My mom has dementia and lives in an apartment attached to our home. Her feet look horrible. I've taken her to the salon to have pedicures done in the past, but it's such a struggle to get her out of the house to an appointment and would love if I could get someone to the house to do it for her. In the past, I've had Podiatrists come to the house but they did nothing. They were here for a total of 5-10 mins, trimmed her nails & left. I was very dissatisfied.
I used to work Elder Care and my client was pretty much banned from all the local nail salons as she was quite difficult to deal with.
I brought my own foot 'spa' to work one day, sat her down, put on some soft music and had her soak her feet for about 1/2 hour in very warm water and epsom salts (those toenails in the very elderly are almost impossible to trim when dry!!)
Then I scrubbed and scrubbed away the old dry skin, trimmed her nails (get a nail trimmer--sideways cut rather than straight on) and gently trimmed her nails. Cut them short, but not to the nail bed. Filed (and filed and filed, should have brought hubby's Dremel!) and then finally painted them a glorious red. Slathered on lotion and she was in heaven!
By no means did they look 'good' but they looked 'good enough' and she was thrilled.
By painting them, I could look at her feet and see how much growth we had going on.
It's easier to keep up than to catch up. I would have her soak her feet every week and we'd just do a light massage which she adored. Lots of lotion!
And yes, we went to the podiatrist, but all he did was hack off the toenails and send us on our way.
I would order Avon for an elderly lady friend. She loved Avons Moisturizing handcream (white and blue tube). Not for her hands but her feet. So I tried it on the rough spots on my feet. I rubbed it on and then put on my socks. I saw a difference in a couple of days. Bought my husband a washcloth where one side has an exfoliating side so I used that to get the dry stuff off. Worked.