Advice on Elder Care

Hey guys, I don't know if any of you have experience with this, but we're in a bind and need advice.

My grandparents have two adult daughters, both of whom live in the same town, about two hours (on a horrible road) away from them. My grandparents ' siblings are all either dead, moved far away, or in worse shape than them. They have friends and family in their town, but none of these people are in the position to be any help, either in an emergency or in a long-term situation, to my grandparents. The town is also two hours away from the nearest decent hospital, and probably three from the nearest good hospital.

Anyway, my grandparents are getting up there. My grandpa has dementia that comes and goes, and is sometimes severe. My grandmother is in great health for someone her age, but taking care of my grandfather is way more than she can handle in the long run. My mother, who is retired, and her sister, who is not, basically take turns driving there once or twice a week to take care of some situation, either a legal thing my grandparents don't understand, my grandpa's dementia being particularly bad, or my grandmother being too sick to handle everything.

Everyone's life would be way better if my grandparents would just move to where their kids are. But they won't. My grandpa is convinced every time he leaves his town that he is being taken to a home, so sometimes you can't get him in the car. I think my grandmother thinks that moving in with her daughter, or even moving near to them, would mean she was helpless. So, they won't move.

Anyone have any experience with this? Strategies? Books?

I should add that even though my mother is retired, my father is not. And he's an elected official five years from retirement, and it would be career suicide for them to move. My aunt is in a similar situation, as she's placebound in her job as well. There are no jobs in my grandparents' town, so none of us could move there. So really they are the only ones who can move.

Silouan said:

Well..you cant make them do anything.

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Of course, but it seems kind of callous to sit back and let them keep endangering themselves (this is really what it amounts to, in their situation and so far from help).

Would they consider moving to a retirement facility?

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I don't think they would ever do that willingly. As I said, my grandpa won't even get in the car sometimes because he thinks we're taking him to a home (which we've never even considered, but he's got it in his head anyway). Plus, they're in a very rural area, and there are no fancy "assisted living" places for several hours in any direction. The nursing homes around them are the old-school warehouse style places that I wouldn't put my worst enemy in. My husband's grandmother lives in a very cool Alzheimer's-specific community, where she has her own apartment but also 24-hour help if/when she needs it. There's nothing like that near my family, though.

Orthosdoxa said:

Are they low-income enough to qualify for a state sponsored visiting nurse?

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That's a good idea. I doubt they would qualify and I'm not sure how they would respond to it, but it's worth looking into. I think if my grandmother had a couple of days a week where she could go out without my grandpa (like a "mother's day out" thing), that it would ease the situation considerably. As it is, she can't leave my grandpa alone, so he's with her 24/7. Plus, building a relationship with a capable person they could call in an emergency would be awesome

Thanks for the advice, everybody!

Clem, are you not aware that I'm from rural Kentucky? A 40-year gap between three generations sounds about right Actually, having relatively young grandparents was the main reason I was so keen to start a family right after marriage. My dad's parents were old and ill my whole childhood (they lived with us), while my mom's parents were just hitting their middle-aged stride when I was a kid. I'm really thankful that they were so healthy and active for so much of my life, and I want my kids to know my parents that way, too.

Everybody else, those are some really good suggestions. They live in a very rural place, so I don't know exactly what's available to them or the quality of it, but we'll definitely check into it. The thing about depressed rural areas is that such a large percentage of the population qualifies for government services, that it's not generally profitable for private companies to offer them. Like my kid won't qualify for Head Start, but everybody else will, so there will be no pre-school for him to go to. I wonder if we'll run into the same problem with home health/hospice/etc.