Tuesday, September 30, 2014 

Mom has a new habit. She now pulls herself up from the toilet by holding onto the glass shower doors. The doors can easily come loose from their tracks if a person pulls hard enough. I tried explaining that she can injure herself. I demonstrated how dangerous this was and showed her where to place her hands on the tub.

All I got was a heads down and away. She won’t listen. Never does this. Says only, I never do that. 

What does one do? I imagine the horror of finding mom bleeding in the bathroom, the shower door in pieces, the EMTs coming into the house to see mom seriously injured from broken glass, the hospital social worked questioning me about my treatment of mom.

My bathroom is too small to do away with a shower door. Everything would get wet. And there is no chance that I can train mom. She won’t be corrected. She denies ever having done anything wrong or dangerous. Constant supervision throughout the day and night is as impossible here as it would be in a nursing home. I recall having to handwash the nightgown covered in feces after she stayed the weekend at a local assisted-living facility. The aids made no attempt to clean up the mess. They merely stuck her filthy nightgown in a plastic bag and sent it home to me. Of course, I can only imagine the state of the bathroom and the white towels as mom left them at that facility. I am sure this is why they are no longer eager to have mom come and stay. They increased the price on us and told us it took too long for mom to acclimate—code for Don’t bring her back here!

Nope. Mom is solely our worry now.