No one was living with her. She was alone. The house was falling down around her. It was torn down later after she passed away. They had to keep the property while she was in the nursing home in order for Medicare to cover the nursing home. Her own children wouldn’t take care of her. She was actually better off in a facility. Safer & cared for.
Her house was crumbling. The roof was caving in over the second floor. There was no indoor bathroom, only a very old out house & a portable toilet in the wash room - no tub or shower, just a sink. The water supply was spring water, which sounds nice, except for the green algae hanging from the faucets. At least someone thought to put in a bottled water dispenser. The power was out for 3 weeks from a terrible storm. I don’t know if she had the sense to not eat what was in the refrigerator or freezer. Her daughter-in-law would drop off a bag of McDonald’s, basically just kind of threw it to her & ran. I asked her about them taking her in & she gave me some lame story about she & her husband working opposite shifts. Sounded kind of perfect to me, someone would always be home.
There was a visiting nurse for a while after my aunt was nearly killed in a car accident - she drove head on into the end of a metal guard rail which went through the windshield & out the rear window. She had a pretty bad head injury which made her mental condition rapidly decline. But the visiting nurse was discontinued after the doctor discharged her from needing care. And all the visiting nurse did was sit in the porch & smoke & play with her phone.
Her clothes were gone. My one uncle used to throw his clothes in the river - he too had dementia. His daughter said my aunt probably threw them out somewhere. She cut the lining no out of her purse & it was empty. I have no idea what she did with her wallet & checkbook. I lived near her for a short time & I took her grocery shopping every week & out to lunch. Sometimes we’d pick up her brother. He wasn’t much better & he didn’t have the excuse of a head injury like hers. He had been in a nursing home & fought like hell to get out & was successful, but he too had dementia & he declined pretty quickly. I had to buckle & unbuckle their seatbelts, neither one could figure out how to do it. Most of my dad’s siblings ended up with dementia & went into nursing homes. There were 13 siblings. My dad, one brother and a sister who didn’t have dementia, but it may have been because they passed away before the onset.
I had to guilt & embarrass her son into taking her to the ER. Here she had a fractured elbow from a fall. I was picking her up to take her to a family reunion & she was in a state. Crying, upset. I had to help her to her portable toilet 4 times. I couldn’t find a matching pair of socks or shoes for her, no clothes to change into. I went out to the car where my husband and another cousin were waiting for us & I sat there & cried. We decided to just tell her son to take her to the ER.
And it turned out that in addition to the fractured elbow, she had a very bad urinary tract infection. The doctor told her son she could no longer live alone, that if they couldn’t take her in, she needed to be in a facility. If you’d seen the house & living conditions, you’d agree. It was just horrible.
I approached my cousin at the reunion & told him about his mom needing to go to the ER. Another cousin volunteered to go with him. After they left, the rest of my cousins thanked me for speaking up about our aunt. They didn’t have the nerve & didn’t want to strain their relationship with him. I told them I didn’t really care about the relationship with him, I was just worried about our aunt.
My aunt was clean & safe in the nursing home. She got haircuts & hair styling, showers, clean clothes. I bought her a basic new wardrobe & shoes. Aunt Helen eventually loved it there & thrived. She actually had a bit of a life that she sure wasn’t getting at home. She passed away 4 years later.