My mother has stage 5-6 vascular dementia and is in a memory care unit near one of my brothers. I am contemplating moving her to a memory unit closer to me. This would involve a 10 hour car ride. I have no idea how we would do this. Does anyone have experience or suggestions? Thanks
A 10-hour car ride would probably need to be broken into 2 days. This means a hotel and restaurants. Do you trust her in a car? She wouldn't panic and try to unbuckle her seatbelt and open the car door? Or continuously yell "Help!" out the window like my Aunt did?
If you attempt a car ride will she need meds for anxiety or sleep? Is she on any now? I would definitely take another person with you so you can have breaks and go into rest stops without her, and someone can distract and entertain her (especially if you do all 10 hours in a single day). She will be disoriented and this may affect her behavior.
Is the MC she is in bad? Who is her POA? If she is not mistreated then I would leave things be.
Ive transported my elderly Mom with stage 5-6 dementia for over 2 years. Put the car/window lock on and break the trip up. I use a purewick at night and poise pads in her diaper.
Mom loves music so she enjoys the road trips and I bring her blanket and echo photo album to make the hotel room seem like home.
I think the trip is one thing to consider and the destination is another. If mom is happy where she is, I would not disturb her unless there is no choice.
The problem toward the later days, was that I could NOT safely transfer her from the wheelchair to the car seat and back out. She could hold her bowels, and her Depends (and liners) could catch most of the urine (she was incontinent). Otherwise, my Mom thoroughly enjoyed car trips. We ate in the car and she liked that.
My suggestion to you is to take your Mom for a ride or 2, like about 1 hour each (no stops). See what happens. Will she eat and drink in the car or does she want to leave the car to eat and drink? Does she try and open the door while the car is moving? Does she try and get out?
There are a lot of different dementia behaviors. It is hard to predict what one will do with certainty. However, you can get an idea if you do shorter tests.
Good luck and I hope the trip is uneventful.
If she's settled in her current place, I'd think twice about moving her.
To her it was an adventure. She was admitted late in the afternoon and I stayed with her until she finished dinner.
Logistics:
Depends on mobility.
She was wait listed, but once accepted, she required a TB test. I had to pre purchase bedroom furniture and set it up before her arrival
I had to donate her old furniture rather than move it. I was very lucky to find another resident family member who had a daughter who needed a bedroom set. The mattress was tossed out by the MC
I packed up her clothes and most personal stuff. It moved with me in my moving van...the reason for the move. The most important items to move were a few wall pictures of long deceased siblings and all of her photo albumns
I packed only essentials that would go in 2 suitcases and my travel bag was only a carry on..
If I think of anything else, I will re post
It's very likely she will not be able to acclimate to a new facilty and all the new people who are strangers to her.
Hubs and I once decided to take my MIL (age-related cognitive decline) and my mother (ALZ) to a swanky restaurant in the town where my mother last lived for Thanksgiving. It was an hour away. We were not even on the outskirts of our town before Mom was asking "are we there yet?". It was a LOOONNNGGG hour and we still had to return home! Mid-trip home, Mom had had enough and decided she was getting out of the car and she opened her door. At 70 MPH. My MIL saved her, but only by offering to let her get out on her side, which was closer to the shoulder, and she opened HER door. Thankfully, we had made sure they were both buckled in, so that bought us a little time before they figured the buckles out too. It was a harrowing 30 seconds or so until we could get pulled safely over, get the back doors closed, regain our composure, and put on the child locks. They both then entertained themselves running the windows up and down as far as they would go with the child locks on.
Needless to say, I learned to always lock the doors when I had my mother in the car. After that incident, I noticed her often wanting to roll down the windows and reaching for the door release instead. I later tried to drive her 15 minutes to visit a friend and she was miserable the whole ride. She thought we had been in the car for hours and was mad that I didn't let her get out to stretch her legs. On another occasion, she was tired of riding, so she tried to take over the steering wheel.
I also often took her with me to run errands just to get her out of her facility, but as soon as we got out of the car, if I didn't basically keep one hand on her, she would try to find her way home (wherever that was on that day in her mind). More than once I had to hunt her down in area businesses. I printed a flyer with her photo and my phone number and distributed it at places we frequented, asking them to call me if she turned up alone at any of them.
The two big problems Mom has with car rides is that she has no remaining sense of time and distance, so every ride seems like an arduous journey to her, and that once she gets somewhere she is so disoriented that she becomes anxious. My biggest problem with her traveling is safety in the car and then dealing with her disorientation and subsequent elopement once we get somewhere. I've learned that going at all is simply not worth the upset to her stability and happiness (not to mention my sanity) and I don't move her at all unless absolutely necessary. Like you, I would like to switch MC's (billing issues with the current one) but I'm going to refrain unless the issues start to affect her care.
Good luck and best wishes.
Mom always made it back to he ship.
I considered transporting Mom from Maryland to a care facility in Florida.
The care facility in Florida said they could suggest transport options and they would track Mom all the way down the east coast. They also said if I flew Mom in a private plane they would drive to the airport to pick Mom up. This facility has a lot of folks moving in from out of state and could provide support.