Long Distance Caregiver

This is my first post. My mom was diagnosed with parkinsons a few years ago. She is in a nursing home in NJ and I live in Maryland. Due to financial limitations, I can't drive up as often as I'd like. She is heading to the last stages of parkinsons. I'm feeling overwhelmed by many things, guilt of not being there leading the pack. I'm trying to decide on treatments for mom, that will most make her comfortable. My wife is a wealth of support, as are the relatives I still have in NJ who are more local, but also having health issues of their own. Has anyone else been down this road? I'm still beating myself over not making my mom come down to Maryland, but she was insistant that she wanted to live in NJ. Mom has started having hallucinations, and sleeping more and more. My greatest fear I think I have is when we get to a point when she doesn't remember us. Has anyone had to think about meds and treating for comfort? Any other options or treatments?

Post Edited (Sewer_rat) : 11/12/2011 12:56:23 PM (GMT-7)

She developed the parkinson's before going into the nursing home. She started falling alot, and broke her hip twice. It was after the second fall that she couldn't take care of herself. Even at that time, she refused to come to Maryland because she still had family in NJ, now most of them are gone. I try to call often, and pay for her phone which allows her to call everyone. Thank you for responding

This is a bit off topic but I hope it helps in some small way.

My mother lived in Delaware all her life. When she was 17 (already married and pregnant with me) her parents and younger siblings moved to Arkansas. For some reason, when my mother found out that she had Lou Gherigs disease, she wanted to move to Arkansas so that when she passed she could be buried with her parents. Now mind you, all my mothers children and grand children still live here in Delaware/Maryland. This presented a problem for us. We could not visit her on a regular basis, we missed her and my father at family dinners and holidays, we could not be there to help out when she had bad days/weeks and some of us were not there for her last days.

At the time there was guilt. A lot of guilt. All her care was left to my father and towards the end our baby sister (the only one not married/with children)and we felt left out on most of her "last months". But, this is what my mother wanted and all the way to the end she would say to us "this is what I want."

We still do not understand how she could want to be away from her home, her friends, her family and her doctors and move where she knew no one but because she was dying we felt that it was her wish and we would make the most of it. My mother passed away 5 years after diagnosis, 3 years after moving to Arkansas. Not once during these 3 years did she ever make us feel guilty. She knew we all had family and jobs and that we would do the best that we could to be there as often as we could.

In the end, all that mattered is that my mother got what she wanted, to be buried with her parents.

I cannot help with treatment options for your mother. I can only help you with your feelings of guilt (hopefully). Guilt can eat you up, its a disease in itself, so please stop agonizing over it. You are giving your mother what she wants, her last desires, to be where she knows as home.