My 80-year-old mother has been declining mentally in recent months. Recently she's been making some very poor decisions for herself, both financially and medically. I am her only child, I live with her, and I need to find some way(s) to get her to make better decisions, or to make them for her. My mother is 80 years old. I'm her only child and have been living with her for the past 2 years, since shortly before my father died.
She was always very intelligent (PhD in Biology, ran her own lab, taught Anatomy & Physiology at the local college for many years), competent, and independent. She hates feeling dependent on or beholden to people.
However, her mental faculties are not as sharp as they once were. She realizes this at least some of the time, and has made unprompted comments about not thinking as well as she used to.
For a while now, I've felt she wasn't making the best decisions for herself, but I didn't feel it was to the point where I needed to step in. But based on a few incidents recently, I now feel we're at that point.
The scariest one is that she became ill on Wednesday morning but would not seek medical care. She was coughing up blood-tinged mucus, had the shakes, and was running a fever. She has COPD and uses oxygen 12 hours a day, so symptoms that affect her breathing are especially concerning.
I cancelled my plans for the day and tried to drag her to the doctor's to no avail. So instead, I spent the day caring for her since she couldn't do anything for herself. For the last several days, she'd been supposedly feeling better (I'm unsure whether she said this because she was actually feeling better or to get me off her case) and then worse, but still running a fever, sounding terribly wheezy, and just generally worrying the crap out of me. I finally told her today that if she didn't go to the emergency clinic, I would spend the entire day by her chair nagging her about it relentlessly.
She finally went this morning, was diagnosed with pneumonia, and given instructions to go to the ER if she felt even slightly worse. She seems significantly better already, thankfully.
I am so upset about this incident, by the idea that she endangered her life needlessly by refusing to seek care, by how helpless I felt watching her do this, and because I had to modify my own life significantly to respond to this, a fact she does not acknowledge.
Less scary, but also concerning, are some purchases she's made lately, for big ticket items, most recently a refrigerator. The previous refrigerator worked fine, but she bought an expensive new one with the idea that it would improve the resale value of the house. I asked whether she's researched how much one would get back in resale value for this particular purchase, and she hadn't. And more importantly, it's putting the cart before the horse; we have tons of other things to do to prep the house for sale, if it will even be possible to sell anytime soon (nothing for sale on our street is moving). There is still most of a lifetime's worth of stuff packed into the house, which we (mostly me) are slooowly selling/donating/trashing. This process is made slower than it needs to be because she over-values some of the stuff.
She's also failed to pay some bills, perhaps more than I realize. I found out about one because I happened to be home when she wasn't when a recorded "pay your bill or else get cut off" phone call came in. I was also shocked recently to see the cable bill on her desk and see how much she is paying for it still. We'd talked months ago about her getting the extra outlets taken off that are never used (she's paying for 5 but only ever watches TV in two spots). I just assumed she'd done so.
After a friend suggested it, I tried to have a conversation with my mother tonight about my having durable power of attorney for her medical decisions (I didn't even bring up financial issues at this time). Long story short, she doesn't want to. She seemed to willfully misunderstand the bottom line, waving me away by saying "you could always call an ambulance" as if that settles the issue. But I can't predict what situations might arise in the future, not all of which can be solved by calling an ambulance. And I want to have a document in place that allows me to step in and make decisions, not just when some doctors deem her incompetent but as needed.
I'm unsure what to do at this point. I could try having the conversation about power of attorney again, though I'm not sure how to get her to really even hear what I'm saying. I could try getting some legal entity to declare her incompetent, though I'm not sure she really is. She seems to be occupying a grey area right now.
Any advice either from a legal or personal perspective would be welcome.
She was always very intelligent (PhD in Biology, ran her own lab, taught Anatomy & Physiology at the local college for many years), competent, and independent. She hates feeling dependent on or beholden to people.
However, her mental faculties are not as sharp as they once were. She realizes this at least some of the time, and has made unprompted comments about not thinking as well as she used to.
For a while now, I've felt she wasn't making the best decisions for herself, but I didn't feel it was to the point where I needed to step in. But based on a few incidents recently, I now feel we're at that point.
The scariest one is that she became ill on Wednesday morning but would not seek medical care. She was coughing up blood-tinged mucus, had the shakes, and was running a fever. She has COPD and uses oxygen 12 hours a day, so symptoms that affect her breathing are especially concerning.
I cancelled my plans for the day and tried to drag her to the doctor's to no avail. So instead, I spent the day caring for her since she couldn't do anything for herself. For the last several days, she'd been supposedly feeling better (I'm unsure whether she said this because she was actually feeling better or to get me off her case) and then worse, but still running a fever, sounding terribly wheezy, and just generally worrying the crap out of me. I finally told her today that if she didn't go to the emergency clinic, I would spend the entire day by her chair nagging her about it relentlessly.
She finally went this morning, was diagnosed with pneumonia, and given instructions to go to the ER if she felt even slightly worse. She seems significantly better already, thankfully.
I am so upset about this incident, by the idea that she endangered her life needlessly by refusing to seek care, by how helpless I felt watching her do this, and because I had to modify my own life significantly to respond to this, a fact she does not acknowledge.
Less scary, but also concerning, are some purchases she's made lately, for big ticket items, most recently a refrigerator. The previous refrigerator worked fine, but she bought an expensive new one with the idea that it would improve the resale value of the house. I asked whether she's researched how much one would get back in resale value for this particular purchase, and she hadn't. And more importantly, it's putting the cart before the horse; we have tons of other things to do to prep the house for sale, if it will even be possible to sell anytime soon (nothing for sale on our street is moving). There is still most of a lifetime's worth of stuff packed into the house, which we (mostly me) are slooowly selling/donating/trashing. This process is made slower than it needs to be because she over-values some of the stuff.
She's also failed to pay some bills, perhaps more than I realize. I found out about one because I happened to be home when she wasn't when a recorded "pay your bill or else get cut off" phone call came in. I was also shocked recently to see the cable bill on her desk and see how much she is paying for it still. We'd talked months ago about her getting the extra outlets taken off that are never used (she's paying for 5 but only ever watches TV in two spots). I just assumed she'd done so.
After a friend suggested it, I tried to have a conversation with my mother tonight about my having durable power of attorney for her medical decisions (I didn't even bring up financial issues at this time). Long story short, she doesn't want to. She seemed to willfully misunderstand the bottom line, waving me away by saying "you could always call an ambulance" as if that settles the issue. But I can't predict what situations might arise in the future, not all of which can be solved by calling an ambulance. And I want to have a document in place that allows me to step in and make decisions, not just when some doctors deem her incompetent but as needed.
I'm unsure what to do at this point. I could try having the conversation about power of attorney again, though I'm not sure how to get her to really even hear what I'm saying. I could try getting some legal entity to declare her incompetent, though I'm not sure she really is. She seems to be occupying a grey area right now.
Any advice either from a legal or personal perspective would be welcome.
