Moving Parents into Assisted Living?
Is it Time for Assisted Living?
Was it time to stop kicking the can down the road and get them into assisted living? Leading up to that question, we didn’t really talk about it much if at all. Status quo has strong inertia. However, being the main caretaker, enabling them to live independently at home, it was going to be up to me to blow the horn, wave the red flag as it were. I couldn’t recognize when the slow decline had gone far enough. I struggled with this question for years and then it seemed every month. So I prayed: God make it obvious to me, clear as a bell, indisputable. My prayer was answered using a rare tornado in my Michigan county August 2021.
It took 3 hours to convince my 86 year old Step-Dad that staying at home with no electricity, no phone and no water was unsafe. The length of time for him to reason it out should have been a loud clue to me but it wasn’t really. I was happy to have finally convinced him.
The storms’ devastation was massive by our standards and could take days maybe weeks to clean up. It took the threat to call my brother that Step-Dad relented. It took another hour to keep him on task packing a few things for himself and Mother. They stayed with me for 4 nights and 5 days at my house.
How I Knew It Was
I experienced up close and personal just how far the disabilities of my parents had gone. I watched my Step-Dad give my 88 year old, dementia suffering Mother his medicine not hers. Quick action from where I was in the house allowed me to leap to her before it was swallowed. Whew but is this a one off occurrence due to the disruption caused by the storm? (See? So many many questions to answer in just the first crossroad of many). To be sure, God let me see it happen again the following day. This time it was him taking her medicine. The blessing of confirmation received, thank you God.
Taking each others medicine was a clear sign to me that independent living is dangerous. Previous events and disabilities leading up to this one were somewhat ‘solvable’. That was my criteria: can I solve for this? The only ways to solve for the mistaken medicine was to hire a nurse to pass meds every day (for us unaffordable) or drive the 13 miles each way to do it myself (beyond reasonable).
I know now is the time to blow the whistle and start the conversation with my siblings. My 4 sibs and their spouses started group texting then quickly turned to using Zoom on-line discussion platform of which we can thank Covid for. My sibs unanimously agreed (another blessing hurled by God) and we began talking about what to do next.
Is It Time for Assisted Living?
How To Convince Resistant Parent
