hello from a New Yorker in Oklahoma city

[g28999o]

Greetings everyone, I'm orginally from New York city but i moved to Oklahoma city because of work. I brought my mother to Oklahoma to care for her but it was eventually to much for me as I'm a single male with no siblings. My mother is currently living in a Nursing home. I searching for information on what to look for in a nursing home, what to ask her doctors, what warning signs should i keep an eye on. I'm also thinking about having her live with me again but i need better resources to make it successful. Please if you have any information or advice to give i would really appreciate any help. Thank you 

[JaneCares]

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@g28999o wrote:

Greetings everyone, I'm orginally from New York city but i moved to Oklahoma city because of work. I brought my mother to Oklahoma to care for her but it was eventually to much for me as I'm a single male with no siblings. My mother is currently living in a Nursing home. I searching for information on what to look for in a nursing home, what to ask her doctors, what warning signs should i keep an eye on. I'm also thinking about having her live with me again but i need better resources to make it successful. Please if you have any information or advice to give i would really appreciate any help. Thank you 

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 Hi there! i moved from DC to rural Oregon! Talk about culture shock! What i wouldn't do for decent Ethiopian food!

You've gotten excellent advice already. i'll add my 2 cents. 

Regarding home care if you decide to bring her home: see if the agency offer health insurance benefits. You can ask the opinion of the nursing home discharge planner. Try to engage her anyway.

Regarding the nursing home, if she's there under Medicaid you do have the option of visiting her often and keeping up on her quality of care without taking on the whole SHEbang of having her at home. There are bunches of ways to do that. Here are some ideas off the top of my head, based on the 7 years my dad was in one, and my work as a geriatric care manager:

*  Make friends with the aides who care for her, bathe her, etc. They might be a rotating bunch, but get to know their names, their shifts, ask about their family. They will take better care of your mother for sure. This might take a while and be an ongoing challenge but it is worth it.

*  Put the Oklahoma county ombudsman in your phone. Call if you have ANY question about the quality of care. If there is an issue, like the beginning of a bedsore, then you can always tell the director of nursing... "I was talking to the ombudsman about bed sores...." And it will strike the fear of God in her.

*  Get to know the social worker. Might not be worth much but if she's seasoned and knows her stuff, she will be VERY useful to you

*  Send goodies but not necessarily during holidays. Folks tend to send cookies or some such at christmas, but a surprise goody basket in February? Or August? Fabulous. You can make them yourself.

*  Just be friendly. Folks in general will look out for your mom if they know you care about her AND about the staff.  Just know there is a lot of turnover.

If she has Medicaid, there might be a program that would pay for care in your/her home instead of the nursing home. The ombudsman or social worker might know. Or find the area agency on aging by putting your zip code into www.eldercare.gov. Call them. Pick their brains.

So we've given you a lot of food for thought. What next? What questions do you have ?  Please keep writing and thank you for writing this community!

jane

[DrBarryJJacobs]

Dear Fellow Ex-Pat New Yorker,

     You are asking the right questions. It is often anxiety-provoking for adult children to hire caregiving services of any kind for an aging parent without some assurance that their parent is in good hands. This is especially true with nursing home when you can't be there all the time to watch over and protect your loved one.

     When it comes to nursing home care, the attentiveness and responsiveness of the staff seems to me to be key. While my step-father was in a nursing home for two years, I rarely heard from the staff members or got the impression that they were looking after his interests. To the contrary, they seemed overwhelmed with too many residents and too many tasks to allow them to focus on any one resident's needs. I always felt the need to be vigilant because I didn't trust that they would detect any problems that arose. While my mother was in another nursing home for a year-and-a-half, I heard from the staff members often by phone for concerns big and small. When I visited her nursing home, they always took the time to speak with me and respond to my questions or observations. With her home, I had confidence that she was being well cared for and that gave me peace of mind.

     Before my step-father and mother went into nursing homes, I hired several home health agencies and dealt with many aides of various personalities, aptitudes, and degrees of motivation. Here, too, responsiveness and trust are the prime issues. Does the home health agency have a good track record of hiring and keeping aides? Will it send you a new aide if your mother and you don't click with the first person they send to the home? Will a hired aide stay around long enough to become a valued member of the family. The APA Home Care Guide spells out many of the nuts-and-bolts of how to ask the right questions and reach the right decisions. I wish you luck in this important endeavor of making sure your mom gets the right care in the right way at the right time.--Barry Jacobs, co-author of AARP Meditations for Caregivers

[Jen]

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@g28999o wrote:

Greetings everyone, I'm orginally from New York city but i moved to Oklahoma city because of work. I brought my mother to Oklahoma to care for her but it was eventually to much for me as I'm a single male with no siblings. My mother is currently living in a Nursing home. I searching for information on what to look for in a nursing home, what to ask her doctors, what warning signs should i keep an eye on. I'm also thinking about having her live with me again but i need better resources to make it successful. Please if you have any information or advice to give i would really appreciate any help. Thank you 

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Welcome to the community! I'd be happy to get some of our experts to help you out with your questions. In the meantime, here is a Care Guide on Home Care Tips for taking care of a loved one in your home. If you decide to go that routek, this should help get you started!