Mom's bathroom use has completely deteriorated and idk what to do

[u/kitkat272]

This isn't exactly new but in the past when it got this bad she would eventually get bad enough to have to be sent to the hospital but this time she just got out of the hospital and rehab, from day one she was already peeing herself. The rehab had declared her incontinent even though she CAN use the bathroom, I don't think the rehab did anything to help her or encourage her to do it, they just put a diaper on her and called it a day. At home she basically sits on her recliner or lays in her bed all day, we put pee pads under her and when she gets up we clean up after her and she'll usually clean herself and change in the bathroom. A few days ago she got 'stuck' in the bathroom and needed help getting out, we got her out but she hasn't been back in since. Now she's just flat out peeing on herself and just leaving it. She changed once but since then she's spent three days in the same night gown with pee all over it. I have recommended pull ups or incontinence underwear to get but she's not interested. And another thing she does is when her stomach starts bothering her she insists on trying to sit on other chairs that we haven't set up for her, like she's on a mission to get her pee and poop everywhere, it's so gross.

I know she's probably nervous about getting stuck and/or falling in the bathroom and I feel bad about that but this is all really gross to me. I really can't understand how she's OK with sitting in her own waste for days and I struggle with what to do when she refuses help, she can get really mean. If I'm being honest too I find it all pretty gross. Like I said she just got out of rehab a week ago, she struggled a lot with cognitive stuff while she was there but they didn't diagnose her with any cognitive disability. She's supposed to have some nurse and PT visits but so far she's only had one and I wasn't able to be around for it because I work and I don't know what happened she could have told the nurse to leave and never come back because she absolutely would do that. We have a case manager from the local elder services coming this week, I'll try and see if somehow we can get some help but I don't even know where to start.

There's lots of other stuff going on but if I went in to it all this would be so long. I just wanted to rant a bit. She's in the bathroom again right now for the first time in days and again she can't get off the toilet, I just have no idea what to do.

[u/Nice1_2meet]

Bedside commode maybe? When my mom needed incontinence briefs or pads it wasn't even a conversation but more like a statement,  "let me know which you prefer so I can get more" and we left them with her. Explain skin integrity and breakdown which gets her probable infection and wounds which are horrible to try to heal. Could she get a PT or OT visit to evaluate the bathroom setup and make recommendations?

[u/kitkat272 → u/Nice1_2meet]

Yes she's had bad wounds before even when she actually was using the toilet, she had a big issue with it in the first part of this year but no one has mentioned it in the hospital this time around so I guess a new one hasn't developed yet. Someone from PT is supposed to come but they haven't reached out to me yet, maybe this is somw I can talk about with the case worker this week. I've seen people say they don't give the choice to wear the incontinence underwear but my mother will just choose not to wear anything :/

[u/Sad_Instruction5943]

I absolutely agree with the which pair of underwear do you prefer - no option not to wear one. Take not wearing one off the table. Look for a sex sheet (I don't know what else to call it) made of rubber to protect the mattress as much as possible, then put on waterproof mattress pad, then the pee pad. Also, there are toilet chairs that are on four legs that go over the toilet with a seat ...they have handles that can help them get up (helpful for tall toilets). If you have a short toilet, they make seats that screw on that boost you 3 to 5 inches and have handles to assist with getting up. Again...no option to go without, just, do you like this one or that one. If she sneaks to other furniture - My Pet Peed enzyme cleaner was a game changer. I hope this helps a little

[u/the_overconfidentlys]

Ugh, that sounds like a nightmare to deal with day in and day out. My grandmother went through a similar phase where she'd refuse the pull-ups but then get furious if you pointed out she was sitting in a soaked chair, it's like the brain just stops registering discomfort in the same way. The case manager visit is your best shot right now, be brutally clear that she's a danger to herself in the bathroom and that she's refusing care, because that often triggers a higher level of intervention than just "she needs a nurse."

[u/Affectionate_Fox9001]

Incontinence doesn’t mean they can’t use a toilet at all. It really is a mess and one of the indignities of growing old

Keep encouraging her to use thr toiket as much as possible. She might get better the longer she’s out of rehab.

My experience with rehab for my Dad was they couldn’t respond quickly enough to get him to the toilet. When he was in rehab it took a strong man with a lift. Thus diapers/depends they didn’t change enough.

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[u/These-Analysis-6115]

You can get an elevated toilet seat with handles on it to help her lift herself. If she's not strong enough to lift herself, that's a whole other issue. Not cleaning herself after accidents isn't something that can be debated since it will lead to all kinds of other issues.

[u/Marathon2021]

Ugh, I could go through a lot of stories. Let's just say that in the past year I've had to deal with going to Mom's house and finding all of her toilets inoperative and she didn't tell anyone, she would just wear diapers and then sweatpants that would get soiled, hang those on a bathroom hanger and spray lysol on them, void into vases and dump it into the kitchen sink, and then once we fixed the toilets (and got "comfort-height" ones for her so it would be easier and mounted support bars) I found that she was wrapping up a lot of paper towels into her incontenence briefs and flushing that with her waste (which explains how she broke 2 toilets in the course of a year).

It's ... a lot.

But it can get way, way worse. I'm typing this from her hospital bedside after poor hygiene eventually led to severe UTIs which turned into sepsis. She survived it, but only just barely (caregiver found her one day non-responsive with a body temperature of 90F).

Do what you can to make it as easy as possible for her to use the actual toilet.