My husband has requested I ask the question?
We have a lot of well-meaning people in my MIL life, who don't understand or accept how bad mil truly is. She has moderate dementia, which she is in denial about and can mask it really well for short periods.
DH (POA) who is now considered enemy number one in mil life, is concerned about being too controlling or shrinking her contacts or friendship group.
MIL, who is in a AL at this point, has a cell phone, due to recent event DH has had to look into who she calls and messages, but not the conversations.
Due to these recent events, he believes a lot of these people are not helping his mother to settle into her new living environment and actually hindering it.
We have had neighbors of mil, that have reached out and mil will take the opportunity to wrap them into her agenda to get to where she used to live. These neighbors will research things for mil or give her information and not suggest that mil talk to her son. Even after the son has explained the situation.
There are family members although well meaning, have no clue that they may be riling mil up. After an assessment with a dr., where the dr. said something along the lines you seem fine, he meant physically. Mil took it as nothing was wrong with her, she claimed the dr. said he didn't know why she was at the AL facility and wants to go home. After that she messaged with a family member for quite some time and then started getting the neighbors involved in getting the realtors info, who is helping to sell her home. DH has also found she is tried to contact one of the banking facilities she uses since then too.
DH is looking for information on where you draw the line or if you would draw a line with communications with people who are not in the tight knit of caring for mil? How far you go to reach out to people, even people who don't even know him for him to explain the situation with his mom?
"Recently, I got her a new phone, using the service Telecalm. It's got a base you plug a landline into but using cell phone power. I have an app to control who calls her, who she calls, what hours she can use the phone, how many times she can call the same phone number within a certain time period, etc. I LOVE IT!"
"This is great! The ALZ store has a couple of free months and then a discounted monthly price."
https://www.alzstore.com/teleCalm-phone-scam-repetitive-call-blocker-p/m005.htm
My mother had dementia and lived in Memory Care Assisted Living. If people were calling her and getting her even more riled up than she already was, I'd have had a cow. As it was my stupid cousin used to call her saying mom should come live with her in N.Y.! We live in Colorado. She was just talking and talk is cheap, but I was the one who had to deal with the aftermath and chaos of those calls! 😑 Had I known about the above mentioned phone and call blocking feature, I'd have purchased one for her in a N.Y. minute.
Best of luck.
He can also restrict any visitors that upset mom. (mil)
He can contact any banking institute and inform them that she is no longer capable of making financial decisions.
The realtor should also be dealing with you alone. Inform the realtor that he is the one point of contact, not his mom.
This is not being controlling for the sake of being controlling this is being done to minimize her anxiety, her anger.
The next doctor appointment the doctor needs to tell her that she does have dementia. Send a message to him/her in mom's Patient Portal so that they know this discussion needs to happen and the doctor needs to clarify the diagnosis of dementia.
The next step might have to be to move mom to a memory Care unit that is locked so that "well meaning" friends and relatives do not try to take her out on day trips that may also get her going.
To answer your "how far do you go to reach out" it sounds like he has informed people and they ignore the requests to keep the boundaries that he has set. They have had warning I think that is plenty.
DH needs to understand that :
A) MIL only has moderate dementia as you say, and can still recognize her friends (I assume?), and that it would be cruel to remove her friends from her. He DOES have a right to control where she lives for her safety and her good, but not her friends.
B) That what family does or doesn't think about ANY OF THIS is simple absolutely irrelevant. And should not be up for discussion. And he and you should politely inform friends and family you are doing the best you can making decisions, and that their best moves, if they care about MIL at ALL would be to help her adjust.
To my mind the answer to both questions is extremely simple, short, and sweet, and easily handled with a KIND but FIRM few sentences to all involved.
As to adjustment, MIL is going to want to talk about "When can I go home" friends or no.
MIL is going to want to try to manipulate her way back home friends or no.
What friends say is not a piece of this puzzle.l
You need to answer MIL with honesty that she cannot go back home, that friends are well meaning and trying to comfort her but are not necessarily helping her to adjust. To give herself time and etc.
Hope your hubby will join, ask his own questions, and participate.
Wishing you all THREE the very best of adjustment and luck in that.
Nothing in life is perfect.
Not everything can be fixed.
And aren't you all lucky to have the love and support you do have.
And on you go.
It really goes back to my post about the conflict of drawing lines in the sand and being empathetic. We have been told to avoid conflict because that causes more trauma to her. She has been told the home is going to be sold, she has even acknowledged several times the house will need to be sold. She only remembers what she agrees with, she forgets all these conversations, even when her own husband told her the house will be sold and their son is right and has always been right. This isn't a sweet little "when can I go home", this is her being nasty and demanding.
These aren't people going to visit her, no one has visited her in three weeks, which we were advised, to allow her to settle in and that family and friends can actually make it harder for her to settle into her new life and schedule. She needs to get and create her social circle in the facility and get comfortable.
But since this in house dr. assessment, which was a week and a half ago, all the people at the facility are beneath her, they are all sick or in lala land. These are people she is communicating with from a far via her cell phone. She is using these people to try and get what she wants and some of these people are enabling and actually causing major issues and we don't know who all is involved. The one neighbor actually thought about what they did and called my DH after the fact. Yet we are sure someone else gave her the idea to get all the realtors information, hence why she called the neighbor.
We have people who assume that we have not communicated our actions to MIL. They only thing she wasn't aware of was when we were taking trips over and packing up the house, why because we didn't want to cause that conflict or pain. We can't help or force her to accept this, our fears are people are going to say or do things we are not aware of to head off any issues.
DH is having to call the facility and put her on a watch alert for exit seeking behavior. MIL does not share or display these actions to the staff, so they have no idea what she is doing unless DH informs them.
Right now, we are praying when she finally sees the Geriatric Psychosocial service dr. onsite that he can get through to her that she needs to be there, and she has a problem.
She has been demanding to see the dr. that diagnosed her, because he was wrong there is nothing wrong with her.
All it took was one dr. almost 2 weeks ago to say she was fine and not distinguishing she is physically fine. This dr. didn't even talk to DH prior to seeing her, it wasn't until everything blew up did the dr. find out her husband had passed in Aug. Her appt was on a Wed. and on Sunday, DH got off the phone with her and we both had a sense of everything has forever changed and he will never be a comfort to her again. This has set the whole settling into her new life back we have not idea how far.
To have a conversation with MIL is like walking through a mine field you don't know what will set her off into a negative spiral and scheming to get out of there. Yet we know talking about where she used to live, telling her she is fine or healthy, the computer work she used to do are all land mines and hinder her from adjusting.
So, if I am missing something in your message, please correct me. We are trying to do our best and cause the least amount of pain and conflict because honestly, we don't want these traumas to inflict more damage like we have been told. We don't want to have to take anything away we want her as independent as possible, but she also needs to be protected too.
I read in a response that you are waiting to see the geriatric psychiatrist. Focus on that for now.
I’m sure that you will explain your concerns and her temperament to her psychiatrist and see what is recommended for her to become more comfortable in her surroundings.
Your MIL’s conversations with others are going to reflect the state of mind at this point in time.
It’s natural for her to be speaking about going home if she is anxious or missing her independence. This isn’t unusual.
Transitional times are harder for some people than they are for others. Hopefully, she will adjust to her new surroundings soon.
Wishing you and your family all the best