I will read this thread and reply tomorrow.
Im posting on the fly but i have an “ask the” post about my experience as a seniors care nurse/dementia care nurse. You can find it if you search my old posts.
When im up to speed on the post i will post my thoughts or feel.free to hit me up with more questions.
My MIL is in a facility for those with advanced Alzheimer’s. When my wife moved her in there 2 years ago the cost was about $5500 a month. Since the disease has advanced, so have the costs. My FIL now has to pay for adult diapers and they charge to change them. The cost of giving her the medications she needs just went up $300 a month because she needs them 3 times a day instead of 2. My wife has taken over doing her laundry, they were charging $650 a month and that was going to increase another $150 a month. The total cost is now about $10,000 month. My FIL has enough in saving to pay for about another year. After that it will mean selling the home my in-laws bought back in 1962. That will kill my FIL. None of those “resort” style places would be of any help. Those that do move into places like that will find them just a short term place to live, they will need more advance care in the future. My wife has mentioned more that once things would be much easier if her mom passed away in her sleep. I am now scared if something like this happens to me or my wife. We don’t have the savings my in laws had and the state offers no help of any kind for the families of those in memory care. To me the worst case scenario is ending up in a hospital psychiatric ward, a high percentage of the people in these places are those with Alzheimer’s or dementia and have no place else to go. My state quit funding nursing and advanced care facilities about 30 years ago forcing those costs on the people of the state.
They also tend to hire minimum wage employees who only stick around long enough to find another job. My son worked at one of those and he told me that most of the employees shirked the more onerous duties (such as cleaning a patient who has soiled himself) at an appalling rate.
This, and it scares me shitless to think of landing there. Always be sure that you have a medical directive if you don’t want to be left endlessly on life-preserving hardware.
Where’s the “just shoot me” option?
Certain followers of a long-dead prophet don’t approve of that option. That’s where it is or, more accurately, isn’t.
For everyone’s reference from 2009: