Cockroach Cafe - newly refurbished for the summer

DD is bloody marvellous .

She's become a proper gym bunny, got a really good part time job (Communication Assistant for a local charity, flexible hours 50% working from home) and great GCSE results and is off to college for A levels in 3 weeks time.

@thesandwich

It is a bit daunting. The job itself doesn't phase me, it's the early start and my life not being my own for 45 hours a week that's not filling me with enthusiasm. It's not really been my own for a long time now but at least, particularly since Dad passed away, there's been a bit of flexibility.

I will be back to having one day a week to call my own so...meh.

Anyway, it is what it is. I've redecorated my study so I have a quiet space to write and am hoping to brush up on some skills so that I can look for a new job next spring, away from the grind and inflexibility of term time only and hopefully one that acrually uses my skills and talents!

We aren't really supposed to have phones too accessible at work, but I put my foot down about keeping mine to hand because of dad. I will just check at lunchtime and make sure the lifeline button people have my work number (without telling mum!).

Hello reincarnated@ words ! Good to see you here with a view from the future if you know what I mean for some of us. Wise words about reclaiming lives.
Good advice to hairbrush here. And minty think the no phones at school rule us a good one. How are you? Must be daunting going back.
How’s your dd?

Hello Everyone ( waves furiously at @thesandwich ) and Cockroach all!

I was on these threads a while ago under another name ( Grinchly ) and they were a haven of sanity, laughs, advice and friendship as I navigated my mother's declining health and constant criticism and demands. Before that I had years of my father's declining health too, but he was an absolute sweetheart which made things much easier.

I've just skimmed through the latest thread and have seen a lot of familiar names. Reading through your stories really brought back the full horror of dealing with my mother before she went into the home. I think I had semi-forgotten the worst of it.

Really we all deserve medals, and as much gin/tea/coffee /cake as we can manage - the stress of it all is just awful. When you are in the eye of the storm it's very hard to see any end to it, and you just have to minimise it in your own mind just to keep going.

To bring you up to date with me, mother went into the care home two years ago. I managed to clear and sell the house, and invest the money appropriately for her after an insane amount of stress with the PoA. ( and to someone who asked, yes I registered it with each institution as needed too, rather than all at once, much easier. In fact there are still a couple of accounts which haven't had it attached yet.) I felt as if I had aged 20 years during this time. People at work were great, but even so, keeping a busy job going alongside all of that was very hard.

Then Covid struck of course, which meant no visits. This, frankly, was an absolute godsend and has enabled me to re establish an even keel, and put my own health and wellbeing firmly front and centre - where it belongs and where it will jolly well stay. I am also largely working from home now which has removed another major stressor from my life. I now feel 20 years younger

I am visiting her again, but only about once a month. That feels about right. What a relief from the day a week it would absorb before. She is safe and looked after. No more calls or demands. And the emotional manipulation can be laughed away when you know you only have half an hour of it at most. She was 90 in the spring and could easily live another ten years, so this stage could well go on a very long while.

Everyone says what a sweet old lady she is. I just try and see her as a frail elderly person, detached from me. I've even taken to referring to her in my own mind and to others by her first name, and that helps with the emotional distancing too.

Whatever it takes, right? Keep on keeping on, everyone.

Hairbrush once she does move to her long term placement it might be worth mentioning her worst case scenario thinking. The more they know about her the less they'll have to find out over time.

I have begged my mum to talk to the GP about her mental health but she has refused quite aggressively. She has always been anxious and assumes the worst. She refused to go to the optician because she was afraid she would be diagnosed with bleed on the brain. Her daily life was restricted by pain from her arthritis but she refused to visit the doctor because she was afraid of what the diagnosis would be and she might have to have an op. By the time she was referred to the hospital her hip had deteriorated to such a state that there was nothing.

I have spoken to the hospital this morning and she is fine. We agreed I wouldn't speak to her because it isn't part of her routine and could stress her more. We think she was confused by being taken from the ward to the garden confused her and she thought she had been transferred to the home and wanted to go back there.

Minty I'd go with the line of "no phones in school". New term, fresh start, new boundary. If it's a real emergency then someone can call the school landline.

Hairbrush I think Dint has the truth of it, DM has seen only you for so long and now someone new has appeared which has disrupted everything. Where were you? She's missed you somehow, everything has gone wrong and escalate from there.

I'd been saying for decades that mum should talk to the doctor about some anxiety medication given her tendency to catastrophise. DS misses a day of school through illness, clearly it's school refusal and he'll never go back and fail all his exams. I'm late - I'm dead in a ditch. She refused as she didn't have a problem with anxiety (yes mum, yes you do). She is now on a low dose of an antidepressant and I wish she'd done it years ago. She's had years of non-stop worrying over little things and she needn't have.

hairbrush I hope you get to the bottom of things today and can put your mind at rest.

I stayed at mums last night as per. She has yet another bloody UTI (literally apparently) started ABs yesterday. This morning she still has blood in her wee and is asking if she should call the GP.
I've suggested she waits until she's taken more than two doses...cue noises about having to call 111 and go to out of hours if necessary with it being a bank holiday weekend, so imagine that's my day off up the swanny again ...

I just hope she puts her big girl pants on when I go back to work next week...I'm envisaging multiple messages/phone calls with accompanying eye rolls from line managers.

She has my work number, I think I'm just going to turn off notifications and leave phone in my bag.

Apparently she was very happy with my cousin but very confused. She thought she had missed a visit from me and my daughter. She also thought that as she had travelled such a long way she was not in her new home but my cousin thought she had accepted it was part of the hospital by the time she left.

Tomorrow I will have to keep trying to get through on the phone again and see how she is.

hairbrush that sounds really upsetting but as others say, she is probably over it now. May be worth getting advice re visitors. 🌺🌺

Hairbrush that must have been very distressing for you. It's possible that your mother has already forgotten all about it while it will continue to upset you for days. Is she more confused than is normal for her? It might be worth mentionning it to the staff if that's the case as there's always the possibility of a UTI.

I haven't been able to get hold of them. The patient liaison lady told me she was distressed and wanted to speak to me but I haven't been able to get hold of them since. I will just have to keep trying tomorrow.

That sounds really distressing for you Hairbrush. Were the hospital able to shed any light as to whether anything had caused the change?

Had a very difficult phone call this afternoon. Now they are allowing more visits my cousin was able to visit mum today. She sent me a lovely picture of her outside (the first time she has been out since August last year) and a quick message saying mum had said she was "quite content" with being in the hospital.

A couple of hours later the hospital phone me to ask me to speak to mum. She was very distressed and thought she was supposed to be coming home. I talked to her for half an hour and she made no sense at all. She kept begging me to come and get her, saying that she could not possibly stay where she was, she had no food and no way of getting any. I asked her if she was back in the ward but she didn't know. She couldn't tell me if she was in an armchair or a wheel chair, couldn't see the window, couldn't tell if she was by her own bed or somewhere else.. I could hear someone telling her everything was ok and she was muttering that it really was not ok.

She was convinced that there was a car waiting for her in the car park and no one would take her there. She said that she had seen so many people today, including the social worker and someone had told her she would be going home and she had been so happy about it.

In the end we left it that I would speak to my cousin and find out what had happened. Phoning the ward is like trying to get through to tv quiz show - the phone will ring out for 15 minutes then go dead so you have to start again.

We had had high hopes for the extra visits that they would bring her back to planet earth but it seems that today's visit has made her so much worse.

Haven't spoken to cousin yet as she has been out all afternoon and just messaged me to say she will ring as soon as she has had tea. As far as she knew mum was very happy and chilled this afternoon.

Well done Knot.

For me the best thing about it was being able to set up Direct Debits to pay DM's bills, as she had resisted them as being not something to trust. She would hide bills from me, or put them away somewhere safe only to be forgotten about, and ended up getting her phone cut off one Christmas which was the last straw for me.

It was a big step for me today, I activated the finance LPA. I don't know what I was so worried about, it took me all of five minutes. I've cut mum's grass and I've called someone to service her burglar alarm, mum wasn't wasting her money on THAT and as a result the alarm goes off when the power goes off. She might not bother about annoying the neighbours but I do so someone can come and replace the 14 year old battery. I've brought the paperwork home to deal with some things I will cancel because if I have to spend twenty minutes on hold I'd rather do it from my own settee.

I've been putting this off for ages but today I felt like doing it.

I saw mum yesterday, she managed about fifteen minutes of conversation before fading to random words and hand waving. She said she was very happy, that she was enjoying having people to listen to and talk to if she wanted to and she told me all about the shopping trip they'd had that morning (imaginary but she'd enjoyed it so what does it matter?)

That is so hard. I've realised that I have got over the loss of my dad (can still cry about him at the drop of a hat and will always miss him) when I realised I have to make these decisions about mum on my own and don't need to consider his feelings. For years before he died he used to worry that it might be her last birthday/Christmas and wanted to get her something special. It never occurred to us that he would die first.

I am dreading mum forgetting that he's gone.

We're waiting for a home in one of the two local homes so I can walk to visit her instead of relying on friends or buses.

We had a call from the hospital today with the news that they are extending visiting to three slots a week - still named visitors but it's something! My cousin and my daughter will now be visiting weekly. They are both so pleased be able to visit her. Hopefully she will be pleased to see them too.

Mum was grateful for the immediate help -" thank you for coming out and sorting out the tv" type thing but no understanding that she needed me to be able to stay in her own home! When the social worker asked her what help she had from me she said "She does a bit of shopping for me and cooks my meals sometimes." Good job I love her!

@IthinkIsawahairbrushbackthere

A couple of weeks ago mum said that she was really happy and that she thought she'd reached a point where everything was working out well. Since then her speech has flown out of the window but she doesn't realise that the words she's finding are the wrong ones so doesn't get frustrated. I don't think she's following what I'm saying either, I'll giving her an opening that always triggers a rant but there's no response. She knows who I am and seems pleased to see me for about twenty minutes and then she's itching to get back into the lounge. I'm fine with that, she's had a year of seeing no-one but me and I'd rather have her enjoying someone's company rather than me trying to come up with conversation.

In your case I'd be deflecting on to the professionals, "it's not down to me mum, they say you won't be safe because X Y and Z". It doesn't matter that you agree with them 100%. It's not you that's doing this to her, it's not that you had a choice to make, it's just that what used to work doesn't work now that she needs more support. Mum couldn't fathom out how the seat belt worked but couldn't see that she'd have any problem at all driving. That was what she wanted but we can't always have what we want can we?

I don't like visiting either but I tell myself that it's only for an hour at the most and I was doing three hours a day, every day and a 14 hour telephone shift. I walk out of the door and come home to no worries, no dread of the phone, no internet searches for solutions. I know she's eating, having all her medication and there are people around her. I've gone from total responsibility to none at all and that took a bit of getting used to but you adjust.

@IthinkIsawahairbrushbackthere

Hi! Mum's actually been really good since Saturday. Have popped in and seen her Sunday and Monday and will go round later but spending the day cooking first as we have friends round for dinner tomorrow.

I think incidents like Saturday's seem to remind her that I actually will and do drop everything to be there for her 100% when she needs me and she gets a bit more appreciate for a while as a result!

Is there a specific home you're waiting for a place at?

@IthinkIsawahairbrushbackthere

Oh yes, the endless 'why are you doing this to me?' She also tries to drag our DS (he's 22) into the whole thing, then accuses him of taking our 'side'.

This disease is bad enough, as you watch someone you know well disappear, but when they become so manipulative and unpleasant as well, it really does push you to the limit.

@Knotaknitter and @MintyCedric how are your mums now?

@countrygirl99 I'm so sorry your dad is in such a bad way. I really hope that things change and you are able to see him again.

@TonTonMacoute I understand exactly where you are coming from with the paranoia and with the constant phone calls. My mum went into hospital 11 weeks ago after a fall but until then I was getting a dozen phone calls a day from her at least. She was living in the granny annex in our garden but each call meant me going outside, down the full flight of stairs, down to the bottom of the garden to visit her to help her call my uncle (a call she made every day) or to turn on the tv or find her handkerchief!

I had noticed she was less "with it" since Christmas but since going into hospital she started being convinced there were arguments going on around her and then she moved to rehab (which she hates) and she tells me how nasty the staff are to her. They ignore her calls, they are rude to her, they are jealous of her etc etc.

She won't be coming home but will be transferred to a care home when a suitable place becomes available. I can only visit her once a week and each week I dread going because she is so unhappy and so unpleasant about the staff.

I have been her carer for 17 years but she has never acknowledged that she needed me. Now her cognitive abilities are fading she can not see that she needs care - most days she is using a steady with two carers to get to the loo, not even a frame. She can't understand why she can't come back home to live with me and can't believe "what I am doing to her."