More Frustrations With Assisted Living Facilities

So, if you've been following along this blog, you know that my mom is in the later stages of Alzheimer's disease. She moved to her second Sunrise facility last year when the first one went WAAAYYY downhill. My family started out extremely pleased with how things were at this new facility, but recently, there have been a lot of problems there as well.

They're supposed to take Mom to the bathroom every two hours, but often when a family member comes to visit, she says that she has to go and often she has had an accident, which indicates that they haven't taken her. Sometimes she doesn't have a pad on or the pad is not on right, and then things are especially messy.

I sent flowers to Mom a couple of weeks ago, and several days after they arrived, Dad found them on her night table, outside of the box and dead, having never been put in water. It isn't just frustrating that I lost $50 there and that my effort led to there being clutter in Mom's room instead of something beautiful, its that there were supposed to be several shifts of people in her room, NONE of which apparently noticed the flowers or who somehow couldn't handle putting flowers in water. If they can't take care of flowers, it makes me worry about how well they take care of people.

There are almost no activities anymore for Mom, and she now wanders the halls. Dad says recently that he found her talking to a picture on the wall.

A meeting was arranged with Dad on Tuesday with the executive director, floor coordinator, and perhaps another staff person. Dad is pretty sure that they're going to try to raise Mom's level of care to the highest level (she came in at level one, a few months ago was moved to level two) in order to charge us more money. At first, Dad was surprised that they'll claim that she's gotten worse, but after talking it over with my sister and I, he seems now to agree that clearly she's gotten worse. The issue is though - to make sure that she gets taken care of properly and that if they'll charge us more, that she'll actually get more care.

I see now that this is probably the situation at most assisted living facilities - they look great, but on Alzheimer's floors, the expectation is that the care is not so great because who is there to notice or care. One other resident's caretaker moved them out recently and told my Dad that things are not right on the floor. At the time, Dad said he thought the person's complaints were unfounded, but I think that the only reason that Mom's care is okay at all is the fact that Dad is there all the time, and the staff know that he'll notice if something not right. But still, its frustrating not only to see the neglect of the other residents, but also that Mom is being treated the way that we hoped she would.

Part of me wants to be compassionate because I see that it is REALLY hard work to take care of people with advanced Alzheimer's - they don't remember you, they require tons of patience, they are difficult to engage. Still, I wish for something better.