A New Frontier

For the last 16 months, I've been actively trying to help my parents transition to the next phase. Mom was officially diagnosed with Alzheimer's exactly 1 year ago this week, and her Medicaid finally came through last fall allowing me to submit her first application to a memory care facility the week of Thanksgiving. After repeating 2 steps forward, 5 steps back ad nauseum for months, everything happened at once yesterday. I found a facility with an immediate opening for Mom and Dad sold their house.

It was a whirlwind of a day. Thankfully I had taken off work to get some things done since I ended up spending most of the time on the phone with my parents and sisters trying to iron out details. I had narrowed down the memory care facilities in the county to 3 that were highly rated. Two of them have long wait lists. The third that has the opening has excellent care providers and a long history of satisfied customers having been in business for 40 years and having several long-term employees (including one who's been there for 37 of those years). That said, it's very old. They are renovating it, but the memory care section is still painted cinder block and it's in the basement. The idea of sending Mom there … it feels like I'm sending her away to be forgotten. I know I'm not, but it's so depressing. And the other people in the unit are much farther along in the disease than she is. She's still social, even if she often speaks jibberish. Most of the women there were no longer ambulatory and seemed completely inactive.

My sister and I keep talking about how the care is what's important, and Dad needs a solution sooner than later. But it still breaks my heart to think about it. We are looking at some other options, but at the moment, this seems like the direction things are headed.

And Dad not only sold his house yesterday, but found another one today. It has some structural cracks, so he's going to have a foundation expert check it out first, but he'll likely be buying it. So much happened in so little time after such a long, slow wait. My emotions are all over the place. 2015 has gotten off to quite a start.