My mother was released from the hospital 5 days ago. She slid or fell out of her chair and has been laying on the floor ever since. I can’t roll her over to clean her nor can she do it herself. I am trying my best to keep clean pads under her and dry blankets on her.
she does not want me to call 911, she gets upset and tells me to leave her alone she just wants to lay there. I am feeding her when she wants to eat. She is drinking water. I am truly at my wits end. I have been helping her for over a year now, my father and brother passed within the year as well. I don’t know who to turn to for help. Medicare can’t pay for a rehabilitation facility because she went to the hospital within 100 days of her release from a rehabilitation facility. Her doctor said they can’t help. I tried reaching out to the case worker she had when she was on the hospital. My family members have called Delaware aging something. Although these places or people seem to want to help they don’t know what I can do other then a private nurse that cost anywhere from 30 to 60 dollars an hour.
You risk being charged with neglect if you leave her on the ground. I understand that you are doing what she tells you to, but consider what might happen if she decides to tell someone that you refused to call 911?
If she refuses care, at least it will be documented that SHE refused.
Those handsome paramedics can be very charming. Let them talk to her.
You have to get her off the floor! Please call 911. It would be preferable to take her to the hospital but if she refuses (if she does not have dementia), then at LEAST allow the fire dept. to come in and assist with picking her up and getting her to her chair/bed. But if you can't roll her, then even if she is picked up, how are you going to care for her in bed or transfer to a chair. There are others on the board much more versed in the financial aspects of care, and hopefully they will chime in. But first get her off the floor!
I don’t even know myself anymore. I am trying to take care of my mother. I used to be a hard worker, now I can hardly work. This is draining me.
It sounds like you are trying so hard but you've been pushed so far beyond your limits you're just not thinking clearly. I sympathize but you've got to take the adult role and do what you know is right, not what your mom says. Please call 911 now, before she gets a pressure sore, infection, and goes septic.
The thing is, refusing to let your family member help you when you're in pain is one thing. Refusing the advice of paramedics or a falls team is quite another, plus they'll be able to assess what condition she's in. Do it now.
You've left an 84 y/o woman on the floor for 5 days b/c 'she gets upset and tells you to leave her alone she just wants to lay there' and doesn't want you to call 911. When does her wishes get overridden and common sense take over? I ask you that seriously, not to make you feel bad.
Call 911 and have the EMTs get your mother off the floor immediately. Let them check her out completely to see if they feel she's suffered a broken bone or an injury from the fall. Or if she's dehydrated or in a compromised state from being on the floor for so long. If so, she can be transported back to the ER for testing.
Then, apply for Medicaid and have your mother placed in a Skilled Nursing Facility for long term care b/c you are in over your head with caring for her at home now. There comes a time in an elder's life when a nursing home is their only option. We daughters make the decision to place them with love in our hearts and a desire to see them get good care, 24/7. My mother lived in Assisted Living and then Memory Care b/c she fell all the time, 95x to be exact. EVERY single time, the staff picked her up and got her back into her chair or her wheelchair when she became wheelchair bound. Never was she left to languish on the floor for any length of time. I knew I was unable to care for my mother and her myriad of issues at home, so off to AL she went. When her money ran out to private pay, I was planning to apply for Medicaid to fund her stay in a nursing home. She died before that happened, at 95, this past February.
There is NO SHAME in holding up the white flag of surrender and saying I CAN'T DO THIS ANYMORE. We all have our limits, my friend, and it's okay to recognize those limits and say ENOUGH.
Don't listen to anyone's advice about you 'being in trouble' for this. You're doing the best you can and once it's understood why you didn't call 911 right away, you'll be off the hook. DO NOT LET FEAR STOP YOU FROM CALLING 911 FOR YOUR MOM'S SAKE!!!
And there is nothing wrong in overriding mom's wishes and calling 911 to get the woman OFF the floor now. Please do so right away. It's okay too if she gets angry with you. It's your job as her caretaker to do the right thing FOR her, even when she objects.
Good luck to you.
You KNOW that's not nearly OK, don't you?
I hope you have called 911. She needs more than a 'boost' to get her back in her bed/chair. The EMT's will PROBABLY assess her and take her to the ER, which you need, to ascertain her current health conditions.
If APS gets wind of this, you may be in huge trouble. This is abuse.
Please call for help!!
Generally there is no transport to the hospital unless there is an obvious injury or there is a request from the patient to transport.
In your case they may transport due to dehydration. Or other physical problem.
This is the time for you to override your mom's demands and get her to the ER with a 911 call! And do not allow them to return her to home, she needs to be placed in a SNF facility. Period.
Because you've allowed this much time to pass, I would document every effort you've made to convince her that you need to call 911. Be mindful that the hospital bears some responsibility in this by allowing her to be transferred home when so weak and obviously in need of SNF placement, but they may want to point the finger at you.
You cannot do this any longer and she needs care you cannot provide.
They can do a "lift assist" and take her to the hospital
Get her off the floor
Please be a joke…
OP, you can't leave your mother on the floor for days. NO ONE does that. one calls 911 no matter what.
His mom had fallen and it was obvious (to us) that something was broken and that mom had dementia.
"But mom says not to call 911". He was terrified of her anger.
We finally got him to call; she had a broken pelvis or hip.
even with bars on the bed she falls out. After getting her up day after day for nearly a year I thought since she was on the floor I made a bed under her. She in my mind is safer. Besides the rehab she was in over the summer did the same thing. She kept falling out of the bed there. So they put her mattress on the floor. It’s not like she’s on a cold floor I have padding under her and plenty of blankets.
if I call 911 they will put her in her chair or bed and she will fall/slide out again. I’ve been calling 911 for well over a year for lifts. They can’t take her to the hospital if she refuses.
Reading what you just said, there is a bolster pillow device you can Buy to put over the mattress on mom's bed. It cups her body, sort of, and prevents her falling out. I'll go find it on Amazon and give you the link. Get the EMTs to put her back in bed with this pillow, then see a certified Elder Care attorney to help you set up a Miller trust in Delaware for the excess $$ mom makes that disqualifies her for Medicaid. Then off she goes into a Skilled Nursing Facility once she's approved. You nor she can live like this, it's too much.
My condolences on your losses this year.
Here is the link to the fall prevention bolster bed pad:
https://www.amazon.com/Drive-Medical-Universal-Mattress-Perimeter/dp/B00V86G39C/ref=sr_1_69?crid=285HOE0JU8RJW&keywords=Medical+equipment+bolster+to+prevent+falling+out+of+bed&qid=1668661234&sprefix=medical+equipment+bolster+to+prevent+falling+out+of+bed%2Caps%2C199&sr=8-69&ufe=app_do%3Aamzn1.fos.f5122f16-c3e8-4386-bf32-63e904010ad0
If she fell onto the floor that is different, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Maybe engage caregivers til she can get medicaid set up. OP can't wear herself out trying to give care on the floor. OP, do you have a draw sheet under her? That makes it much easier to turn her for cleaning, but may still be a 2 person assist.
People don't just fall off a profiling bed with raised rails. If she is winding up on the floor every time, then she is getting out, she isn't falling out. Try to find out what it is about being at floor level that she prefers, and/or what it is about the bed or the mattress or the view that she doesn't like when she's in bed, and see if there's a solution to that.
In your profile you mention cancer but you don't mention dementia. The point about this is that if she's able to make her own decisions about where she wants to lie she is also capable of understanding that she needs to co-operate with you in her own care. Is she on hospice? Do you have any support at all with looking after her?
maybe that’s the problem.
or you’re afraid you’ll be charged with neglect, so you prefer to avoid 911…
in any case, you need to call 911 please.
Or you really have left her like that. Do you not know how to call 911?
Let me tell you something. If in fact this is going on and you've been feeding your mother on the floor, YOU are guilty of abuse. Call the police and ambulace right now.
Make sure you clean the dishes up off the floor and the arrangements you've had there for the last five days.
I'm reporting your post because people like you should not be on this forum.
There is also a major concern if Wendilyn isn't rolling her Mom over so that blood clots don't form.
Your mom has something seriously wrong if she can't get up. Not to mention her mental state to be willing to stay on the floor.
She is putting you at risk of criminal charges. I am not trying to scare you, this is reality. What happens to her if you go to jail? The courts will do an emergency guardianship hearing and she will become a ward of the state and you won't have any access to her because you have criminal elder abuse charges. You could go to prison because of her choices.
Please call 911.
A lot of people have told you to go against her wishes and call 911, but I didn't read this as an emergency thing, I read it as a disagreement. She slipped into the floor, not fell, and wants to stay there, where's you want her back on the bed. It's just a disagreement about where she wants to lay, not an injury.
I think that maybe some of these folks aren't from places where it's common to lay/sleep on the floor and don't even know what a pallet is like you're talking about making for her and maybe that's why they had such a strong negative reaction? Because I'll be real, the responses here really shocked me. Both of my grandparents have done stuff like this and if your insurance can handle it and it's not an emergency, you can see if home health can come talk some sense into her.
But if she just keeps doing it and would rather be floor ridden than bedridden I'd just switch out the pallet for a futon mattress when I could afford one and see if she'll take to that.
To the posters who were so mean about this - sincerely why? Like why are treating wanting to lay/sleep on the floor instead of the bed as weird or an emergency? A lot of people, especially older people, do this and doctors will recommend it in some cases because a hard, smooth surface is better for the back in some cases. In Appalachia this is pretty common, I slept on floors a lot myself.
I didn't think it was an Appalachian thing, I thought it was an everywhere thing. People lay on floors sometimes. Maybe her back hurts.
Edit: Sincerely, how could you get criminal charges for letting someone lay on the floor? Y'all said this like it was self explanatory and common so I feel like I have to make sure y'all know this is a sincere question. She's uninjured on a comfortable pallet with pads that are being regularly changed, at her own request. I sincerely don't understand what part of that could be illegal. How would you face charges for that?
Edit: And for clarification, I'm not "slow". I'm a college educated AP student who graduated top of my class and currently works in my chosen field of psychology. So that's probably not the issue here.
Edit: Also the issue causing the disagreement is that you can't properly roll her to clean her on the floor, but my issue for giving advice is that I don't know if that's a space issue or a "bad back," issue. I used to have a really bad back so I would have a hard time doing this on the floor myself. But if it's a space issue, you can get the help from the EMTs to do the lift and then try to rearrange the furniture to make space on the floor that would be sufficient for turning, like I said, a futon mattress if she'll have it, a blanket pallet if she won't, something you can hold for turn assistance, and then just let her be floor ridden if that's what she wants. That's what I would do.
You assume she slid without injuring herself. No human being “slides” onto the floor and stays there willingly for some days.
She might be seriously injured. Anyway, I think the OP’s question is fake. It’s too outrageous to be real.
If this was so okay and something this poster deals with, why on earth would she post a question that sounds desperate?
Not being able to move, just laying there peeing and crapping yourself is considered okay? Not in my world.
Yes, this has become an emergency.
Why is everyone assuming that her mom could roll herself before and that this is a new, emergency situation? The question isn't, "OH MY GOD MY MOM FELL AND IS REAL BAD HURT WHAT DO I DO!?"
The question was, "Mom's in the floor again like she's been doing for over a year and it makes it real hard to keep her clean. Any advice on keeping her clean? All I can think to do is call 911 but she doesn't want to and it's not an emergency so that seems extreme. Her doctors say it's fine for her to be on the floor and even moved her mattress to be on the floor in the hospital, I just need advice on floor rolling so I can clean her."
The mother had broken a hip (I'm not sure anyone ever established exactly when), and one thing led to another until it was at the stage where it was far too late for the woman carer to admit that she'd let it get this bad (her mother's choice) and so told no one and did nothing (her choice). The mother died (gruesomely) and the woman was prosecuted and went to jail, which was what the headlines at the time were about. I don't remember if any other heads rolled, but there would have been serious case reviews about it in social care circles.
Anyway. Extreme, but happens. Mainly because people don't know what to do so they do nothing.
One of my family saw the other fall. A small trip but hit head on a hard surface. Did nothing.
That was a big red flag to me.
She was unable to get up. He fed her, tried to keep her clean. He transported her around the house by pulling her around on the rug she had fallen on. For 2 days, I believe.
One of her adult children stopped by with groceries (TG). They had spoken to both parents by phone, both neither indicated that anything was wrong.
911 was called, over protests by BOTH parents. My aunt had a broken hip which was surgically repaired. She went to rehab for 3 months. She lived for another several years.
This was in an upscale part of Westchester County NY. The folks had plenty of money.
After this incident, one of their adult kids moved in with them and round the clock aides were brought in, althe husband regularly "fired" them.
That visit was a stroke of luck. Was tragic, but could have been tragic & lethal.