My mother is 94 years old with mild Dementia. No one really knows how long one will live with this disease except God. Does anyone have experience taking care of a LO with Dementia and kept your parent/relative at home until the end? What is the longest the body can keep going? I find it amazing my mother's will to survive exceeds the predicted life expectancy of men and women...even so called healthy people? Thank you.
As for keeping a LO at home, this also is a very personal decision. Some people who have always been easy going and calm will turn mean and uncooperative. They refuse baths and meds. They wander away. They ruin the lives of their caregivers and from what I’ve read on this forum, some people never recover from this experience. On a rare occasion, I read of LO who are cooperative and grateful even through their disease until the end. What a caregiver needs to remember is that they will be doing the work of three shifts of trained caregivers, 24/7/365. No one can predict how this will go either. Unless you take STNA or CNA classes, to my knowledge there aren’t any “caregiver training” classes you can take. If you work, you’ll probably have to quit your job. Unless your LO can pay you, even if you get rare government assistance, it’s not enough to live on, there’s no health insurance and no retirement fund unless you pay for your own. It’s flying by the seat of your pants. Some people stick it out until the end because they agreed to promise their LO they will never “put them away”. And, they wind up hating their loved one for ruining their lives.
Here, we can offer advice based on our own experiences, but no one can make the decision for you.
I would interview multiple ones and get a feel for their business model, not all hospice are the same and some may go against your personal beliefs and make it harder for you. Read all their literature and then decide which one fits best, also remember that you can fire the hospice if you decide that they are not doing what they promised and it doesn't get fixed by speaking with your representative.