I live in Seattle. My mother and the rest of my family live in the midwest. Travel is difficult and very expensive for me, as there are no airline hubs close to where I fly into when I visit. I am lucky that my dear sister has stepped in and taken care of helping get my mother to a from appointments when medical issues have popped up, but she is a little battle weary . . .

My sis is more qualified than me or my brother in the fact that she is in management of hospice services and has a background of working in management of care facilities. The one battle she feels she is not winning with my mother is Mom's personal physician, whom she dearly loves, but who is coddling my mother, refuses to re-evaluate her medications (like to remove some she doesn't need, and prescribe something that would possibly help with her memory issues). My mother is so fixated on her meds, but will not consider trying something new that might actually improve her life.

My mother has been in a live-in situation with her male partner for almost a decade now, but recently he has confided in both my brother and sister that Mom's combativeness at times is more than he will endure. If she exhibits much more of this behavior, he says he will leave, and go live with his son and family. This would devastate my mother, who truly believes she is ina loving relationship that will only end when one of them passes on. . .




Bottom line: My question is -- what can a long-distance sibling do to help? I feel helpless, and with heath issues of my own, often powerless, to do much if anything to help. My sis seems to be the realistic one, keeping an eye on Mom's progression (she says this stage is the hardest, because my mom knows something is wrong with her memory and her functioning) and that when/if she moves on to the next, she will likely be oblivious, living in the dream-like, regressive world of Alzheimer's. My brother, the eldest, on the other hand , pretty severely time-limits visits, takes her the same place every time, and never sees (nor wants to see!) the tougher side of Mom's condition. I hadn't been home in several years, and this Spring I was shocked to see not only her progression, but the way my brother has put a protective wall around his society life-style and his ever-so-planned-out-life, which doesn't appear to include getting his hands dirty nor getting his spirit challenged, buy the deterioration of our own mother. He is not there to help with the issues of her medications and her care, but rather keeps the visits superficial. My sister, on the other hand, takes up the slack.

Where can I turn for information on how I might be able to be of more assistance? And how can a long-distance child be there for her mom, when being there in person is not possible as often as I would like?