Cockroach Cafe - newly refurbished for the summer

Hello PermanentTemp and HellonHeels. I can't spell Permanent, it's one of those words that looks wrong whatever I do with the vowels so I suppose I will use it enough now to get it right.

It's like the toddler years, there are days where you do whatever you need to do to get through to bedtime. The people at the same stage as you don't judge because they are living your life, the ones that do judge have either never been through it or the passage of time has softened the edges from their memory.

I have considered Christmas dinner, personally I'd like to be ditching it entirely and substituting it with rum punch on a Caribbean cruise but my son would like the Christmas he's always had. I have decided to not think about it again until December.

Thank you. I'm not the first to be on this thread and have tears welling up because someone's written kind words and I won't be the last.

Mum is coming back to my area and that's a good thing, but I know from this thread that there's a long road ahead.

Excellent advice Mum5net.

Mine is 'Sufficient unto each day is the crap thereof'. I found myself wondering what the hell we are going to at Christmas (MIL, DDad and DB all come to us for the day) and I realised that it is totally pointless to worry about this now.

hairbrush there certainly are some parents who had things much worse than we do, yet they coped with it much better than us (mentioning no MILs!)

Permanent At work when things cut up rough we had a mantra Path of least resistance Sometimes on a given day you just have to make the least worst decision in order to get through. It's not being weak. It's about survival.

Im broken (by another minor thing compared to everyone else's). Just had to be the one to pull out of Mum's retirement flat sale again. Distraught elderly buyer and family say it will be the death of him. Wish I were dead. I'm so weak. Hope it wasn't your elderly person that we've just screwed over. I'm reaching the point of almost hating my mum and it is not her fault she's old and can't make decisions.

Hello @HellonHeels. There's no judgement here for snapping or ranting. Your comment from your mum 'I moved loads of times when I was younger and never got stressed about it, what's the matter with you' really struck a chord with me. That is the sort of comment I used to get from my mum all the time. And like you my reaction was tears and fury. I have no advice on dealing with it but I wanted you to know I have been in exactly the same position! Any aspect of my character or any opinion that varied from my mum's was always wrong.

Like your mum, my mum's world suddenly started to shrink. Now she is in hospital in a rehab unit after a fall three months ago and will be moving from there into a residential home. (Thus making me the worst daughter in the world) And I am still coming to terms with no longer being responsible for her care and happiness.

You have such a lot going on. I am so sorry about your partner and to have to move while you are still processing that must make everything so much harder. This is a great place to sound off safely.

Hi HellonHeels

Whoops that message went a little awry. Thank you for receiving my rant, it does feel a bit better for having told someone on the internet.

Mum has always been very self-centred, it was always all about her but it's so hard to feel she really doesn't give a toss about what I am dealing with and will only focus on her own lockdown woes. How do our worlds suddenly become so restricted as we age? I am dreading this happening to me, but I suppose I won't be aware of it!

Same with my DM country. Her favourite saying is 'old age doesn't come by itself' and dismisses anything that I have tried to put in place to help with the dementia as nonsense - whiteboards, dementia clock, etc. I've got used to her asking me the same thing every two minutes (why are you working from home?) but it's when she gets a bee in her bonnet about other people that I struggle (last summer she convinced herself my DD was getting married and hadn't invited her). And I have to do the 'oh look, a squirrel' distraction technique.

Hi all can I pop in for a mini-rant? I so feel for all of you dealing with your parents.

My mum is in her 80s, lives on other side of the world (me and brother both moved to UK at different times, been over here a long time) and in a country that's regularly going in and out of lockdown still. She lives on her own in an apartment, signs of cognitive decline but she won't hear anything said on that subject.

I'm in middle of a house move, selling former home (partner died a violent death last year), moving to another city, and have been given notice to leave the flat I'm renting, all at the same time. My flat is a mess and I've lost the plot - and the landline phone. The base unit still rings but its answerphone is now full.

Every single phone call I get is 'I've been calling and calling but I can't leave a message' I explain again and point out she's got hold of me now. This morning I got caught by a call just as I was about to leave for work. Felt massively stressed, explained again about the landline, was instructed to 'tidy up and look for it' so I lost the plot and snapped I wasn't looking for it and it would turn up when I'd sorted the moving details. Then I got 'I moved loads of times when I was younger and never got stressed about it, what's the matter with you'

Am a horrible combination of crying and raging now.

I'm receiving regular phonecalls

Any practical suggestions tend to be met with "Why do you want to do that I'm, I'm not stupid. Everyone forgets things occasionally." She is in denial that anything is wrong. I understand that if a particular particular the brain is affected then it's impossible to understand that there is something wrong.

The brain is very complex isn't it. Mum can remember that dad has been moved. What she can't remember is that dad has been moved from the hospital to the care home. Because she can't remember which way round it is she panics and then it's "I don't know where he is and nobody will tell me". Last night DB messaged me to warn me as he'd just come away from spending half an hour explaining where dad is, when she can see him, showing her the calendar again etc. I left it 15 minutes and phoned her and it was back to square one.

It's the cognitive part of the brain- when I ask DM to write a shopping list and give her a notebook she writes the same thing over and over. Each line says 'toilet paper', and despite the fact she can see that she's already written that 10 times, she will write it another 10. It's like the scene from The Shining.

And yet - she can knock out a crossword in no time at all.

The brain is a strange and complex thing.

I ended up with a sheet of A3 paper taped to the living room door, letters in marker pen big enough to read without glasses and visible from the whole room. Notes needed to start with her name otherwise they were written for someone else. It is hard struggling to find something that works but it's worth trying because it reassures them and makes your life easier.

DB has put it on her calendar last week and crosses off the days but she forgets it's on the calendar or gets confused and thinks that's when he is coming home or going to the care home from hospital, even though it clearly says what it is. I'vehad the same with reminders I have put on the calendar/ fridge notes. When dad was in hospital before she couldn't remember what was wrong or what they were doing so I wrote it down, showed her and stuck it to the fridge. Next day I found she had ignored the note because she didn't know what it was.

That must be so hard. And for her to think the fourteen days starts every day. She must be so scared. I think you are doing an amazing job in supporting her even though it is so stressful for you.

Does she have any sort of whiteboard to write messages-and countdown of days? Helps with dm.
So hard🌺🌺

Mum is in a state again. Dad was discharged to a temporary care home place last Thursday and mum can't remember whether he is in the home or the hospital so phones DB or me to cry that she doesn't know where he is and "no one is telling me anything". Between us we have had this conversation a dozen times over the last couple of days. On top of that she remembers that it's 14 days until she can see him but in her head it's 14 days from "today", not from last Thursday so never getting any closer when it's now 9 days. Had that conversation 4 times today.

😂 Laughing at the icon. One of them would have to be of my DM who went everyday to visit her mum, did her shopping, washing & housework for her and now can't understand why I don't go to see her everyday to do similar. Everytime I visit I hear stories of how since she was 8 she was being told by my grandpa to help my gran. Tbh it makes me feel quite sad - it sounds like she was a servant rather than a beloved child.

"Icons" series
Arf 🤣

In 1978 I spent a summer working in a local hospital. There were 5 wards and were purely medium term geriatric patients in for several months. 2 wards were for patients who were never going to leave. Primarily like MIL, very disabled after a stroke, or dementia. I remember 1 lady had a photo of "my Charlie" next to her bed and kept telling me they were going to get married when he came home. He was killed in WW1.

Just a snap shot but in the 80’s I volunteered in a cottage hospital and the ‘geriatric ward’ had patients in there from the start of the year I was there pretty much to the end. I think hospital stays were generally longer then. I remember my sibling had several minor operations. Went in the night before then stayed two weeks after. For no reason other than to ‘keep an eye and check’. So yes, I’d agree that some of the ‘slack’ was taken up there.

@Zolrets

Oh I can empathise totally.

MIL is due a heart op at a hospital which is an hour and a half round trip. I have taken her for a pacemaker check, a scan (at 8am), a drive through Covid test (on Sunday afternoon), an angiogram, and a check up with a nurse consultant.

The hospital letter told us that the procedure takes 3 or 4 hours so I dropped her off at lunchtime and went back home. I erred on the side of caution and went to pick her up at 5 - rush hour so traffic was terrible - to be told 'oh, she has only just had the test and can't leave for another 3 hours'. I was shattered (I'm no spring chicken myself) so DH said 'Come back and I will pick her up at 8'. So that was the day and evening messed up, and this was May when we had torrential rain evey day, MIL was really embarrassed but it was not her fault.

Surely the department could take a mobile phone number for the collector and send a text an hour before she was ready!? How long would that take? Seconds. They probably only see 4 or 5 patients per day, many of whom would be able to text their collector themselves.

Tbh in the 50s/60s the geriatric wards in hospitals looked like nursing homes do now. I saw a clip on telly just recently on a documentary- serried ranks of wheelchairs in a corridor containing frail but likely medically well people from our perspective (tbh most of them looked around 70). For sure women were expected to nurse/care for people at home but that's not to say it actually happened.

And at the ‘icons’ series. That made me chortle.