Respect for life

[larry85704]

As a Catholic we are told to respect life. I try to respect life so I have to ask a question. What are the good choices to what a caregiver can do for the person they are caring for when the caregiver goes on vacation?

I take care of my mother. She is alert and plesasant and 87. There are things she can’t do anymore so I take care of her. I decided to take a vacation and mom went to a nursing home for a week.

What I would like to hear about is how some parish, somewhere, has put together a mom-sitting co-op. Perhaps some of you have heard of babysitting co-ops. Lets face it, we are a gray haired church. Many of us are retired with big old houses and extra bedrooms. Those extra bedrooms could very will be put to use to house an elderly member of the parish when their normal caregiver is away.

It strikes me as not respectful for life for a person to be in a nursing home. I understand that, sadly, there are times when a loved one must be put in a nursing home.

 

[rpp]

While I understand your motives, there are some very important reasons why this is often not a good idea.

Most elderly people who need care or “looking after” have serious health problems. To have someone unfamiliar with their needs or procedures is asking for trouble. It is better if a professional look after them.

I would be very hesitant to look after someone else’s parent in my home because I do not have the knowledge, training or skill to deal with foreseeable problems. I cannot imagine how I would feel if something happened. I do not know what would happen to me or the children of this parent who entrusted them into my care.

But I bet a lawyer can.

 

[Gardening_Mommy]

My in-laws finally put my husband’s grandmother into an asssisted living facility. She doesn’t quite need a full-blown nursing home, but she really can’t live by herself, either.

Previously, she was living in a good-sized mobile home about thirty feet behind my in-laws nice mobile home. She ate terribly, too much junk food and TV dinners, she never got out, she hardly ever even walked across the garden to my in-laws’ house, etc. When she drove, she got confused and lost. She missed medications or just refused to go to doctor appointments.

When my in-laws moved to Virginia to be nearer the grandkids, Nanny was told she was NOT going into an apartment of her own. She fought it, she argued she didn’t want to sell her car, etc.

However, now that she’s settled in, she loves it. In fact, she turned down an invitation to dinner tonight (we live only five minutes away) because she had tired herself out playing in a bridge tournament. She gets up, gets dressed, and gets out of her room every day to go to meals and activities. Nanny has gotten significantly more coherent and less forgetful since she moved in, partly from the regular activities and partly from her medications being more carefully dispensed than my mother-in-law could manage. There’s even a doctor who comes every week to make the rounds.

Yes, some people can abuse the system, but it can also be a huge help when the medical problems get too bad to handle at home. Nanny fell several times in her house in Alabama; once, she spent several hours laying on the floor until my MIL happened to try to call. About a month ago, Nanny fell again; she fractured her arm, hit her head, and was bleeding pretty badly. Within minutes, she had pulled the emergency cord, the staff had arrived to help her, they called my in-laws, they called the ambulance, and she was on her way to the hospital. Her recovery took a while, but if she hadn’t been in the assisted living center… ?

 

[BlestOne]

In my mom’s family, the brothers and sisters would take turns caring for grandmom. Of course there were 12 of them so they basically could help each other out. The ones that lived close by did most of the care, but when g-ma broke her hip they all pitched in including my mom who lived the furthest away (SD to PA). The last year of g-ma’s life she voluntarily put herself in a nursing home after spending the winter before there and coming out in the spring. I guess this would be the benefit of having 12 kids… like in the days before contraception and abortions became the norm even in some Catholic families.