When do you start thinking about a NH?

[Guest guest]

Hey all!

So I had a conversation with Bob (grandma's husband) this morning that is making

me

start to wonder if we should be beginning to look at a NH for grandma. Bob is

not

sleeping hardly at all for fear of Grandma getting up in the night and falling.

I've offered

to sleep upstairs sometimes but have a feeling (knowing Bob) that even if I'm

here he will

still get up if she does. Grandma is still not eating well (we discovered she

has gone from

112lbs to 104lbs in the last 2 months), she is having more toilet accidents, she

is refusing

to shower or brush her teeth most days, and if we don't directly make her use it

she NEVER

uses her walker (BIG safety risk). She has 3 years worth of long term care

insurance but

when do we know its time to start using it? What if we start soon and after 3

years she is

still kicking?!? What could they do differently in a NH that we aren't doing

here besides 24

hour supervision? We've (mostly) decided that if she continues eating poorly

that a

feeding tube is probably not a good idea. This idea stems from the fact that

every time

she has had an IV in the last year and a half we have to be constantly vigilant

to stop her

from pulling it out. It causes constant fighting whenever she has one since the

more you

ask her to stop messing with it the more she DOES mess with it to the point that

we have

to hold her hand to stop her and she just gets more and more angry every minute.

Is a

longer life with a feeding tube worth the unhappiness it would most likely

cause?

What makes it worse is that Grandma was pretty clear in her living will that she

wanted to

stay at home if at all possible but she DID buy the care insurance so she

obviously knew

that she might need it someday. Does that mean she would be ok with it or was

it meant

as an absolute last resort? THAT is not clear.

At this point I worry that if Bob doesn't get some kind of relief soon I'll be

taking care of 2

people and not 1. I'm afraid that as long as she is home he will sacrifice

himself to care

for her no matter how much I try to help.

Such a weird decision to have to make...

What do you all think?

Emma