Archive for January 6th, 2010

Posted on January 6, 2010 - by Nurse Virginia

When an Elderly Family Member is in a Nursing Home with Alzheimer’s Disease, who decides who can visit?

My “Best friend has Alzheimer’s Disease”

“She was my best friend since we were in grade school, and I didn’t see her for these last five years, because you wouldn’t tell me where she was” accused the crying elderly woman. We were in the line of mourners waiting to speak our words of comfort to the grieving daughters. When to everyone’s surprise and discomfort the very elderly woman right in front of the daughters spoke these words. The daughters tried to comfort their mother’s old friend, but those accusing words just hung there in the air.

“Mom didn’t really know anyone anymore. She didn’t even know us” said the oldest daughter.

“I don’t care, I would have known her, and you wouldn’t tell me” replied the elderly woman.

The old woman then spent the rest of the time at the wake, just sitting off to the side by herself.

The daughters as caregivers

Mom was 87 years old and had spent the last 5 years of her life in an Alzheimer’s unit of a Nursing Home. During that time the progressively dementing disease robbed her of the ability to care for herself, eat independently and eventually no longer recognize her family or herself in a mirror.

This was the latest in the many hurtful experiences for this family, after the last five painful years and the so recent loss of their Mother. Of the many decisions the family has had to make: letting family and friends know Mom has Alzheimer’s disease, finding and taking Mom to live in a Nursing Home, seeing the on-going loss of the Mother they knew. Now they were asking themselves, did they do the right thing not letting anyone know where she was?

Mom wouldn’t have wanted her friends to see her with Alzheimer’s disease.

Knowing their Mother, and what a really private person she had always been, had prompted the daughters to agree not to share their Mom’s location her last years. Now in their grief what they needed to hear was that they had done the best they could under bad circumstances. Getting to really know your loved ones and be able to act on their behalf when needed, gives the comfort that you did the best you could.

Virginia Garberding, R.N.

Director of Education, The Wealshire, Lincolnshire, Illinois

Author: Please Get To Know Me – Aging with Dignity and Relevance