"Panic Button" issues. Anyone else?
What is the point of my mom wearing a "panic/fall button" when she bangs the thing into everything she walks by (including but not limited to her own walker??) She is bent pretty much in half, due to osteoporosis and just refusing to do her exercises. So she walks bent over, the button hanging on the string and it gets bumped and often sets off the alarm as if she has fallen. Then the calls begin. First a siren goes off in her apt, and someone comes on the line to ask if she's OK. She often doesn't respond. Then they go down the calling list. First my brother (with whom she lives, so luckily we've avoided about half of the calls--) but if he is not home, then they call my sister who is a good 25 minutes away, then me, I am 5 minutes away. Even if they shut off the alarm and my brother assesses her and tells them she's fine, the co calls all the people on the list and tells us she's had a fall but that she is OK, or in just one instance, taken to the ER. My poor hubby--the phone is on his side of the bed and he has answered quite a few of these calls. I hear the phone ring at 3 am and my heart starts to race. Turns out she got up for a drink and smacked the button on the counter top. So at least 5 people are awakened several times a week for nothing more life threatening that the fact she won't tuck the thing inside her nightgown (she likes people to see that she wears one...she's a little theatrical about these things to say the least). My sister set this up and she is not even ON the list of people to be called. Funny thing, she sent it through the washer AND dryer and it didn't go off. I asked my bro. is he thought maybe she is looking for more attention by deliberately setting it off and not responding to the person who calls her...and he just sighed and said "That's entirely possible". Anybody else have this situation? After the W/D episode, I began to wonder if she isn't showtiming a little for us? She is quite passive/aggressive--and she's manipulative enough to do just that for attention. I rarely see her..actually am taking a month off for my own sanity--but my heart goes out to my brother!
If you mom falls often, she needs a higher level of supervision and care. Period.
When she lived alone, we told the service to call 911. Of course, what would the neighbors think? She was embarrassed to even consider it. Getting US to run around would amuse her endlessly, so we said "call 911"
Oh, smart move there, cookie!!!
I'm sure she *meant* well, as my mother would say.
Don't know if this is of slightly more help: my mother wears her pendant wrist watch style, on a piece of elastic fabric with a little clip to it. It's not connected to a remote call centre, though: I have a portable monitor and she's supposed to press her alarm to call me when she wants to move around. My big problem is that wild horses galloping through the room wouldn't make her use it. And, yes, she has in the past pressed it in error, meaning to turn on her bedside light, change the TV channel etc etc etc. No system is foolproof. Or, rather, dementia + independent soul proof.
I look at it this way. "What we call progress is merely the exchange of one nuisance for another nuisance." (Walt Whitman, I think) You pick your nuisance. No personal alarm system, you lie awake hollow-eyed wondering how long you leave it before you go round to her house and check she's not lying there with a broken neck of femur. Personal alarm system, you chase your tail on nine occasions out of ten. And in my case froth at the mouth uselessly trying to persuade her to use the beep-beep thing as she's meant to (I'm trying to stop doing that).
Ah. I see just now that your mother can't use a push-button alarm. Nanny cam? Motion sensor that warns you if she hasn't beetled around for a given length of time? Have a good look at the product catalogues, because they really have done their best to think of everything. Best of luck.
Remember, that your Mom put the POA's in place, hopefully when she was competent. That is what she wanted for herself. And the one holding it is the ONE that is to make those difficult decisions that are based on mom's instructions.
She now uses the emergency button at all hours day or night to call me. The latest call made using this button was at 2:13am to ask me if I put kitty litter on the shopping list. Needless to say my heart was racing, and neither my husband and I could get back to sleep for hours.
Now the other day I go in the house and there she is on the floor of the bathroom. She says all night long (with the phone around her neck). After we got her up safely I asked why didn't she use the emergency button. Her response was, "I didn't want to bother you." But in her mind kitty litter on the shopping list constitutes an emergency. UGH! I was seriously thinking of putting 911 for the button but I value our emergency service people too much to have them deal with her Dementia.
Good luck with trying to figure out what is going to work for you in case of falls.
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