I’m hoping for some advice regarding my MIL who has undiagnosed dementia (memory clinic ass Jul 22). She has not been well recently and is on her third stay in hospital. First for an accidental o/d of her pain medication and the last two for falls, she has problems walking and sometimes even standing. She has had carers coming in but since the first fall, her mobility was so bad that they had to leave her in bed wearing incontinence pads. (She is not incontinent, just could not stand). We have not seen sight of her care plan, if there is even one arranged yet. The carers came in originally after the overdose and it has increased since then, to four visits a day. She has not seen an occupational therapist, nor has a home visit been done. We were awaiting one urgently last week but due to another fall (she was trying to get to the toilet) she is now back in hospital.
The hospital are saying things like, we will be discharging her when her bloods are back to good levels (on warfarin) but to be honest the bloodwork is only one issue. How can they discharge her without a proper care plan, an OT assessment of her and the home and knowing this is her third stay in 5 weeks.
We don’t think she should return home as she is only there due to huge input from social services and my poor husband who is running her house as well. When at home she calls all the time, cannot do anything apart from sit in the front room watching tv, or she is asleep all day. Social services send in carers to feed, dress her but we are doing her washing, shopping, cleaning the house, sorting the garden etc…taking to appts. She won’t go out of the house, well she is not able to now without a wheel chair and cannot even come to our house as we do not have a downstairs loo.
She is not aggressive in any way and can sometimes chat normally, she refuses to even consider going into a care home and does not like it at all if mentioned. We feel that this would be best for her, but unless she not not have mental capability, which they currently say she does there is nothing we can do. Memory clinic appt is not until July.
My main questions then go back to the hospital and the care plan and occupational therapist, can we say that it is fundamental that she has these things in place before she even attempts to come home. It is such a worry, last week was horrendous we found her on the floor numerous times crawling to the toilet, then she had the fall and went back in.
Sorry this post is so long, we really do not know what to do. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.