I am sure others have gone through this. My mom is not easy to deal with. She is not a "content" old lady. She had a stroke and isn't very mobile, but boy can she still talk..... and talk..... and talk...... and yes, I am glad, but sometimes, she is just mean.
She has always been this way, but it is worse of course now. My dad is alive, but she is killing him. They fuss constantly, he is under stress all the time, etc. We have in-home help (not cheap!), and thank God for it, but I do wonder if it wouldn't be better for mom to be in a nursing home.
She doesn't want to go and I fear that she would constantly be calling us, complaining, etc. I pretty much know she would. So, would we really have any peace? Also, can you get kicked out of a nursing home? Asking for a friend lol....
My 90+ year old friend who was widowed and lived alone (however with many cats) for over 40 years, had to be placed in Memory Care ward due to her wandering. The day she moved in, there was a guy greeting everyone. He took an interest in her and she found him interesting to talk to. They spent a lot of time together. His family works in the police field and had her vetted. They were surprised to find out she had worked at the sheriff's office as he also had worked in the sheriff's office. They were best buddies for the next 5 years until she passed.
She told everyone while she was alive, that it took her to move into a Memory Care ward, to find a soulmate after her husband passed.
if you decide to place her and she is capable of understanding, I would explain to her that once in the facility she will get better care and have her needs met if she is not mean and demanding because no one wants to help a mean person. Whether she actually does get better care for being polite and cooperative may or may not be true, but it sure can’t hurt - unless she gets ignored. Then you need to take action. At home at times my mother has fallen into a nasty patch here and there and has even hit and pinched. I have told her her that is a no go unless she wants the same back. Of course I would never do that but the look in my eye must be enough because that pretty much stopped. I give her plenty of leeway if she has a brewing UTI and therefore is not able to think straight.
What helped me a lot was limiting her calls to ONE a day. If it was an emergency I knew the facility would call me too. ( I say ‘was’ because she is not able to call on her own now )
She also called me upwards of 17x a day to complain so I got a ‘dumb’ flip phone and never gave her that number. Turned off the ringer on my phone whose number she has. The constant ringing and knowing what was behind it drove me bananas. She was filling up my voicemail on my smartphone but now I don’t miss important calls because I have the 2nd number to give out as needed. This system has worked out so well for me . Not sure what it costs right now but I just added the cheapest phone possible to my plan and it has been so worth a few dollars extra a month.
Ideally I would have given mom the new # and had that be ‘her’ line, but she hasn’t been in a mental space to switch numbers. That’s the only thing I would have done differently if I could.
Good luck with everything!
I’d suggest that you discuss the same system with your Dad. He can visit her as much as he likes, as her husband not carer. He can leave if she’s mean, and say ‘I’ll come back when you’re feeling happier’. He can skip days so that he has a better life himself. And he can also control any phone calls to him.
Keeping your Dad happy with this is an important part of making it work.
Is your mother in her right mind or does she have some kind of dementia?
If she's still with it enough to understand and have an adult discussion, then you and your father should sit down with her and have an adult talk.
Explain to her that the constant talking, meanness, complaining, and fussing is too much for you and your father to handle. Then tell her that she is going on probation for 90 days. If her behavior does not improve a ten-fold in that time, she will be getting placed in a nursing home. Something like 50% of caregivers die before the people they are caregiving for. Ask her what she thinks will happen if your father has a heart attack and dies because he can't take the stress anymore. Then tell her that it will not involve you taking your father's place as caregiver.
Please give her the advice I have given so many of my stubborn and fussy care clients.
'Nothing gets a person a one-way ticket to a nursing home faster then being stubborn'.
From what you're describing she belongs in a nursing home.
You and your family will have to adjust to the discipline of how to manage and ignore phone calls and visits, and learn to stand up say “I LOVE you Mom, but I gotta go”, when she is cantankerous when you visit.
Believe it or not, the staff who is caring for her will be unfazed by anything “mean” she says or does, and will have strategies for dealing with anything she throws at them.
Also, and very important, you may be able to have psychiatric/psychological testing done that will lead to a suggestion of small doses of medication. You may be surprised to learn that she has the capacity to be a pleasant, reasonable person, or at very least, a decent, manageable one.
Nobody, NOBODY—- WANTS to enter residential care, but safety and 24/7/365 care may be MUCH more important toner welfare (and yours) than what she wants, or thinks she wants.
She is not in any way entitled to damage the lives of those her love her. You have all tried Plan A, and found that it wasn’t working well for anyone
Time for Plan B.
However, if she's violent and uncontrollable, she could get punted, but I'd cross that bridge when I got to it. There are other nursing homes who take on those patients -- they don't just send them home.
In my case, my mom first was in rehab for three weeks following a fall and now in senior (independent) living. In each case yes, she always called (calls), complains, etc
The workers at the indy living facility call me a saint for having to deal with her
Based on what you say it sounds like your mom would do the same but that is not a reason to not put her in one. You would have more peace than now and would have more control in just refusing to answer phone, etc rather than have her be there all the time.
And yes you can get kicked out. A friend of my moms got kicked out of her place for slapping an aide across the face.
Yes, of course you'll have peace back in the house once mom is placed! You choose to take one phone call a day from her if the calls become incessant, and that's that. In time, she'll develop a new routine in the SNF and acclimate. My mother lived in Memory Care AL for nearly 3 years, and in regular AL for 4 years prior, and had quite an active life there with activities, meals, side trips with the mini bus, movies, visitors coming to see her, etc. She also got great care from a team of people who truly loved her.
It takes quite a lot to get 'kicked out' of Skilled Nursing; the staff is used to complaining elders and have seen it all, pretty much. Just b/c your mother is chatty and irritating at home doesn't mean she'll act that way once she's placed. She can turn out to be entirely different in a new environment. My mother treated me like DIRT and the staff in her MC like solid gold. It's 'funny' how that works out sometimes.
Best of luck!