I know as well as anyone that has worked in LTC that we should not put ourselves in the position of judging the families of those that require long-term care. The sweet old man that no relatives ever visit may have been an abusive father that severed his own family relationships with a heavy hand. The cute little old lady might once have been a raging alcoholic that showed her children no love stronger than her next drink. And family members may have exhausted all other options for care before ever considering LTC as the final and safest option for a family member in the progression of an illness when they find themselves at our door. However, it was heartbreaking to play a role in the scenario that recently played out at my facility, leaving us feeling more like workers in a kennel that found an abandoned puppy.
As often happens with multiple admissions in a day, the supervising nurse didn't have time to thoroughly read all the admission paperwork, just knew we had a new resident with the primary diagnosis of dementia expected to arrive late morning. Well, late morning came and went, then early afternoon. Not long before second shift two women came in and went to the empty room. An aide overheard the young lady tell the woman, "I have to go to the bathroom, I'll be right back." The aide went to tell the supervisor that our new resident had arrived, and the care giver went to the bathroom but she'll be right back. A couple minutes later, the supervisor headed to the room and introduced herself to the new resident, I'll call her Molly. Molly asked where the woman was they were coming to visit, and the supervisor was a little confused. Molly said her niece told her they were going out shopping but they were going to stop in and visit someone for a minute on their way. At this point the supervisor comes out to find out where the caregiver was and an aide on the other wing said she left a few minutes earlier (no one saw her use a bathroom). Now the supervisor tries to tell Molly that we're at "**" and we're a long term care facility and she's going to be staying with us for a while. Well, that didn't go well.
Molly is a very convincing dementia patient. We've all seen them, they appear to be as competent as you or I in conversation. And for about half and hour we were pretty sure that there was a mistake and she shouldn't be staying. She was angry, but appeared competent, and said either we were going to call her a cab or she was jumping out that second story window in her room because she was NOT going to stay here one single night. Fortunately our social services professional is fantastic. It fell to her to spend a good bit of time after that trying to explain that she was going to stay with us for her safety. There were many tears, some threats, and definitely no acceptance long term, but she agreed to stay the night. We got a wandergard on her by telling her it's the wristband she will use to get her meals. She spent her evening wandering the halls, with her pursue, sitting in different chairs so she could look out all the windows. She agreed that she could use some help getting changed and ready for bed, she goes to bed at 9pm by her account and in the morning she would take a cab back home.
As the supervisor completed the admission the paperwork stated that the family decided not to tell her ahead of time about relocating to our facility because she would probably refuse to get out of the car. I can't imagine that hearing the news from complete strangers was any more comforting to her, but maybe her reaction to family members was potentially going to be worse. I feel badly for all of them, but Molly most of all. I'm trying not to judge, but I wouldn't even do that to a pet, forget a family member. The son is supposed to visit at some point- apparently when they called he said he would come in a few weeks. We'll do our best to get Molly settled and I think for a while we'll just keep a box of tissues on us, we used a lot of them last night.
I wish none of you had similar stories, but I'm sure you do. Thanks for listening to mine.
