Here is how to make a stubborn elderly parent go to the emergency room.
Have you ever heard of a case in which an elderly person died because their medical treatment was delayed, because family members couldn’t get that individual to visit the emergency room?
I’ve always wondered how it’s not possible for the adult child of an elderly person, who’s compromised by an illness or injury, to make them get into a car and be driven to an emergency room.
I made my elderly mother, who refused to go to the ER, get in the car and be driven to the ER.
She was delirious and wouldn’t keep still, requiring nonstop supervision.
The delirium ultimately had been diagnosed as a side effect from a type of medication that, in a very small percentage of recipients, causes a reactive “psychosis.”
The drug had been prescribed by a neurosurgeon to mitigate fluid buildup in her brain as a result of a recurrence of a chronic subdural hematoma.
So to this day, we’ll never know how much of that “psychosis” was brought on by the increasing blood and fluid in her brain (sounds frightening but she fully recovered).
My elderly mother flat-out refused to go to the emergency room, even though I and my father were insisting on this.
My father had orthopedic issues and was not in a position to use a hands-on approach to make my mother get into the car.
Look, if you have an elderly parent who needs to go to the ER, and he or she refuses, there is NOTHING stopping you from doing what you intuitively know is the right thing to do!
I forced my mother into the car. This sounds like I used violence, but all I did was stand behind her, place my hands on her upper arms, and “force” her to walk out of the kitchen, through the laundry room and into the garage. There was no way she could break loose.
Holding her upper arm with one hand, I opened the car door with the other hand, and I made her get into the front seat.
I turned her body to face the open door and pushed downward, making her lower, and I guided her into the seat, lifting her legs into the car, then quickly closing the door. I then put her seatbelt on.
My father and I knew she’d try to get out. I quickly got in behind her as my father put on the automatic lock for all the doors.
This way my mother couldn’t open her door. She was still verbally delirious and insisting she be let out.
The drive to the hospital took 40 minutes, during which I kept my hands firmly on my mother’s shoulders while I sat behind her.
Several times she reached for the door handle, and I didn’t quite trust that automatic lock.
I kept her pinned against the seat with my hands. She kept saying she wanted to jump out.
The CAT scan at the emergency room revealed the chronic subdural hematoma, and since the scan looked pretty much the same when compared to one that had been taken a few days ago, the ER doctor deemed my mother’s behavior to be an adverse reaction to the drug.
She was admitted and underwent a second burr-hole operation to correct the cSDH, then fully recovered within a few weeks.
You do NOT have to injure or bruise an elderly parent in order to “force” them to walk to a car, get in, and be driven to the ER.
If your elderly parent can’t walk (my mother had no problem walking), then pick them up.
If your parent is heavy, then of course, picking them up won’t always be an option.
If it’s impossible to get them into a chair with wheels or a wheelchair and roll them to the car, then hoist them in, or if two people find they can’t dually carry the person, then call 9-1-1.
If an elderly person falls and can’t move much, leave them be and let professionals do the moving!
When my elderly father blacked out, fell, hit his head and had an altered mental status at 3:00 in the morning, I found him on all fours (elbows on floor). This was a week after he had total knee revision surgery.
Though he was conscious, all 190 pounds of him, combined with the inability to realize he needed to try to get into a seated position on the floor, made his body dead weight. I took the mobile phone into another room and dialed 9-1-1.
He didn’t want me to call 9-1-1, and my mother was even swayed by his insistence that he was alright (by then she had talked him into making his way, along the floor, to a seated position on the floor with his back against the bed).
But I wouldn’t have it. Within minutes, four EMTs arrived and properly transferred my father, neck brace and all, into a special chair and secured him in it, then carried the chair down a flight of stairs and out the front door. He fully recovered.
So as you can see, there’s really NO reason why you can’t somehow, some way, get an elderly parent to the emergency room, no matter how much they refuse to go.
