Mom has COPD and insists on living independently. Any advice?
My mother is adament about staying in her own home to the end. She has chronic COPD using oxygen constantly at the 2 liter level. She has been recently been diagnosed with a heart irregularity due to her disease. She does not drive and walking any distant leaves her out of breath. Her immobility is causing edema in her lower legs for which she takes lasix. She is pretty much homebound and only goes out for doctors appointments. She has six hours a week of in home help with bathing and light housekeeping. She is lonely and depressed. My sister and I do what we can, but we both live an hours distance and work which leaves us little time to help in her increasing needs. As her DPOA, I try to honor her wishes, but I am not so sure her living independently is realistic. She is not incompetent so I cannot force her into assisted living or move closer to my sister or I. I finally convinced her to look into alternate transportation for her medical appointments. My mother will not increase the hours of in home care. She doesn't want to spend the money, even though the cost is subsidized based on her income. Any advice or someone in the same situation that give me some insight about managing living independent in my mother's situation?
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Does your mother do her breathing exercises? Do they help at all? I don't know a lot about COPD, only that it can drain the energy from people. She and you have my sympathy. Does she sleep well through the night?
I was thinking yesterday about how easy it is to write on here what seems to be a good idea, but how hard it is to do it. If it were just us, we could do everything ideal. However, we can only do what they will let us do. It sounds like hiring a caregiver to help during the daytime would allow her to age in place. That can be very expensive. I don't know how much care she qualifies for with her subsidizing.
Now, that sounds all good, but then we run into the problem that our parents don't want someone else in their home, or doesn't like the person hired. Sometimes there seems no good solution unless everyone is in agreement with things going on. I guess the best thing is to work on getting everyone in agreement.
Perhaps you could research some solutions, like one or two trustworthy caregivers, or several assisted living facilities and let her situation evolve so that she makes the decision herself, when she's ready.