Wow!! you certainly have had your share of heartache you have been a wonderful son to your Mom and don't ever forget that. IMO the feelings of depression etc.. that you have are normal for the situation that you are in..having said that their comes a time when there is really nothing more that you can do. Putting your mom in a home where the staff is trained to take care of her .. is going to be the saddest and the hardest thing you will ever have to do, but you have to know that it will be the best thing for her & for you. Good luck! I do hope that everything works out for you both..
Thank you, Pitszal, I truly appreciate your reply, and I agree, the best possible thing for her is likely to go into a care facility, the logical side of my brain has made that connection, but the selfish side that's worried about her feeling like she's back in the children's home she grew up needs to catch up still. I'm going to talk to her case manager sometime soon and start actively trying to find out how all of this works with her insurance (she has ALTCS, long term care insurance for people in this situation, so I assume there are allowances for facilities like this, I just don't know how it all works because my brain has deliberately shut most of it out and instead focused on me taking care of her until now), since financially we couldn't hope to afford it without some sort of assistance. I know that it is the best thing for her to be surrounded by people who deal with this on a daily basis, I'm just trying to get my brain to fully catch up and accept it rather than rationalizing that I can keep doing this forever.
I am so sorry to hear about your Mom's mental deterioration and the pressure it has put on you. You are to be commended for putting your life on hold while dedicating yourself to her care. That said, there are alternatives you can consider.
While placing her in a nursing home isn't a pleasant solution for several reasons, would you consider doing so if you could spend every day with her just like you're doing now so she does not feel "abandoned?" There will be trained staff there to care for her physical needs such as toileting and bathing her as well as medicating her if need be. This takes a lot of stress off of you and with the load being shared this may help you to deal with your own problems.
Another solution, go back to work and use some of your paycheck, or a three way split with your Dad and Sister to pay for skilled private duty nursing so Mom can continue to remain home. They can either be daycare or live in workers.
Finally. I don't know if this is available in your area, but where I live they have respite centers where family members can bring their loved ones with dementia or Alzheimers disease during the day. This frees them up to go shopping, take care of personal business or just have a few hours to rest. Caregivers need to have some time for themselves too or they burn out and are no good to their loved one or themselves.
Thank you, Foxy, your response is extremely insightful and you're right that I should be looking into as many options as possible for her best interests. If I could spend as much time with her as possible and she was still around properly trained nursing staff, yes, I likely would feel far more comfortable with that situation. The problem is, once she enters that nursing home, I have to focus on getting my life back into order and getting a job so I can financially support myself again, which is going to cut into what time I will have to spend with her. I think that's a massive reason why my brain still won't let me just accept it. Right now I'm with her all the time, she's even at this very moment just in a chair off to my right taking a nap as I type this (I tend to do most of my online time when she's napping or otherwise occupied), so I know she's safe and I know I can spend a little 'me' time doing whatever. When she's not here with me, I'm going to spend 90% of my time wondering if she's ok and the rest of it wishing she was back here, all while still searching for a job and trying to re-train myself in the programming languages I used to be active in so I can actually do any job I might actually land! It's a very tough proposition for my brain to get it's head around, even if the logical part of my brain is already accepting it.
I have thought about a day care facility, and it would be an interesting idea. I'm going to talk to her case manager about that, as well, and see how it would work, because if I could bring her home each night and know she was safe, and yet have time during the day to re-train and search for a job, that might actually be the ideal solution. I'll still be panicking during the day wondering what she's up to, but at least I would know at night she was ok.
Thank you both, I truly do appreciate taking the time to read and respond
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