Cockroach cafe 🪳 Spring 2022 🪳

@countrygirl99 It's not your dad's place to be cancelling your mother's assessment, clearly he's not acting in your mother's best interests. I am sure that SS deal with difficult people all of the time and are capable of dealing with this. If they see him at his worst then they also see what DM is living with. I'd guess you are right about him thrashing about because he's not in control anymore, fortunately my powerlessness comes out as anxiety rather than anger but I recognise the scenario.

Mum was lovely to the end, her last coherant words were "I love you very much you know" (and the whole ward went "ahhh"). MIL is nicer now than she has been for the last thirty years but the bar there was pretty low.

I'm trundling along with garden maintenance and house clearance, it was paperwork from 1987 last week.

Oh and spending time with my DH who has spent weeks alone whilst I've been with the DPs..holding the fort and listening to my rants and tears..Then supplying endless tea whilst I've been on the phone when I've got home. I'm dealing with everything that can be done on the phone (SS, hospital, care home)whilst DBs do physical things when I'm not there (Dr appt, Shop, visits to Mum etc)..I'm very lucky to have my DBs so close. I know a few of you are having to cope alone...Anyway off to make a cuppa and start the calls..

Just caught up with you all..I had a 'communication holiday' and have just pottered and gardened and eaten and spent much needed time with my adult DCs. (My brain was fried and constantly buzzing. I'm sure you'll all remember those moments of crisis when you spend all day/week on the phone either making or taking calls..not to mention the lost hours on hold.. I know nearly every layby on the 250 mile trip and which ones have the best signal!!)

All quiet with DM..Still in the discharge lounge awaiting a care home place. Family have a rota so she gets a visit every day.. Taking my Dad when he's up to it. She's sleeping a lot and still not eating/drinking much. I'm stealing myself to try and get an update today. Wish me luck!

Dad has finally made an appointment with the Dr today which my DB will take him too. (he was very cross and told me yesterday that he'd been on hold for an hour! Really Dad..I had no idea! ) He's in so much discomfort. He has prostate cancer and I suspect he has a blockage now but he wouldn't listen/refused all suggestions so far. We shall see..
Sending hugs and gin and solidarity to you all. x

Well done, FlyingMonkey. Tough call, but sometimes the wisest one.

I am already 'feck off', so not sure what there is left for my language. Maybe I'll go the other way and be all Mary Poppins?

My heart goes out to everyone who is at various stages of struggles with their elderlies on this thread. I know it has been a Godsend for me at times to be able to come here and vent and feel understood.

I've now emptied and cleaned DM's house, the sale is due to be going through this week. I've come to the realisation that as I am the thing causes DM to be upset when I visit her in the CH, then I should cut back on the amount I visit. It serves no purpose for either of us as we both end up upset and unsettled.

That's worrying and upsetting, countrygirl!

It's alarming how the veneer of civilisation flakes away as we age. I worry occasionally about what I'll be like! My dad was so lovely when he was very ill. He didn't have much language left, but it was all 'How lovely to see you' and 'So kind!'.

I might be more 'Feck off!'.

I've had a few days away from it all. Mum was being very unreasonable so I just went quiet and left her to it. I couldn't resolve the imaginary wedding issue she has, so why listen to the ranting.

She's a bit cheerier now, thanks to the jubilee stuff I think.

@PermanentTemporary basically he won't let them in the house and given how aggressive he was at the meeting a couple of weeks ago I don't blame them if they don't want to go unaccompanied when he is like this. He may be an old man but he can be really nasty and DH aunt (age 75) walked out of that meeting because she thought he was going to hit her and DH had to intervene.
SIL is trying to talk sense into him and he is trying to make out he misunderstood and thought they were coming to collect her and take her to a home this week, saying DH hadn't explained things properly to him. But DH was there when the GP came round last week and his dad was explaining the plan correctly to the GP so he did understand it and is choosing to try and mislead people because he has changed his mind. He thinks if he is stubborn and aggressive enough he will get his way. What he doesn't realise is his current behaviour may well lead to MIL being taken to a place of safety. He is a controller who is losing control and lashing out. After we got married it took DH years to understand what his dad was like and then only because I talked him through stuff after a particular incident that nearly wrecked our marriage. Other family members are only just realising how controlling he is to MIL. One BIL doesn't have a lot to do with him because he sees him like I do.

Oh good grief countrygirl and exexpat. What nightmares.

Im a bit mystified that social services have rolled over and cancelled an assessment of your MIL's needs because your FIL said so [well not that mystified but it sounds wrong].

Sounds like everyone is having a rough yime st the moment.
FIL is playing up again. He is really struggling to cope and the doctors haven't found a pain medication regime that works for him yet - he can't take morphine and the alternatives are making him sick, he is deleting badly due to that and MIL needing help in the night. We thought he had accepted that MIL will meed to go into a home. DH has been to view homes, they have screed preferences and he wanted DH to set the ball rolling with social services understanding that there is a waiting list for his preference and it could be a few months and that a crisis would probably mean she would need tobe placed elsewhere. SS were due to be coming out this week to do a formal assessment of her needs as the next part of the process. Yesterday he told them not to come and has halted the whole process again. Not only that but we now have reasons to suspect he may be losing his temper and being violent to her, MILs sister was really frightened by his temper yesterday afternoon and phoned DH yesterday evening to tell him.

My update: all my hopes of things improving once DM moved from the totally unsuitable huge family house to a lovely sheltered flat with a great community earlier this year have proved to be total pie in the sky.

After a fall and a cancer diagnosis, she has been bounced from sheltered flat to hospital to rehabilitation unit to nursing home, while we wait to see if she can improve enough to return to the sheltered flat. Cancer (but not the aggressively terminal kind she would welcome), incontinence and a severe reduction in mobility since she went into hospital a couple of months ago (she is now basically bed-bound) make it look increasingly unlikely that she will.

She was in the flat for less than a month and we are still paying for it, as well as self-funding the posh nursing home and all the running costs of the family home until I can finish dealing with DF's probate, clear the house and sell it. Aaargh.

as needed to everyone, particularly @MissMarplesNiece - sorry you have to join us here, and I agree with everyone else that you need to take a step back. They would have to manage without you if you dropped dead or ended up in hospital, so they might as well work out what to do without you before that happens.

@MissMarplesNiece You definitely need to take a break. Can anything - the bungalow clearance for example - be outsourced? There's no point in you throwing your health away. Your two siblings seem to have more boundaries in place but that means you have to have boundaries too, not that you pick up all the slack and run yourself into the ground.

We had a couple of months of DM insisting that she could look after DF at home and getting angry with me when I said she should consider a care home place, but then not being able to cope and phoning for an ambulance every few days so he got admitted to hospital. He is very ill and frail but the hospital can only do so much and it wasn't great that he was getting shunted about so much.

Eventually the ambulance refused to take him in but said they were worried about DM's mental health. DM then said she couldn't look after him anymore. He's ended up in hospital again as there's nowhere else he can go, while he waits for a nursing home place.

DM and DF live in a small town and the only home there has a waiting list. There are some places in the bigger town 45 minutes away where my parents have friends and could have easily settled in when they were a few years younger. It just feels like all the way through things have been driven by crises and my DPs just refused to plan ahead, and now it's just a much worse situation than it really needed to be.

DM doesn't like driving much now and we're not sure how long she'll be able to, but she was keen for DF to go into a posh nursing home in a village that's even more awkward to get to than where they stay, there's not even a direct bus link so it just seemed like a terrible idea. Luckily I don't think she could get a council funded place there.

Ah thank you! Good tip

Just seen this 😮, so sorry, scrap what I said earlier..
I agree that you are suffering from carer burnout.

It can take only one elderly person to make things hard for you, so don’t be hard on yourself.
Can your sister help with her house?

@MissMarplesNiece You are definitely not being melodramatic, far from it. Your stress levels are sky high 💐

What did your DM say when you fainted?
Can you organise ambulances to take your Mum to hospital appointments?
Sort out online food shopping, even if it means you set it up ?

I know she lives with your sister, but could she not help with just one thing?

I’m sorry if these have already been suggested.

@MissMarplesNiece I'm so sorry to hear this. I hope you/your husband have been in touch with your GP and you have told anyone you needed to that you are downing tools. The care of your mother sounds physically extremely stressful and the emotional load on top, plus sibling conflict, is terrible. I ended up having time off work and am on antidepressants plus a therapist because I just couldn't cope, and I was doing much less than you.

Not sure @Clymene but I can tell you that if you have to phone them, you should be prepared to be on hold for up to an hour, so have tea to hand.

Sorry to barge in (and I'm sorry to read what you're going through @MissMarplesNiece - I can only echo everyone else) but I have a quick question which doesn't seem to warrant a whole thread.

How long before I can expect to hear from Attendance Allowance application? I found something on the internet which says they should acknowledge receipt within 4 weeks but it's an old page and I'm not sure if that's still the case post Covid. We sent off the form 7 weeks ago.

I suspect I may become more of a regular around these parts - if only to go argh! a lot

@MissMarplesNiece I echo the others. I had a less extreme ‘breakdown’ recently and have had to withdraw for my own sanity (as well as get signed off work). Just starting to feel slightly normal again. It’s not about whether you should or should not be able to cope. That’s irrelevant. I used to be able to cope with far more than I can, but now I can cope with very little indeed, probably because I spent far too long trying to be super woman. You’re no use to your mum or your sister if you end up seriously ill.

Please listen to the other posters here and get an urgent care assessment for your dm. Your health is at risk.

It's not about you should be able to care for one elderly person, it's the fact that you obviously can't, which is why people have carers to come and do it instead. Please phone adult services, you are becoming very ill and need to give yourself a break.

Not wanting to worry you but there is also the possibility you have had a T.I.A ( mini stroke ) you should contact your Dr to rule it out.

You are suffering from carer burnout/crisis.

You don't need to leave it all to your sister but you DO need a break and to get carers in. She gets AA - that's what its for.

Could you chat to your Dr about this?

because it's too much?

I had the most horrible "funny turn" this morning. I was listening to DP tell me about a film, then everything seemed as if it was bombarding my brain, a sort of sensory overload. DP was talking and it was like nonsense, and the radio in the kitchen was all mixed in and I just wanted to cover my ears. I walked into the other room to escape the noise but I couldn't stop walking - round and round, up and down with my fists clenched - I drew blood where I dug my nails in tho I didn't feel it at the time. In the end DP got me to sit down and eventually I calmed down. It was so horrible. I don't know what to do. I'm sure it's all related to my mother. I should be able to cope with one elderly person - 1000s of people do, why can't I? I can't leave it all to my sister.