My Dad is 86 and legally blind. My Mother is 84 and has tinnitus, to the point where she's almost deaf. She still drives, but only to the Doctors, Aldi, Meijer and Wal-mart.
Together they are still in the house they bought in 1972 (for $19,500 and paid off in 18 years).
We've had the "resthome" conversation (actually everytime I go to visit along with going over my mom's "Death Book", as my sister and I call it.)
The consensus is that as long as it's the two of them they can stay in the house, once it's down to one, then we need to make other arrangements.
Dad, although blind, is what my sister calls "portable", give him a day or two to learn the number of steps in each area of a new place and he's good. He could easily live with me as he's easy to get along with and a good cook.
My mother on the other hand drives everyone (including my father) crazy. The tinnitus prevents her from getting enough sleep, so she's pretty miserable. I've tried several things, including buying those Quietous pills, and taking her to a Hypnotherapist. Nothing seems to work. Her regular docs literally run when she comes in.
My father, brothers, and sisters agree that it's mostly in her head. She's a retired RN, so she reads all the medical literature and when given a prescription reads the little FDA-required flyer they put in with the meds, then goes and looks it up in her PDR. She naturally gets all the side effects, which necessitates another trip to the docs, which means more meds (as she won't leave until they give her something to "fix" whatever problem she currently has), rinse, ring, repeat. We keep telling her that if she only took her blood pressure meds and cutout everything else, she'd do much better.
You can always tell a German, you just can't tell them much.....
