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jenny lucas Online
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- Posts: 9648
- Joined: Mon Oct 07, 2013 5:39 pm
Thu Nov 19, 2015 10:02 am
Maz, very glad to hear you didn't rush into the hospital! I'm not unsympathetic to the hospital, because patients with dementia are very, very challenging (as that poor matron is finding!), but that is NOT something for families to sort out - the NHS/government should be sufficiently funded for the huge numbers of very elderly people with dementia who are arriving on their doorstep and will continue to do so in in ever increasing numbers as the UK population ages.....(!!!!). Clearly, the NHS needs specialst 'dementia hospitals' as well as what used to be called convalescent nursing homes to absorb all the 'bed blockers'.
I'm glad the matron was sympathetic to you, but it does show they 'try it on' with families, doesn't it?!!!!! If they can get family to cope, then they are only too relieved to pass the problem back to you.
Speaking of which, please don't have your mum home again! It really does seem as if she has gone way, way beyond what you can cope with.
I'm not really clear about why they are faffing about with her diagnosis. After all, does it really matter that much WHY she is as she is, so distraught and 'wild', only that she IS like that! Unless what it causing it can be reversed, and in days, she HAS to be in 'care' somewhere (not at home!), irrespective of what is causing her to behave like that.
As for whether dementia care homes can cope with her - they do come in different 'varieties' I know. My MIL started out in an Abbeyfield where those with dementia only had it mildly, but she got too bad for it - they threw her out when she got out of the front door and headed off! So she went into another one which had 'lock down' facilities - basically, the doors were code-controlled, and residents couldn't get in and out on their own. This was actually 'too much' for her, and so I moved her yet again to an intermedicate home where nearly everyone has dementia, but not if it's 'wandering dementia' as it is not a lock-down facility. So far she's not managed to be thrown out, but it does happen. She did take to walking out a month or so ago, but was put on a low diazepam dose to 'calm her' (she gets restless in the evenings when there are no structured activities to absorb them), and so far, fings crossed, that seems to work. Another resident was thrown out because he kept going into the wrong bedroom and getting into bed there - nothing could convince him to stay in his own room for bed!
So, on that basis, I would surmise that there are care homes for very very disturbed and 'wild' dementia patients - though perhaps that is only through the use of tranquillisers?
I know it's controversial, but one argument in favour of tranquiillisation is that it not only makes it possible at all for someone to be cared for by others, but that they themselves are more well 'tranquil'......though others say it's just a 'chemical cosh' and turns them into zombies.
Whatever the situation with your mum, it really truly does sound like her behaviour is utterly impossible to manage at all without constant care and 'hands on' attention, and even then she sounds desperately unhappy. And WAY beyond what you can cope with.....