When do you judge it’s time to have a supposedly independent 97-year-old to stop baking? She uses a walker. Transfers boiling water on that seat of the walker. We cringe thinking she will spill and burn. She has had burns before which take months to heal. She is very unsteady on her feet. Lives alone. We check on her daily, but wonder when it’s time to unplug her oven ( like we ended up doing to my own mother). Her memory is starting to get sketchy, recovered from a mastectomy last year. Quite the tiger, but when do you know it’s time to take a stand on transporting boiling water, baking, cooking, frying, etc? Or do we just wait for something to happen?
We always prepared enough with a client that if they wanted more could just heat it up in the microwave or toaster oven.
A little coordinating of your MIL's kitchen won't go amiss either.
I remember one client I had. An old Italian lady with mobility issues who cooked all her life. It's hard to give that up.
She didn't trust microwaves and didn't have one. She had a toaster oven with an automatic shut off. We moved this over to the kitchen table so she could sit while heating something up and also eat at the table. Her family bought her a Keurig coffee pot (also on the table) to use instead of her continuing to us the little coffee pot on the stove. She had an electric water kettle too. A little rearranging worked wonders for her. I came in four days a week to help her. She lived to be 105. At 103 she did move into a lovely AL facility where she was happy until she died.
Pick up the book “Being Mortal, Medicine and What Matters in the End” by Atul Gawande. Someone as active as your MIL is not going to be happy sitting on a shelf. They equate usefulness with a reason to live.
My DH aunt has a photo of her 100 yr old great grandmother (passed many years ago). She is tending her vegetable garden in the photo. It is a clipping from a newspaper where they are reporting that she still cooked, did her own laundry, lived alone. For her 100th she asked for a dance. Her grandson built her a dance floor on her lawn, hired a band and gave her a party where she danced. She died at 100 yrs and 10 months.
The really old do look so fragile and sweet. We don’t want anything to happen but, of course, it will. Death will come one way or another. Most people face a certain amount of danger each day just living life. Something will happen. I hope she goes peacefully in her sleep. She sounds very special.
If you are her PoA then arrange for a medical "check-up" for her, then at the appointment discretely hand the nurse a pre-written note outlining your concerns for her safety and request she get lab work for a UTI and given a cognitive/memory test. If she does poorly on this test, then your PoA is most likely activated and you can then work to make her qualify of life better and safer (but do it diplomatically). If she's not too bad, then you have a baseline from which to judge future decisions.
If you aren't her PoA, you would want to encourage her to create this important legal protection for herself. Then get her tested.
The beginnings of dementia often look like stubbornness and obstinance.
happen" may not be a good idea. Transporting boiling water in such a manner is risky. Depending on the severity of the burn (think second degree or other) and no doubt her thin skin as she is elderly, it may take longer to heal.