Cockroach Cafe 🪳Autumn 2022 🪳

Hello@Definitelynotme2022 welcome! Plenty of room on the bad daughters sofa!
just a gentle question…. Why are you working when signed off? With so much going on you need fuel in your tank.
hello all regulars… this weeks adventure was getting a call from db that dm wasn’t answering phone….. dash to indignant dm to find phone was dialling out, not taking incoming call….. then next day discovered by ringing from her handset her number had changed! On to yesterday when phone went dead while I was there and careline saying no phone line…. I spotted a bt engineers van going down the road so went and grabbed him 🤣🤣- turned out dm had been given someone else’s number, and he was installing it in neighbours house…… eventually sorted…….
spoke to bt …. They do have a vulnerable customer flag they can put on accounts… might be worth doing. And got £16 quid rebate……..
cockroach all!

Hello all, can I join you?

Dm82 and df80 both ill and infirm. We now have a live in carer, but can't sustain paying for that for too long.

Waiting on a Parkinsons and dementia diagnosis for Df, but just a had a letter from the hospital saying it's 60 week wait! He's deteriorated very fast in the last couple of months - to the extent that he's now doubly incontinent.

Dm is driving me nuts..... I've never had a great relationship with her, and she's a narcissist. And so demanding.

I'm meant to be signed off work, but I'm working most days!!

We had blister packs for dad. Until we found out mum was emptying the lot into a bowl (not that it was her you understand, no idea who could have done that!) Fortunately soon after that regular carer visits 4 times a day were a requirement to get him out of hospital so they were able to keep an eye out for problems like that. Mum is on her own now and just has 1 visit largely to check there is nothing toxic in the fridge. They haven't been willing to fill the pivotell but I may have to try and persuade them.
The one medication she has been on for a while is marked up by day but she forgets what day it is and takes more than one dose - hence the pivotell. Not that she ever took more than one dose you understand, the packaging must be poor and they must be falling out.

@countrygirl99 ask the pharmacist about a nomad or dossett (blister packs basically) if mum is able to handle taking tablets out of a labelled 'blister'

I'll find out when I go up at the weekend. I'm having to take over filling mum's pivotell when sibling moves away. Not a problem until today as she's been on once a day medication so 1 fill is 4 weeks. But I'm a 2 hour round trip away, can't always go at the weekend and work full time. Generally I go up once a fortnight but sometimes visits are 1 week apart, sometimes 3 weeks depending on what else is going on. Twice a day will mean religiously once a fortnight, 3 times weekly and that is certainly not happening so would need to find another solution.

@countrygirl99 it depends, sometimes it's once a day, usually at night as they can make people sleepy. Check the prescription.

Do people usually take antidepressants once a day or more often. Please let it be once or I'm really going to put some serious boundaries in place.

@countrygirl99 spot on! My mother was (she's still alive but very different) a very loving and compassionate person but she had zero experience of the practical side of caring. She would phone my great aunt four times a day at least, plus my dad would drive a 90 minute round trip to bring her to my house once a week. My lovely aunt (and she was lovely, not being sarcastic) would do anything to avoid speaking to her on the phone. But when the crisis came my aunt dropped everything, walked out of work on compassionate grounds and moved my great aunt to live with her there and then. She was fantastic with practical care but couldn't handle the emotional side. My mum demanded both from me.

FIL always used to give us the "we looked after our patents" spiel. But his mum died young, his dad was fit and well until he died in an accident, his FIL was poorly for a few months (mostly in hospital) and his MIL died suddenly of a heart attack having lived independently in a wardened flat. So "caring" consisted of having the in-laws to Sunday lunch on a rota every 3 or 4 weeks. They lived 5 minutes drive away so even picking up and dropping off was hardly onerous.

You don't, until you're in the midst of it. My own family as a whole aren't long-lived, and my parents both died relatively young. DH's grandparents were all gone before he reached his teens, too, so we had no idea, really. People think we have it easy because MIL was sectioned and remains in hospital, but it means taking FIL to visit every day, an hour each way, plus all the wrangling between siblings about what the next steps ought to be, not that they will get to decide that. If anything her dementia has got worse (no shit!) since she was admitted during the summer.
FIL isn't in the best of shape either, with long term MH problems. After many years of managing with one vehicle, it means we have to keep two cars on the road to be able to see to him as and when, though of course he's convinced he's entirely independent. So it's a drain on finances as well as time.

Raising a to all sandwich fillings.

@Knackeredandstressed is that you turning your dh twice a night?? I can't even begin to imagine how exhausting that would be.

I feel tired this week after my dual nursing home trip - a lot of driving and of course it's emotional and can be hard to be positive, but I am so liberated from the grind of caring. I'm also about to drop ds at uni this Saturday so that's another chunk of responsibility I'm dropping.

In my family there have always been a lot of very long lived people but - perhaps as a result - a lot of use of institutional care like nursing homes. It can make family history quite bleak but it does mean we don't feel we are doing something unbearably bad if that's how things go.

Yes, that's how I feel x

Dr thinks mum may have something called essential tremor - AFAIK that's a neurological issue.

She's 45 kg now. She's 5ft 6 so that's pretty skinny.

@Chevyimpala67 I know exactly what you are saying. I started doing everything for my mum 10 years ago when I still had three youngsters at home. Although they would disagree I really feel that I neglected the younger two especially because of mum's needs. Now when they visit I make sure I say "yes" to everything they want me to do with them because I have spent years saying "You go and have a good time. I'll stay with G'ma"

My aunt cared for my dad's mother (grandfather died young) - they shared a house but my grandmother was independent right up to the last few months before she died. My mum's mum died after a brief illness and mum's sister helped my grandfather nurse her. When she died grandfather moved in with my aunt but didn't need care as such, just lived as part of the family.

Mum would always say she couldn't care for someone like my aunts did for their mothers yet she expected me to do much, much more for her and for much longer than they did. She really has no concept of what "care" involves.

She's in a home now and I am discovering the joy of freedom!

Another sandwich filling here - it's utterly exhausting!
I have DC x 2 at Uni, DHs health has deteriorated rapidly this year (no further treatment available), DF (88) is in a nursing home following a massive stroke and is basically "locked in", DUncle (93- his brother, no kids, I have his POA) is in another nursing home with vascular dementia. I now wfh PT to care for DH, and have carers come in to help 3 times a week. He needs turning twice a night. Constantly feel I'm dashing around between health crises (both DF and DUnc have had to go to A&E this month) and getting DC to Uni. I'm just shattered with it all.
DB is living his best life, visits DF for maybe 2 hours a year, although you wouldnt know that from his social media updates - all fake "love them" crap on birthdays etc. DB can't be trusted with their finances (caught him writing himself cheques on DFs account, and I made him pay the money back to DF).
I love him, but dislike him intensely. The one person in all this who I thought I could rely on turns out to be a total d*

Sigh.
More bloods
Dietician referral
Got to phone consultants secretary about colonoscopy
I'm going to ask my sister to take her to her blood test as it's a weekend appointment 🙃

Got mum am appointment at 5pm
She's just told me she regrets cancelling her colonoscopy and wants to get it re arranged
<pulls out hair>
Argh

My children are 6 and 8, and I work 30 hours a week. I feel like I am constantly running around after someone else, trying to fit in visits to dm, at her home, and df in a care home, around all the cubs, beavers, football, swimming, homework etc, and keep some semblance of order in the house. If I mention I’m tired my dm tells me to go running less, which gives me the rage. I go three times a week and that is literally the only time I get to myself.

Yes.
Absolutely

@Chevyimpala67 I also think it would be so much easier if my DM and I were closer. I sometimes wish I liked her more as then perhaps I wouldn't feel so resentful.

Thank you for understanding 💙
It all feels a bit bleak at times
Pils are getting older too and starting to have health issues for the first time

I've been caring for kids/mum for 20 years now and no end in sight
I guess I wouldn't feel so down if mum and I were closer.

@Chevyimpala67 it must be so tough juggling all of that, please rant away! My DD is an adult now but if I take myself back to her teenage years, the thought of having to deal with my DM as well is just too much. What with school and exams, all their activities and the fact that they just need you 'there' to listen to their friendship worries and general angst, you must feel pulled in all directions.

I hear you on the fact that your parents and PIL were spared looking after older family. I've often thought that when my DM was in her mid-fifties like me, she was completely off the hook - her mother was in good health and my aunt was the one who lived a few minutes from her so must have done all the other stuff.

Yeah...
Always something isn't there?

Waves to my fellow sandwich middles. DH and I are in the middle of 2 increasingly needed DF (both our DM have passed away) and 3 DC, one in final year of university, 1 final year of school, and 1 starting Nat 5s (our gcse). The DC need us less and less but it's Sod's law that the dad's have a crisis when there's parents night or a flat move or a football final.