What was your experience with the nursing home or assisted living facility that your loved one was in while battling Alzheimer's?

I can tell you that my experience was not good. The cost was about $6000 per month, it increased every year, the health care aids that worked there were "baby sitters" who paid little attention to the residents, the home itself was run down.

our cost was also around $6000. my mom was there for 3 1/2 years. she just died two weeks ago. there were good things about the nursing home and bad things. There were aides that sat and watched TV in a residents'room, there were aides who sat chatting on the phone. there were nurses who gave us bogus to No information when my mother would be rushed to the ER. But there were also aides who would clean my mom up, put her in her bed for a nap, wrap a blanket around her, put some classical music on and kiss her on the forehead.
it's a difficult job and it takes a special person to do it well.

My mom, thankfully got a court order from a pro-bono (free) attorney to get the state of Indiana to pay 100% the nursing home costs. The money she tried to pay out of pocket every month wiped her out and put her in a destitute situation.

the nursing home lost dads teeth once. Took six months to get them replaced. A week later the top plate was broken and they again lost the bottoms. They lost his glasses a couple times.
The nursing home paid for everything to be replaced.

The thing is this:
The nurses aides have 12-15 maybe more residents to care for. I was an aide, and I was told I could only spend so many minutes with each person.Still though, little things like putting in teeth or putting on glasses is something that is minimal enough and in my opinion laziness not to do it at all.

just a few days ago, we walked in to find dad siting in his dark room shades pulled and no tv or radio on.

i had an awful experience too. my dad had early onset alzheimers. they nursing home kept telling me that he was a "nuisance" because he walked. all of the other residents were drugged up and in chairs. They even kicked him out in the middle of the night and left him at a local hospital. he had no where to go. It is unbelievable the lack of care for these amazing people who unfortunatly have such a disease. i can't tell you the fear, the pain etc as we went through this process. He survived only 2 months in a nursing home and then passed away. between the meds, the abuse etc. it was just too much. We paid 15,000 dollars a month with no assistance for that abuse!

My mom has been in a nursing home now for 4 years. From the start I had zero trust in them. I still consider myself the primary caregiver. They were & are nothing more than babysitters to me. Would anyone give a babysitter sole responsibility to raise their children?-no. There is no substitute for family. I will guarantee you that she would have been gone loooong ago had I not been a strong advocate. So having your loved one in a nursing home isn't less stressful, it's just a different stress.

I hear ya. I have horror stories and I can't get past them. My mom has been gone for almost five months and I am haunted about what happened to her in the nursing home. The assisted living she was in for two months before that was just as bad. I was able to get her moved to a really good nursing home in October of 2007 knowing she probably didn't have a whole lot of time left but I sure didn't think she would go as fast as she did. She got pneumonia and died three weeks later. But I could see a calmness in her in the last weeks that I hadn't seen. They treated her so much better. But I still have to live with the memory of her in that horrible horrible place.

My Mom was in the dementia unit of a nursing home and overall I think they were quite good. Not perfect, but they did pay a lot of attention to her, trying to help her knit, for example, and reading to her when she was restless. I visited her almost every day and could keep tabs. There were things I wasn't happy with, but overall, if she had to go into a nursing home, we were glad we chose that one.

I think Mom and I were very blessed. The assisted living facility she was in was great. The caregivers loved my mom and took care of her like she were their own mothers. After she could no longer stay in assisted living I moved her into an Alzheimer's home - a regular house that had six AD residents. It was 3000 a month and she received wonderful treatment... food, bathing, etc. and it was only about a half mile from my house. She died there on hospice - all in all a good place to be.

Ours was absolutely wonderful and a complete blessing. My mom, who was in Stage 7, was sent there for rehab 6 days after breaking her hip. The cost was very high, $300 per day, but we never had to pay any of it because it was covered by medicare due to the hip fracture. Had she survived, we had already decided that she would remain there, and we would have sold her home to pay for the care. Ultimately, if that money ran out, they would have kept her on as a medicaid patient.

Every single person - doctors, nurses, PT's, aides, orderlies, receptionists- treated her with kindness, gentleness and respect. She never once lost her dignity. The place had carpeting, curtains, and bedspreads, yet had all of the equipment necessary to keep them clean, comfortable, and medicated.

When she became gravely ill, the doctor was fully supportive of our decision to not hospitalize or medicate, and he called in Hospice. Without having to move her, they made sure that her last days were peaceful and comfortable. When I was there the last few days and after she passed away, I got a hug from the nurse, and nothing but kind words from the entire staff. It turned one of the saddest experiences of my life into one I can look back on with thankfulness and peace.

We were lucky in the Dementia unit we found for my DF. Although it was not our first choice, he has been their 7 months, and all in all we are happy with his care.
Last month, he acted out, and acutally hurt an aide, so off to psych ward to adjust meds. The aide he hurt was actually one of his favorites. When we first placed him, they said they did not tolerate violence, and if he acted out, they could make him move. They had a meeting while he was in psych and decided to keep him, because they like him, and most of the time he is happy go lucky. Luckily the new meds are working, and no more aggression. So all in all, I feel lucky to have found this place for my DF.
After working as an aide for 5 years, I know how hard it is working in NH, and the pay is horrible, so sometimes finding good staff that will stick around is very difficult. Escpecially in rural areas.
But if anyone is unhappy with care in home, please talk with administrator, social worker and so on, and if that doesn't work, start looking for somewhere else.

My Mother is in a wonderful nursing home. She ended up there for rehab after a stay in the hospital for a UTI and we decided that she was getting better care there than we could give her at home. My Dad died in January and was her caregiver. She is doing so much better there, eating better and has much more attention than my sister and I could ever give her. Everyone at the nursing home is kind and treats all the residents with respect. We are so glad that this is where Mom is now.

My mom was in an ALF. Like some already said, some of the staff were good, others were not. Things always went missing, and no one really cared. Most of the staff loved my mom, so that helped. However, I would never ever recommend this ALF as in my opinion, they are responsible for her death. They found her one morning, unconsious in the bathroom inside the laundry room. It sickens me to think how long she was laying there and no one even noticed. Not sure how she even got in there in the first place. She ended up with brain bleeds, and died within a week. That was January 28th. I wish I could have kept her with me. But I am thankful she is now at peace.
I think the majority of nursing homes and ALF's are similar. They have minimum staff based on state requirements, and they don't pay them anywhere near enough. So you end up with unskilled...and not to be rude, but stupid people. I think you just need to be there with your loved one as much as possible, no matter where they are.

Hi,
I'm glad of this question, because it is timely for me. We had to move my Mom from her ALF to the Nursing home side of her facility at the insistence of the staff. Their reason was that they were afraid she would fall, because her gait had become so unsteady. My response was that she was going to fall anyway, and it seemed better to me that she fall on a carpet rather than on the tile floors of the nursing home side. Also, she was living with my Dad on the ALF side; moving her would mean splitting them up.

The staff prevailed, by stating it was the nursing home or nothing. So, in January, Mom was moved, and the staff on the nursing home side assured me she was much safer now, because the staff/patient ratio is so high.

Of course, she fell in her first week over there. Now she is confined to a wheelchair, with a chronically sore hip and an alarm system hooked onto her if she tries to get up. She was an active, sporting woman, and she hates this.

My other genuine concern is her health: she had a urinary tract infection after about two weeks in the NH, and now, a month after that was cleared up, she has c. difficile, an intestinal infection causing diarrhea. Both her feet and ankles are very swollen, and she's losing her voice. What's up? She had NO health issues of any sort besides the dementia and gait problems while she was on the ALF side. Now, in four months, she's a medical wreck.

I'm suspicious about the care (or lack therof) she's receiving, but also aware that my feelings may be tainted by the fact that I didn't want her moved yet, anyway. Are all these problems normal?

p.s., I live three hours away, and haven't yet been able to convince my Dad to move themselves closer to me.

Thanks for feedback.
-m

The first home that we had mom in was really bad. They stole her meds and then tried to back charge our account for new meds. They did not take good care of her at all. They would wash her with straight soap and it looked like they never washed it off. Her skin was horribly dry and she always had food stuck in her teath. We moved her from there and in to a new home. It was better but there was a lot to be desired.

I started taking notes everytime I was there and any time they called. I kept a notebook with all her conditions and any med changes they made. It proved useful when they would make mistakes or try and lie about her care.

Unfortunately noone will care for your loved one the way you would. That is not to say that you should let people get away with insufficient care though. I was never a jerk to anyone that worked there but I did make sure they new I was watching and that I wasnt going to tolerate any crap. CF's are like anything else in life.. they wont respect you until you make them. I made them respect me by being fair, firm and friendly. I was never condescending to them, being rude will not get you anywhere. Its like being a jerk to the waiter at a resturaunt...you dont know what they can or will do toy your food.

Hi - I'm sorry for your anxiety about your Mom and totally understand it. I think if you look at some of these posts - maybe search for 'gait' or unsteady, you'll see it comes with the territory. Everything you describe I've seen at my Mom's NH/Alz. unit, and they provide good care. Falls still happen and decline still happens, but that doesn't mean she can't get better and stronger too.
It's scary (and a shock) to see the alarm, the wheelchair, the decline and most of all the big change in environment. Give yourself and your Mom some time before you judge. The care she needs and is getting now from the NH side is more than she would get from the ALF side.
Stick with your questions thou - call a lot! Keep calling until your concerns are all addressed - in your most 'sweetest' voice of course . I'm glad your Dad is still close by and can come over and be with her - how comforting for her and you both.
Hang in there.