Choose Your Battles
Remember raising children? One of the first things you learned when your child turned 2 or 3 was to choose your battles so you didn’t lose the really important ones. Some were important. Some were negotiable. Looking back some didn’t need to be battles at all. You learned which were which and you learned to let go.
This is not an article about child care or child rearing. This is an article about aging parents. Maybe you are one. Maybe you are the adult child of an aging parent. Either way somewhere in here is what I hope will be a lesson for you. I want to share a personal story with you. I hope it may make some decisions you are trying to make easier. Everyone’s journey is different but keep in mind our human need for dignity and control as you read this.
My mother is 87. Her health has been failing for several years. She has always been a very independent and self-sufficient woman. A few years ago she started to have some balance problems that led to a number of falls. My siblings and I spent evenings in the ER, nights in the hospital, days waiting for doctors to appear. God forbid you go for coffee because they would be gone when you got back and you’d have to wait another 24 hours to get information. She recovered from each episode and went home and we returned to our lives. She had an emergency button she wore that informed us of each new episode.
She was still, in our minds, fairly independent, living alone in her own home, a neighbor to run errands and check on her daily if we weren’t around.
That changed about a year ago. Several larger strokes weakened her and complicated her walking and ability to do some of her own care. She had a short stay at a beautiful rehab facility and made some progress but not enough to go home alone. My sister moved in with her. We supplemented with a few hours care from an agency. That worked for a while. I offered advice from afar, living over 200 miles away. I’d make it home once or twice a month and give whatever advice I thought was reasonable. After all I had been a home care nurse for 25 years, run a home care agency and helped hundreds of families make the decisions they needed to make about care. A built in self proclaimed expert in the family for free ! How lucky could she be?
Mentally Mom still seemed competent, a little confused sometimes, some speech problems, but oriented and very much aware of what was going on around her and what she wanted. Unfortunately her body wasn’t cooperating. She became less able to assist in her care and my sister was having more difficulty providing the care she needed. Changes needed to be made. My suggestion of going back to the facility she had been in for rehab feel on deaf ears. She was not going to leave her home. Enlisting the aid of the home care team, Physical Therapy, Nursing, and the aides, we finally convinced her of the need to go back to rehab. Short term. To get stronger. To learn again to transfer and walk short distances.
It was a painful process and many tears were shed. We breathed a sigh of relief when she was safely placed in her beautiful room, in the competent hands of the facility personnel. As far as I was concerned the die had been cast. This would be her new home. She would get therapy. She would be clean, well fed, well cared for. There would be people who were trained to take are of her, transfer her properly, check on her during the night. She wasn’t happy but she was cooperating. I visited as frequently as I could, one sister visited daily, my other sister and brother as often as possible. She had many visitors. She was being well cared for. Why not stop fighting it and be happy ?
Her plan and mine were different from the start. Her plan was to go home. Mine was to get her adjusted to the new routine and come to love the setting in which she would get the best care. To bloom where she was planted. So began the battle.
She was determined to go home. I was determined she couldn’t/wouldn’t. Why should she not want to stay in such a nice place where she could get all the care and attention she needed? Months past. At first it was always the topic of conversation – when would she be going home? Did I know how much it was costing? She could get the same care at home and for less money (not true). And on and on every visit. I found myself dreading the visits. She became quieter and quieter with me but my siblings told me that she was planning on going home, that was all she talked about with them. She still couldn’t walk or transfer but she insisted she was going home. I insisted she wasn’t. She complained about her care but I knew the complaints were not really substantiated. She needed to be where she was and that was my final answer.
She has been home now for almost three months. She made the arrangements herself.
I have learned a lot. Most of it about choosing your battles. Something has changed in our relationship. She went home without telling me. She asked that I be kept out of the decision making loop because she knew I could marshal more forces and arguments to keep her where she didn’t want to be.
She does’t confide in me like she used to. I lost her trust. What I forgot was one very important thing. I tried to take control and she hadn’t yet given that to me. Even though I had been appointed her medical power of attorney I needed to remember as long as she could make the decision the choice was still hers. The one thing she had left was control over where she would spend her last days, months, years. This is hers however long she has the ability to make that decision and still be safe.
Is it where I would like for her to be? Is it where I think she will get the best care? Is it even the best decision? The answer to all three of these questions is no. BUT she is 1) safe 2) happier 3) in control 4) maintaining her dignity. Best isn’t always right.
Aren’t those the same questions we asked ourselves when we decided to choose our battles with our children? How can we give them some control, keep them safe, maintain their dignity and keep them relatively happy. Will what they want seriously impair their safety? Will it ultimately give us more control later on when it comes to the important stuff and they know that there is no room to negotiate? I’m sure there may come a time I will have to choose the battle and make the really hard decisions but for now I need to let go.
Could we have avoided this? I think the answer is yes. My heartfelt recommendation is that you sit down today with your aging parent/parents or if you are the aging parent with your adult child and have some very real conversations about your wants and expectations as you go forward. AARP has published a good resource called “The Other Talk” about having those difficult conversations between adult children and aging parents. I recommend it as reading for both parties. Its a good place to start.
Think about it.