Scary Situations Out There

I had a lady come tour last week.  She was referred to us by the sitter service she is currently using.  Her family pays for a sitter 4 hours a day.  She is in the mid stages of Alzheimer's probably about the same place as my mother, maybe a little further along.  We toured one of our rooms, went next door to talk to the resident in that room and when we walked by the empty room we had just toured less than 10 minutes before, it was new to her.

The director of the sitter service says the lady cries when the sitters leave every day because she is scared.  Her family lives out of town, like so many these days.  I'm sure 4 hours a day at $15 an hour is what the family can afford.  Yet I shudder to think of this lady home alone for 20 hours a day.  Like so many situations, the family doesn't want to upset her by talking about assisted living.  Unfortunately, the symptoms of dementia are such that there comes a time when the individual can no longer be the one to make those decisions.

I have one resident who stayed at home until she burned her house down and then had no where else to go.  Luckily, she was not killed in the fire.  A year or so ago, there was another fire in a town close by and the owner was not so lucky.  The news talked about how she was known to have Alzheimer's disease.  And these are just the situations I am aware of.  Our nurse at assisted living also works in the emergency room of the local hospital.  She sees a lot and tells me I just can't imagine what is out there in the community.

I know it's not easy to make an unpopular decision.  But is it preferable to leave someone home alone who is not really able to care for themselves and who is scared on top of it?  I can only imagine the situation is going to get worse.  Skilled nursing paid for by Medicaid is going to get more difficult to qualify for as their budget gets overwhelmed by the age tsunami.  People of this generation have mostly not purchased long term care insurance.  Too many have relied on social security only for their retirement. People of my generation have to keep working until we die because we can't afford to quit working.  I don't know the answer, but it is scary.