My mom is married and living with her husband, who is sick with cancer. As her health has declined, she needs more attention, he is not capable of giving it to her. My sister called me over to their house because the smell was horrifying, we spent hours cleaning, and came back two days later to the same smell. He is incapable of caring for my mother who has a very hard time getting around. Also she is bleeding from down there and will not let anyone look at it or clean it. She is unable to do so herself. Her husband wants her to go to the hospital, says she can't stay there. He cannot take it anymore. She does not want to go to the hospital, wants to die at home. We are not sure that she is dying, as she won't go to hospital. Five years ago, she signed medical POA to me while she was hospitalized. To my knowledge, there is no other one. Can I go there and take my mom to my house for care? Which would include a trip to urgent care to investigate the bleeding, whether she liked it or not. I have the room and ability to care for her much easier than her husband but he hates me. Hates the thought of me doing something he cannot. We have never gotten along. When I brought up the subject he got very angry. I suspect they are both abusing pain meds as well. I have no idea what I can legally do. What I want is to respect her wishes.
i believe she has depression, and possibly dementia. hope to find out the facts soon. hopefully being in a normal home without the abuse of her husband will help.
If you called 911 to have the EMTs investigatecher physical condition, what do you imagine might happen?
It doesn't sound like she can be cared for in anyone's home right now.
She needs to be in a hospital so that they can run tests to discover the source of the bleeding and stop the sel-neglect.
Is she able to speak for herself if EMTs come to her home?
Urgent care will most likely call an ambulance and send her to the ER.
Can you show up at her home with your POA papers and tell EMTs that you want mom transported to the ER?
Or call a hospice organization and ask them to send someone out to talk to her about her condition?
Does your Mom or her Husband have a plan of care / end of life plan? You might just start with asking them that, and explain that it will make any emergencies easier to deal with for one or the other of them when (not if) the need arises.
Some elders absolutely refuse to discuss *anything* with anybody (I swear, I wonder sometimes if they even talk to their doctors!) so it may not be easy to initiate that conversation. You could even have one or a couple of suggestions for a plan of care, "What if mom breaks her leg? What's the plan?" And visa versa.
End of life is pretty much the same. Ask them what outfit they want to be buried or displayed or cremated in, or if there's song they want sung or played. Who wants to be laying around getting stiff and cold while their family runs around like chickens with their heads cut off hollering that the sky is falling? Not me! I wanna go play leap frog over cloud-tops!
I lost my parents pretty young -- each of them were about a month shy of age 62. I imagine I would tell them, "We want to be considerate about your final days; let us know what you would plan out, if you were able to do that. We want to be able to help you through those days, without stressing you out or annoying you with these kinds of questions at that time."
(Ridiculous, I was 11 when my Dad died and I was a hysterical wreck!).
Still... maybe you can appeal to them to consider maintaining the easiest solution for the surviving spouse.
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