I am starting in home care tomorrow mostly to get the elimination period out of the way and also to find someone I feel comfortable enough to use for respite care since the LTC policy will pay for that now. I had another thread on this but really wanted to get an answer to this particular question.
DH does not drive but he still takes walks on his own around the neighborhood. He used to be a runner and even ran in a couple races around here a couple years ago. There's a local place he walks to once a week and has been for the past three years that we have lived here. This is a tiny tourist beautiful town and a paradise to walk around in. I will not stop him from walking independently until he shows some signs of disorientation and he has not. Maybe it would be safer to keep him contained in the house unless I or someone else can go with him, but I have no doubt that would hasten his decline and make him depressed which he mostly isn't right now. Therefore,
He is super aware of his situation. He knows the person coming in is from the agency and that we have to have someone here once a week at least so that we don't have to continue paying the premium. (Great advice from Mary and others on how to approach him on this, but when it came right down to it I went with what I thought would work best with him.) I told him they would be doing mostly light housework and told the worker that too. She came by yesterday to meet us.
Re: WALKS. I'm thinking of telling him that he must remain in the house while she is here at least for awhile so as not to jeopardize our policy. I think that will probably work for today and Sunday when she'll be here. What do you all think? Have any of you had in home care while your LO was still taking walks on their own? How do you handle that? What is the responsibility of the worker in this situation?
Although my solution may work for these first few visits it won't work if I use her for respite care and she lives in 24-7. I can't imagine at this point DH would tolerate well not having some freedom to walk around the neighborhood. We live a block from "downtown historic area".
Oh, forgot to mention. In a rush to get to store. He walks the dogs every day and I want to keep this up because everything that has become daily routine with him he seems to be retaining better.
So, advice on independent walking and in home care would be so helpful. IT STARTS TOMORROW. I'll be at a book discussion group at local library very close by so if anything goes wrong I can be right home. So nervous but so glad I started this.
I think you should check with the agency from where the worker is coming. Since she really is there to watch him, even if he doesn't think so, there could be a big liability issue if he is out of the house away from her. If she is coming just once a week, I see no reason why he cannot stay in and around the house for that day. He has the other days to take his walks. But please check with the agency. We never know when our spouses' behavior will change, and it could be on the day she arrives, he suddenly gets confused and lost.
Terry--I agree with Joan's point--the aides we have had make sure that they accompany him if he leaves the house. I have had very good success with getting compliance from my husband by telling him he must do thus and so in order to get coverage by the LTC policy. In your case, I would have said something like "the policy will only pay if you keep the worker company while she is here". Maybe because he was a CPA, he still responds well to rules and regulations and I have also advised the staff of the day program that he attends to say things are a "state regulation" if he balks at cooperating.
Both our aide and myself try to tell him he is keeping us company, taking care of us, etc. Somewhere deep down he knows it's the reverse, but he likes to think he's still the man of the house and why not keep him thinking that?
Home Health Care here said hb has to be confined to home for him to be eligible for home health care because that's what it is. Since he can also take walks, we don't qualify.
Our aide went with Charlie on his walks and he was fine with it since he and I walked together most of the time. If he was just in the back yard, he was allowed to walk alone (with her watching him from the window). If he wanted to walk around the block or to the store across the street, she went with him. This continued for several months until he no longer had the balance or the strength to walk.
Joan & Marilyn, I agree completely. Knowing that he won't be going out on his own will be a MAJOR relief to me also. I'll deal with the full time respite care later. Today has been a rollercoaster as DH's decline keeps hitting me in the face everytime I turn around. I'm exhausted. I have a feeling I'm getting started on this policy and home care just in time. She came by the other day and I really liked her.
Edis & Faye, I'll have her go for the dog walks and any other he takes with him. Hope she likes to walk. She does like dogs thank god. Zibby, DH qualifies for LTC insurance due to his diagnosis with AD. That's all it takes for this policy.
With the way things are escalating I don't think it will be long before he shouldn't go out on his own and I am dreading the heck out of that. We moved here so he could walk places. He loves it. I try to go with him as much as I can stand it but he wants to be going all the time to listen to music in the town park, the restaurants/clubs, and just to walk. All these venues are within a few blocks of our house. I know, Hang on, this is going to be a wild ride.
I haven't a clue what to expect from tomorrow. I'm going to have DH show her around and show her his routine (she and I can compare notes after), have her do some light housework with him helping with the stuff he can do, and fix him lunch. Oh my......is this really my life? When the nurse came the other day to evaluate I met her outside and she asked if she was going in to evaluate my father! Sometimes he reminds me of my grandfather. Sometimes of my son when he was a toddler.
Isis took my husband on his walks. When she first came he was more than capable of walking on his own although mostly he had stopped doing that already. But he took her out and showed her how to come back home.
My husband is also a runner, typically he runs 4 miles several times a week.
I agree with others that perhaps the aid could take walks with him. There was someone in my support group that had to put her young husband (late 40's) in a nursing home because he would take off running. This nursing home has a young activities director who runs with her husband!
I'm not sure I really know when the right time is to start a "sitter"/"aide" with my husband. I have always been a "keep him happy" wife for 46 years - he is a strong personality - so it's hard to learn to be the parent of this 68 year old child. I dread if he gets upset with me and complains. Guess it's just up to me to get a thicker skin because I know there will be tougher days ahead. The one consolation is that most times they don't remember the confrontations later.
George's caregiver, I agree with you. Although I am not a "keep him happy" wife (lol), I also dread it when my husband gets upset and complains. I know I need a thicker skin because we are coming to the stage where tough decisions will have to be made by me, and I am certainly not looking forward to it. My husband is a type A personality and everything on this journey has been a struggle and a war of wills! We have been going round and round for the last 4 weeks on getting in home care for 2 days a week. He is fighting me tooth and nail, but I have to keep trying every day because I can't help him if I can't take care of myself. I put everything of mine on the back burner and I need all my routine visits to take place, like the dentist and mammogram and such.
Last fall I just told DH that I was getting a woman to help in the house. The first time I stayed home and then started going out for short errands until he got used to her. Now he just acccepts her being here. In the beginning he did go outside but just went to the end of the driveway. Now I have started a second person on a different day of the week. This man has been only twice but said he feels Ron is getting used to him. So far, so good!
One of the hardest lessons to learn about having a spouse with Alzheimer's is that they no longer get to make the decisions. He's not the husband you knew. He's a patient with a brain disease, and he is incapable of making decisions about his care. If he needs an aide, you get him one. There are plenty of different suggestions on these boards as to how to handle it. You hire the person, explaining the situation beforehand. I would only hire someone who had experience with Alzheimer's. When he comes, you can tell your husband he's there to clean; to "assess" him with various tests; to keep him company. Anything that works.Or you can simply tell him he's there to stay with him while you do errands. They usually, not always, cause all the screaming and fussing with US, not the outside caregivers. Eventually, even with resistance, they usually come to accept the caregiver.