Probably going down in flames...

Hi, Lighthouse,
Much the same here, a very gradual decline. It’s August so not unexpectedly or undeserved many of the regular carers are taking a break (lucky for them), so the moan factor has stepped up a notch. Any suggestion of me taking a holiday or even a day off is met with ‘that face’. She had some understandable concerns that she asked us to sort out, but then realised that it would (and has) caused a bit of a family rift, cue tears and ‘forgetting’ what she’d said. Just waiting for the next thing!
As you say, names have been changed, not sure I always feel innocent but I’m hoping for extenuating circumstances to be taken into account.
So glad this forum exists and one lovely neighbour who ‘gets it’.
Hope your heart holds out and you aren’t always stressed.

Hi Paroxetine
Interesting someone else remembers the thread.
The names have been changed to protect the innocent!

Sometimes it’s just wondering which of us will go first. Stress, heart etc. Hope things are better for you.

Resurrecting this zombie thread because I’m still here as is Mum. Wondering if anybody else is still soldiering on?

Relieved to have found this thread....I feel the same as Ophelia and others on this thread .
My mother is getting more demanding and I am (luckily living overseas) having to visit every school holiday to relieve my siblings .

Yes, someone who has known him for a while needs to witness it. There is a pack online, gov.uk, that talks you through it.

Hi, @Lighthouse,

That would raise my blood pressure too - I'm so sorry you find yourself stuck in this position. I'm glad you're seeing the GP.

I don't know too much about the actual process of applying for POA - my brother and my DH both have it for Mum, but I wasn't involved - but I do know that it's crucial that you get it sorted, if you can, while your father is deemed to be of sound mind. If it gets to a point where he isn't, the whole business becomes much longer and much more tortuous.

Thinking about you - please keep us posted.

thanks pickle

so if I print off the forms and dad signs them in hospital, does it need witnessing?

You can, if it is straight forward. It's not too hard, to be honest. Getting agreement is another matter...

hi again
yes I'm seeing a doc this afternoon.

meanwhile I will post in legal but busy trying to work out if I can do Lasting Power of Attorney without a solicitor...anyone know?

of course I asked them to sort this shit out years ago....!

Lighthouse, please see a doc.

Thanks all

I think it's the combination of trying to help out when I don't even like the man

Plus we have gone from him seeming to be at deaths door and now he's bounced back to the point that he's just being rude to mum which has given the rage all my life

She is just desperate for him to live

Now I think we are looking at the possibility of him being discharged and having to sort out home care

I used to think that I had to help mum because otherwise she would collapse

Now I think I'm the person most likely to collapse!

And all this for a man I've disliked all my life. He's fallen out with most of his mates over the years because of his anger issues and general unpleasantness

Oh and the neighbors who are trying to help, still my mum is saying she doesnt want to take help from them. I live 90 mins away. I'm exhausted.

They also have a very disorganised approach to everything which isn't helping

Meanwhile I cannot believe what I see the hospitals can do to keep people alive. Combined with his extraordinary determination to live, I cannot see the end of this.

BP has hit 174 even after getting home and having a rest. Perhaps I do need to make a doc appointment?

Hope you are ok, Lighthouse! Remember this isn't your fault. It is stuff that happens and is stressful. Stuff that you may be able to help out with. But not your responsibility or fault!

@Lighthouse, bless you - what's happened?

Really struggling
BP gone back up

@nononny

I'm sorry your experience was so awful. There certainly isn't any money for social care or proper pay for carers, I agree.

Knuckle, i wonder if some people are just fitted with a "be ridiculous" gene.

I saw him today and we had a conversation about care. He said it's up to us, he didn't express a preference for being in his own home, but having care at home will be cheaper.

Mum thinks he's going to get better so she's not really talking about it.

We've now shared the news with a couple of neighbours. My parents have these delightful neighbours, some in their 30s, who are really honestly happy to help and very full of energy. Dad has always refused any help because he says "we can't return the favour" but I don't think of it like that.

In our 20s and 30s we helped out elderly neighbors. They're long gone but we still remember them fondly and it was no bother at all to just pick up groceries or put bins out so not even really helping, just a tiny task.

Anyway, hopefully now we've told them, mum might actually accept those offers of help.

I'm sad that my paragraph about not loving my mother has resonated with so many people, but I also find it immensely reassuring.

@Lighthouse, I understand about the alternating between feeling like a terrible person and feeling nauseous. All I will say is, if they do try and send him home, get Occupational Therapy involved to assess him and see if he needs help at home, don't offer to help out, and don't let your Mum say she'll do whatever needs doing. The help is out there, but in my experience if you give them the slightest whiff of being prepared to take it on, they'll pounce on it, and that's not fair or sustainable.

I still have to give myself a good talking to to unpick whether I should visit Mum because I want to or because I feel I ought to - I visited yesterday, as a matter of fact. She greeted me by asking if DB was with me and asked me about four times in the course of my visit when he was due back. This is par for the course, though - a couple of years ago when she was still at home with carers I had to spend three weeks there while DB went away on holiday. I thought I did ok, and every day she would tell me to go out for a while (I did some days); when DB came back she had a good old moan about how I kept going out and I didn't look after her properly...

Anyway, I'm picking DB up from the airport in a couple of days. He still doesn't know about his pet because he hasn't been in touch, and as he didn't want to know if anything happened to Mum I guessed he wouldn't want to hear about that either.

As for going NC with him not making much difference; I hardly hear from him now unless he wants something, so it'll pretty much be business as usual.

Chin up, everyone. This too shall end.

If you are evil OP, then so am I. My mum died a few weeks ago. The last 6 months have been some of the hardest I have had to live through, seeing her go from relative idependence to needing 24 hour care. I wish she hadn’t had to go through that. I wish I hadn’t. They say it is a nightmare. It isn’t. It was like I’d died and gone to hell. You know you will wake up from a nigthmare. This goes on and on, it’s relentless. She was very unhappy during this time, saying she was a burden, they’d put her down if she was an animal etc – heartbreaking to listen to you can only stay cheerful and postiive for so long. I didn’t cope well, I turned into a dithery jelly – had to keep reminding myself that not so long ago I’d been a competent adult witha successful career. Nothing prepares you for this. My father died suddenly.
I did love my mother but it is so hard when someone no longer wants to live. She was difficult. I spent the last 60 years trying to please her and I could never get it right. But I did love her and I know she loved me. Now she has gone I do feel relieved, because it is what she wanted and she is no longer suffering. I have plenty to feel guilty about, but I don’t. I did everyting I could. I spent as much time with her as I could and I am so grateful for the time with her before she became ill. I know she wanted me to come and live with her, but I couldn’t have done it . The physical stuff I just got on with, but it felt inappropriate – she didn’t seem to mind. I’m not squeamish, I’m a farmer’s wife, used to mucking out pigs and so on. The emotional stuff was harder, it wouldn’t have done either of us any good. Then there was the terrible sense of isolation. I’m an only child and there is no other family, and I live at the other end of the country. Every time I thought I’d sorted things out something else would go wrong. You can’t control other peorle’s behaviour. Dealing with doctors, district nurses, carers, care homes, sociial workers from a distance is hard. Ask the doctor come out to deal with such and such, no, that is the district nurse’s job. Phone district nurse, they won’t do anything a unless the doctor tells them to, and so it goes on . Then all the hospital visits. As soon as the family is involved any help mysteriously disappears.
So what could have made things better. They said the NHS would care for you from cradle to grave. Seems to me it’s unfairly weighted to the cradle end. Try getting a taxi around 3 oclock during the week – none to be had because they are all busy ferrying little Snowflakes home from school. You don’t have to pay for schooling, why should you have to pay for care at the end of your life. It would help if the government stopped foreign aid and spent it on their own people, after all they did go through a world war. But they are no longer economically active so why bother. They could pay carers and care home workers decent wages so they didn’t get the dregs, the sadists and those whose English is not so good. Make it a worthwhile job. But that’s not gong to happen. God help us when our turn comes.

Moved, not made bed!

Oh I hadn't even thought about oxygen

They have moved my dad to a different hospital, I wonder if he will get oxygen

I will go tomorrow

I sort of alternate between feeling nauseous and feeling like a terrible person

He seems to have been moved because no one can find answers so now going to what is in theory a bigger better hospital but I honestly can't tell if he's been made bed because he made such a fuss that the first hospital wasn't doing enough

The GP had to battle to get him a hospital place at all because a lot of what he's showing is old age and heart problems

I can only guess but I reckon tomorrow he'll be discharged and we will have to get a carer at home

Mum was with him today and she said he was upset by something I said. It's because I can't fake it any more. As the song says, all I want is to stop pretending. There is just no end in sight.

Lighthouse, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head, pain is under control, the oxygen has helped her breathlessness and she’s sleeping well with the pain meds. She feels better, albeit totally immobile so has the energy to find fault. If she was to go home she would be equally critical of our efforts as she was before she went into hospital

@ParoxetineQueen

Oh I do feel for you. You know how this works is that they go in a home and recover quite a lot, because daily strains are removed.

My feeling is that is if she needs a hoist to get out of bed, she needs to stay in the home.

She's going to make the same comments about any home I guess? The other thing is if you could get funding for 1:1 at home, she will then make demands of everyone around her?

I am so sorry you are all going through this.

Thank you for the and support. Sitting here despairing of what to do. Mum spent 4 weeks in hospital, we agreed to DNR and she was very vocal that she didn’t want to live. She got a funded place in a nursing home, that she agreed to. We were strongly advised that caring for her at home would be very difficult. My brother doesn’t have a partner and has shouldered her day-to-day care, I live about an hour away, and although I was spending 3+ days helping, emergencies couldn’t be responded to immediately.
From being apparently only having a few weeks left she has made a partial recovery but is totally unable to even get out of bed without a hoist.
She is very unhappy in the home, I am met with a barrage of complaints every time I visit, but to be fair all she did before was complain about my brother and his lack of care.
She has a small amount of savings but they wouldn’t last very long given the amount of support she needs. Short of a lottery win this weekend to fund 24 hour 1-2-1 nursing care (with English nurses! Her racism not mine)
What do I do?

Knuckle, why won't it make a difference?

My dad is back in hospital. He's been such a pain today even mum said she might not visit tomorrow. I bet she will though.

Is it possible for sheer force of ego to keep someone alive?!

@Saidtheshark, It's horrible, isn't it? Your friend was very wise, and I'm feeling a similar sense of support and validation from this thread. Thankyou all.

@Lighthouse, I'm glad your blood pressure is behaving! I used to have a good relationship with DB, but that was ages ago - I don't know when things changed. But now, you're right, the only contact I have with him is when he wants something. I arranged care for the pet last year, and he just kind of assumed it would be the same this year; the pet hadn't been in great condition then, but not bad enough to raise concerns. But yes, it was entirely due to neglect...poor little sod. If he'd only asked for help I would have taken the pet on, but by the time I saw it it was too far gone. The rest of the stuff is irritating, frustrating...but just stuff. But to have allowed that to happen to a living creature- I am so angry!

And yes, once this is all over, I would cheerfully go NC with him. Not that it would make that much difference anyway.