The new shiny 2019 thread for anyone caring for elderly parents

PS Dint I don't know how people manage if they don't have someone to speak for them. doesn't have to be family of course - my dad was doing this sort of thing for 3 older friends but we did have some issues when one of them, who was in her 90s, was in the hospital and it took a while for the hospital to believe that he was her representative.

I'm really glad he never took on POA for her - one of her other friends did - similar to dad's age but in much better health. It would have been chaos trying to find another POA for her on top of everything else!

Oneday do you mean district nurse? wondering about round the clock care, or are you and your family doing that?

Rose & Dint thanks, yes, it's the financial one we were wondering about. tbh the "mistakes" thing is one of my concerns. The idea would be to take things off mum's plate altogether but given the performance of financial places so far, with death certificate etc, I'm not impressed. She would want to carry on being able to run her main current account, but there's a couple of things that she let dad set up for her and they are going to be hard to sort out (long story).

so if LPA lets me sort those out, that would be really good. It's a shame she's so determined to wait for probate - that will take ages, then the LPA will take ages and I have told her this, but of course her grief and stress level combined means she is finding it hard to process all this.

It was you who discovered he'd signed the paper without understanding it, am I right? Yes. I asked him in front of her what he thought he was signing. How does anyone cope who doesn't have family to fight their corner for them? For anyone dealing with elderlies - this is one reason why you must not over commit yourself - you need to keep the energy and alertness to keep an eye on things like this.

PoA Rose is right. There's a key difference in that Health and Welfare PoA only comes into effect once person has lost capacity, whereas you can set up Financial PoA to come into effect while person still has capacity. That means you can divide up things with your mother, you use PoA to look after some accounts, and she can look after others herself. So you get the PoA registered with the Office of the Public Guardian, and then just show it to the institution managing the account that you are looking after.

Your understanding is right, once you have PoA and the financial institution have accepted it, you can get them to deal only with you, and to send all correspondence to you, just as if the account were in your name. Mistakes can happen. My father and I have just had a compensation payment from a building society that started sending letters to his address and not mine - the whole point of me looking after the account in question was to save him stressing over letters from them.

@Grace212 how many attorneys are you having?
You would need to be an attorney for LPA
Your mother is the donor.
It is good to have more than one attorney.

If you cross the box that says joint and severally it will mean you have more options for decisions even if you are not immediately taking over all decisions.

It is good to get health and welfare and property and financial.

It takes two months to come back registered from the opg.

Does this help?

I need to get my mum to do them.
At work we help clients with LPA's.

grace dn coming tomorrow. Ended up calling 111 to check if I could swap the mask for nasal tubes - had to adjust dosage but she seems better now, more settled. The 24 dn number we were given was only office hours!

Oneday have you got help in?

I have Power of Attorney questions, I could pop to legal but probably more traffic here. Short version - mum wants to sort out Power of Attorney after probate etc is done for dad - she's adamant she doesn't want to do it before.

there are a couple of issues within her own finances that need to be sorted out. She wants to sort them out, but because dad set stuff up in her name and she just signed it, I'm concerned that if she contacts those places and tells them dad's dead and she didn't know what she was signing, there will be stress. Every piece of paper she gets gives her stress.

so my thinking is, when I have PofA, to sort it out then and then they won't write to her or ask her anything, I can just deal with it. Is that correct or am I overestimating what I could do with PofA?

thanks.

We have a memory clinic assessment for my mum tomorrow. Are there any questions I should ask?

So mum is finally home - arrived this evening - first round won! We are already , however, we'll and truly into round 2. What the hell do I do when mum is constantly pulling off her oxygen mask? She's sleeping fitfully after a panic attack/struggling to breathe episode earlier. Had to give lorazepam and morphine tablet as prescribed but she now can't remember why she has a mask on and keeps trying to take it off. Guess I'm on night watch tonight.

total side note
just saw about DofE accident and cannot believe he is driving at that age.

Agree Dint, there is no logic in that at all, their decisions in such a short time frame.

my concern about not being there at all is that they would be even more likely to decide he can manage for himself? It was you who discovered he'd signed the paper without understanding it, am I right?

Gummy got drunk and called her a miser who did fuck all for her parents. sorry thigh had to laugh and Gummy is right!

mrscat honestly, in your mum's situation - esp as very early stage - I would not go ahead with surgery. Anaesthesia seems to really fuck with old people's minds, and there is a question to ask as to whether the dementia or the bowel cancer is the most disruptive element to her enjoying life as much as she can. One or the other is going to get her (sorry to be so blunt) and maybe its a choice you can make after talking to the cancer care nurses.

No news on DH next MRI scan yet, but I had to pick up some scrips for him today and had the privilege of using the 'free scrip card for people with cancer'. Saved me over £17, but would have preferred to pay and not be in this situation. A viewing on mum's house on Sat (this is described as an 'open day' I dont think one person qualifies as an open day but there you go...)

cockroach one and all

oh dint that's just awful. hopefully you (and he) have made it clear that 'no care' is not an option. My advice, fwiw, is to make yourself unavailable to provide ANY care, or even offer to sort it. 'the daughter round the corner' situation applied to me for many years, and its a pile of pants, it allows them to get away with providing less than they should because they know that concerned family will pick up the pieces because what else would you do? And that goes to providing material things such as stairlifts etc, if you can pay and you seem to be willing to do so then hell, SS are off the hook. Some of them are marvellous, but most of them are juggling too many people with too little budget, so if you give them an inch they will take a mile.

Grace It's trying to stretch scarce resources - I presume there's some other poor guy desperate to get out of hospital and waiting for reablement. I can understand that. (Reablement is I think NHS not SS).

What I didn't think of during the 1.5 hour discussion is that her stand today, of removing all care, is totally at odds with their decision last week that he'd need continuing care and therefore to transfer across to paid SS before the full 6 weeks free enablement period ran out. That's fair enough, I can understand that if it becomes clear they're still going to need some care, then they'll initiate transfer to the chargeable SS provision as soon as they've made that decision - but to turn around a week later and say "he doesn't need any help, he's doing it all himself"! That is just not credible.

I was furious that she seemed to be planning to withdraw all care with zero notice. I don't mind being told "you'll have to sort it yourself" - as long as I have time to do that. But I think the night visit has been stopped from tonight, and she was proposing to leave us with no help whatever over the weekend.

Fortunately Dad performed splendidly and made it clear he needed help at night (something to do with changes in police procedures!), even though he hasn't let them help because they come too early. And then the fact they'd got him to sign something he had no understanding of put us back on the moral high ground.

I don't know what to do about the "no dementia". I think we need to know something about what's going on - it was clear today that Enablement Woman was finding it impossible to get straight answers out of my father. The Police were coming into everything.

Dint
so now the situation is that your dad has been told no dementia - sorry I meant to reply to that yesterday before it all kicked off here - and now social services want to withdraw care?

is this all just their way of trying to save money or is there some incompetence here?

regardless, I'm really sorry you're going through this

I am so cross!!

Reablement team identified DF needs continuing care, so are handing over early to SS, and I'm seeing SW on Monday.

Then at lunchtime Head of Reablement demands crash meeting this pm- carers are apparently saying DF is managing everything for himself and they want to remove all care. I argued at length, questioned Dad who demonstrated that he can't, for example, wash himself properly. Then she waved a piece of paper at me where she said Dad had signed to say he agreed he didn't need any help. Fortunately I questioned this, and it turns out he thought he was signing to say carer had visited. It has now been annotated to say customer hadn't a clue what he was signing.

And he was adamant he needed help with bedtime (although he's refused to let carers put him to bed at 7.30, so presumably he's been sorting himself out).

We have "compromised". They are continuing morning visit but not evening one. She wanted me to sign to say I agreed with this, I wouldn't, so she wanted Alan to sign. So I've signed, said I don't agree, and why I don't agree.

I am of the firm belief that people can become very selfish towards the end, they retreat into themselves and the world becomes very small. I think it tarts taking so much energy to look after yourself that there isn't any left for other people. Bit like when I'm suffering from depression, I don't have energy to show empathy to anyone else.

I'm an occasional poster but whilst sympathizing with you all don't post often as both parents now passed. My last post was a few months ago about my female family member who was having troubled with her mother in her final weeks due to psychosis.
I re posted when she died. I'm posting this because of a conversation with ffm (female family member) as she has negative feelings towards the memory of her mother, and it had been posted by others here that they feel the same.When my own dm was dying there were times when I felt I had to remind her that I was her daughter and not a carer. I am of the firm belief that people can become very selfish towards the end, they retreat into themselves and the world becomes very small.

MrsCat1

ah, I was wondering if the doc might have had a view on the wisdom of having surgery after a certain age, but I suppose the oncologists will have more of a base to take a view.

@Grace212.
Doc said it was a very difficult decision. Wouldn’t say more. I will call the specialist nurse (who is very good) to try to get her view. My beloved mum is 88.

MrsCat1 siblings who do nothing are a feature round here.

what does the doc think? I'm not sure if you mentioned her age, sorry if you did and I missed it.

Grace. Hi. My DPs live an hour away from me. My visits vary between 7 days a week and twice a week, depending on how things are going. I have a DB who lives much nearer, but he does next to nothing. 🙁

Trying to work out in my mind whether cancer or dementia are likely to take my DM over first. I know she will be led by my view. Feels like her life in my hands.

sandwich sorry, forgot to say mum does take Kalms.

I suppose there are bound to be bad days like this, I think we are getting fewer of them....famous last words.