Coping with Placing Someone

If your care recipient moves to a nursing home, you will experience many emotions. In Virginia Morris's book, How to Care for Aging Parents, there is a list of common reactions to having a parent in a nursing home. These apply to placing a spouse or friend, also.

TEN COMMON REACTIONS TO HAVING A PARENT IN A NURSING HOME (from How to Care for Aging Parents):

• Guilt that you are not doing enough for your parent
• Anxiety that the nursing staff won't do enough for him or her
• Guilt because you promised you would never put him or her in a home
• Anxiety about whether you will end up in a nursing home
• Guilt that your parent isn't in a nicer, more expensive home
• Anxiety over the high cost of the nursing home he or she is in
• Guilt that you don't visit him or her more often
• Anxiety about having to visit so often
• Guilt for feeling relief that your parent is in a nursing home
• Anxiety that it won't work and you'll have to devise another plan

Many people who go through the transition to nursing home with their care recipients continue with their support group and sometimes join another associated with the facility where their care recipient lives. Those who have been through it can provide information, support and encouragement to those facing the decision.

It can be very healing to talk with other support group members about the emotional pain you may experience because some relatives and friends will not visit your care recipient in the nursing home. Some people cannot stand to see the mental or physical deterioration, some fear their own aging and possible nursing home placement, some just don't know what to do around a person with debilitating mental or physical illness (although you can make it easier for them by giving them ideas), and some don't know the value of being with someone in the last days of life even if the person visited cannot communicate verbally. For more on this, see Stage Four, section 1. Resolve relationships.

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