Nursing Home and New Rules

Well, after finding Grandma laying in the road from a fall, we decided it was time to find a good nursing home.  No matter how many cameras we had on her or how often we checked on her, we couldn't keep her from stealing the neighbor's mail or digging thru everyone's garbage.  This fact caused her to miss her step on the curb and fall.  So, after a week or two in the hospital, my dad placed her in a local nursing home.

It has now been 10 months.  Grandma is doing great.  We found her a good roommate.  She spends many nights rummaging through other patient's rooms and yelling at her roommate to turn the lights off because she can't pay the bill.  In the last couple of months, the nurses and my mother have caught her several times pushing her wheel chair to the door and trying to escape.  She has made friends.  They have dementia as well. They all spend their days plotting their escape from the nurses.

Some days, the nurses allow her to sit at the nurses station.  Back in the day, she was a nurse and now she simply thinks she is back at work.  She reads the phone book and yells at anyone that bothers her.

One day, while she slept in the hallway in her wheel chair, someone painted her fingernails red.  She woke up and found them.  In a complete panic, she spent the next 30 minutes scratching all of it off.  She was mad that someone put that red stuff on her.  A friend of my mother's realized what had happened and helped her remove the rest.

She doesn't understand that she is the nursing home.  Her roommate tells her that Ellis (Grandpa) is down the hall.  Her roommate also has a hard time dealing with her.  When Grandma goes to bed, she expects everyone to go to be with her.  Her roommate likes to play games on her computer and is constantly having to tell Grandma to get over it.  For some reason, grandma deals with her and moves on.

Recently, we had a scare.  Grandma developed a UTI.  UTIs are horrible for people with dementia.  We thought she was on her death bed.  It took a day or two before they figured it out.  They got some meds in her and she is back to her old self.  

Keep our family in your prayers.  My mother has become the main caregiver and visits the nursing home daily.