"Panic Button" issues. Anyone else?
What is the point of my mom wearing a "panic/fall button" when she bangs the thing into everything she walks by (including but not limited to her own walker??) She is bent pretty much in half, due to osteoporosis and just refusing to do her exercises. So she walks bent over, the button hanging on the string and it gets bumped and often sets off the alarm as if she has fallen. Then the calls begin. First a siren goes off in her apt, and someone comes on the line to ask if she's OK. She often doesn't respond. Then they go down the calling list. First my brother (with whom she lives, so luckily we've avoided about half of the calls--) but if he is not home, then they call my sister who is a good 25 minutes away, then me, I am 5 minutes away. Even if they shut off the alarm and my brother assesses her and tells them she's fine, the co calls all the people on the list and tells us she's had a fall but that she is OK, or in just one instance, taken to the ER. My poor hubby--the phone is on his side of the bed and he has answered quite a few of these calls. I hear the phone ring at 3 am and my heart starts to race. Turns out she got up for a drink and smacked the button on the counter top. So at least 5 people are awakened several times a week for nothing more life threatening that the fact she won't tuck the thing inside her nightgown (she likes people to see that she wears one...she's a little theatrical about these things to say the least). My sister set this up and she is not even ON the list of people to be called. Funny thing, she sent it through the washer AND dryer and it didn't go off. I asked my bro. is he thought maybe she is looking for more attention by deliberately setting it off and not responding to the person who calls her...and he just sighed and said "That's entirely possible". Anybody else have this situation? After the W/D episode, I began to wonder if she isn't showtiming a little for us? She is quite passive/aggressive--and she's manipulative enough to do just that for attention. I rarely see her..actually am taking a month off for my own sanity--but my heart goes out to my brother!
Thanks for your response. I initially said I'd be on the call list as I live so close and could get to her in 5 minutes. Now I don't want to be on it at all. It was set up by the sister who is pretty much never around, she she herself is not on the call list. WHY they call the whole list to tell us she is fine is beyond me. No point in getting mad at the person who calls, they're just doing their job...but to hear they've called 3 people ahead of me and that she is fine...just annoys me.
She'd LOVE a watch type thing--anything that shows her poor health condition. She saves her "sharps" in a clear plastic orange juice container and keeps 4-5 around her place so everyone can see them. I bought her a red sharps container that you send in to a place to be destroyed and she was not happy.
When she lived alone, we told the service to call 911. Of course, what would the neighbors think? She was embarrassed to even consider it. Getting US to run around would amuse her endlessly, so we said "call 911"
Oh, smart move there, cookie!!!
I'm sure she *meant* well, as my mother would say.
Don't know if this is of slightly more help: my mother wears her pendant wrist watch style, on a piece of elastic fabric with a little clip to it. It's not connected to a remote call centre, though: I have a portable monitor and she's supposed to press her alarm to call me when she wants to move around. My big problem is that wild horses galloping through the room wouldn't make her use it. And, yes, she has in the past pressed it in error, meaning to turn on her bedside light, change the TV channel etc etc etc. No system is foolproof. Or, rather, dementia + independent soul proof.
I look at it this way. "What we call progress is merely the exchange of one nuisance for another nuisance." (Walt Whitman, I think) You pick your nuisance. No personal alarm system, you lie awake hollow-eyed wondering how long you leave it before you go round to her house and check she's not lying there with a broken neck of femur. Personal alarm system, you chase your tail on nine occasions out of ten. And in my case froth at the mouth uselessly trying to persuade her to use the beep-beep thing as she's meant to (I'm trying to stop doing that).
Ah. I see just now that your mother can't use a push-button alarm. Nanny cam? Motion sensor that warns you if she hasn't beetled around for a given length of time? Have a good look at the product catalogues, because they really have done their best to think of everything. Best of luck.
If you mom falls often, she needs a higher level of supervision and care. Period.
People who loftily delegate are a particular bugbear of mine (married to a narcissist for too long, I've become allergic). Please do put a stopwatch on your sister and let us know how long her u-turn takes. I think you're right, we'll be able to hear the screech of brakes from here.
Canadian? I'm flattered, but no - 'here' is the UK. You get all sorts on AC, that's one of the many things I love about it.
Remember, that your Mom put the POA's in place, hopefully when she was competent. That is what she wanted for herself. And the one holding it is the ONE that is to make those difficult decisions that are based on mom's instructions.
As I have said, when I thought it was time for her to move to assisted living and I made all the appts and checked out the places..then ran the idea past the other 4 sibs I was blown away that none of them thought it was a good idea. Even the one with whom she lives, so I will not be the one to bring up that hot topic again. I TRULY do not think that the 2 sisters and 1 brother do NOT see what I see and the brother with whom she lives---he has some kind of martyr complex, plus he does gain financially from her living with him. Truthfully? I am not really a "player" in this at all. My opinions and voice don't count. Now that I see this, in the clear light of being non-involved for a couple of weeks, I realize that I am stressing over nothing. I have no say in her care, and I am not going to, unless asked. I think I will find out, just because I think I should know, who does have POA for mom. Just curious--
My brother's wife has pulled triple duty for years, raising a young family, dealing with elder care issues under her roof and also (more recently) working 2 jobs to help ends meet. I know my mother pays for their electric and cable (internet) and maybe chips in a little for groceries. My SIL had to step away from caring for my mother a couple of years ago as it was burning her out and mother was being kind of nasty to her. They live under the same roof, but my SIL really never speaks to my mother. The kids come and go, but they are all busy with their own lives and there is no reason they should play nursemaid. They are sweet to her and check up on her, but they shouldn't be changing out her diapers and cleaning her apartment.
My brother is an EMT, so he works shift work. He is off only 3 nights a week, so if she falls at night, he's 40 miles away. Why should my sweet, LONG suffering SIL be awakened night after night to go check on mother? Hence the call system the way it is. SO far, the calls have always been when my brother has been home, so that is why I think she is deliberately setting them off. I haven't had to jump in the car and run up there yet. I would, of course, if that was the need. My sister who is now #2 on the list us a good 20-25 minutes away. She has stated she will call 911 if she gets a call. I wish I could get a family mtg together and discuss this, but nobody wants to talk about it. Easy peasy for the 3 sibs who are not "involved"...when my brother, the main caregiver decides he needs help, he'll arrange for a mtg. He has stated over and over that he is in this for the long haul. (I guess until Mother dies). There's no money to inherit, so he's either a saint or a martyr. (Oldest brother cleaned my folks out years ago--another sad tale for another day). Sorry such a long post, but this is cathartic for me...my hubby will not talk about mother with me at all...so it's nice to have people who "get it" listening and adding their viewpoint.
She now uses the emergency button at all hours day or night to call me. The latest call made using this button was at 2:13am to ask me if I put kitty litter on the shopping list. Needless to say my heart was racing, and neither my husband and I could get back to sleep for hours.
Now the other day I go in the house and there she is on the floor of the bathroom. She says all night long (with the phone around her neck). After we got her up safely I asked why didn't she use the emergency button. Her response was, "I didn't want to bother you." But in her mind kitty litter on the shopping list constitutes an emergency. UGH! I was seriously thinking of putting 911 for the button but I value our emergency service people too much to have them deal with her Dementia.
Good luck with trying to figure out what is going to work for you in case of falls.
RatherbeFishing--yep, my mom would think that buying birdseed would be an emergency--and falling down in her bathroom and lying there for hours with a wet diaper around her ankles isn't....I have no idea how her mind works. I will broach the idea of a nanny cam with my brother. I'd think it was an invasion of privacy, since it would have a camera in her bathroom, but she ALWAYS uses the toilet when anyone of us visits and leaves the doors wide open, asking us to stay to help wipe her and get her up. I doubt the presence of a camera would upset her at all. She'd probably like the "attention!" Maybe a video security system would work better for you too.
Oh, she forgot. Yeah, she always forgets. But the pressure pad on her armchair gives her away every time.
Last time she pulled that one she broke her wrist. Any system that relies 100% on compliance seems doomed.
Maybe if there were a way to implant a device into their bodies. But I do not see that happening either. We can implant chips into our pets, but not into the people we love that are just not capable of doing anything for themselves and do not even remember who they are?!
I had not even thought of an alert for my mother, and I do so wish I had. My mother had a slight stroke and she fell down a flight of stairs, fractured her ankle and had a head wound that almost killed her. I don't know how long she had been on the floor before I came to the house to bring her for dinner at my house, but it was way too long. It took the EMT's almost half an hour(the trip to the hospital) to stop the bleeding, and then she had 16 staples in her head to close the wound. After a stint in rehab, she came to live with us for four years. Her brain had changed, our lives changed. I was fortunate enough to be able to have help 5 days a week thanks to the money Mom had put aside for a "rainy day" while my husband and I both worked, but I still moaned and groaned. There are no siblings, so it was all on me. My mother died five years ago this December and I miss her every single day.
Get a wrist alert system that automatically, most of the time, lets the company know when you've fallen. If you can't talk they'll call for help. They are waterproof; make sure your parent has it on all of the time. Get in touch with your local Council on Aging and they'll tell you what is available in your area. We can get lock boxes to put by the front door so the police/EMTs can get in the house without breaking down the door. Get grab bars for the bathrooms, have your parents use walkers. Have first floor bedrooms, pick up the scatter rugs, have someone come in and evaluate the surroundings. And remember, as we get older our brains change, we get more fearful, of everything. But, probably mostly of being forgotten and being left alone.
Do everything you can because guilt at having done nothing is a very heavy burden.
We all just do the best we can with what we know at the time. Hindsight will always be better, but it changes nothing.
My mom had all that and STILL fell and hit her head, suffering some pretty dramatic cognitive decline as a result. She was on a flat floor, in a senior apartment/care center, and still fell. Fortunately her med nurse found her. We still don't know how long she was on the floor and never will.
Someone told me we can drive ourselves crazy with "IF". "IF" is not a productive path to go down because we just can't change the past.
I am so very sorry for your loss. I hope to be the kind of mother my children miss when I'm gone. She must have been a very special lady.