My Mother asked me to signup to be her Advocate when she realized she had Alzheimers. Knew Pop was incapable of letting her go when it was time. She also knew the Dr. son was a dick and the Lawyer son a prick, the oldest daughter a bleeding heart liberal who would not let her go for different reasons than Pop.
I made the decision to move her to a "Memory Care" facility when Pop could not longer really care for her, and, he was tied too much to the house to live any kind of a life himself. (that was a really big ruckus when I "took" her to the facility, but I had the legal papers to do so) Price of agreeing to be an adult...
She did ok for a year, she as in a place I could visit every day from my work whilst I was in town and the wife could pop in and check when I had to travel. (showing up at all hours with no discernible schedule tends to keep a facility honest about how they treat someone who can't really communicate how they are being treated)
About 18 months in she broke a hip, Mr. No Bedside Manner was all for drugging her up and just letting her die, never heard from the Lawyer bud, too busy I guess. I talked to the surgeon and asked him what would he do if it was his mother, and he said he would fix the hip so they could keep her clean without major pain, so that is what I did. She developed
c-dif about a month in to the rehab. Hardest thing I ever did was say no to antibiotics, but had she known what she had become she would have pulled the plug on that herself. A few days later I closed her eyes when she took that last ragged breath, free from pain.
I never told the siblings about my decision, only the wife knows how hard that was. Interestingly a year later to the week she had to take a call from a ward across the State whey the carried her WWII Veteran Father who had developed Dementia, and they could no longer keep him at the Vet's home in Humboldt. They perforated his colon doing a rectal pick and the foreign Dr. wanted to send him for surgery to repair the massive bleeding they caused and she said no, let him go. That was a very hard thing, but he had no idea who or where he was anymore, and I still want to beat the ass of the guy on the phone who told her she killed her Father...
Only you know when her quality of life means fighting to keep her here...and I woke up in a cold sweat for a while over my decision, but the point of her having me sign up was she knew I would do what was best for her.
