (I am the step daughter) got terribly angry that we were moving my dad away from him and his family. We had moved to be close to them, for my dad's sake, but then over a 3 year period, he was visited less than 10 times. That same son has not made one bit of effort to visit him in the past year. He did, quite generously (sarcasm) offer to find him a flight so he could fly to SC to spend time with them at his in law's beach home. My dad would have had to pay for it, we'd have had to drive him to the airport and walk him to his gate, then meet him at his gate when he flew home, and god forbid there was a connecting flight! Interestingly enough, that son couldn't drive 4 hours from the mountains of NC to visit his dad because he's too busy, but could spend two weeks at the beach. I mean, take one or two days out of that vacation wasn't a possibility?
I have a sister that lives less than 10 minutes from my dad. She hasn't visited him once. We live 30 minutes away. One other brother has made the drive down this past summer to visit him, but the other hasn't. My husband gets very frustrated about it, but I tell him we can't change their behavior, so no need to dwell on it.
My husband had dementia for 10 years. His daughter rarely called him and never came to see him, but when we moved to Florida she went on such a rant about how I am stealing him away just to drive a wedge between them, etc. It seems that the ones who show no interest and want none of the responsibility are the ones who cry the loudest when changes are made. I suppose it helps them maintain the delusion that they are still involved.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
