Cockroach cafe 🪳 Summer 2023 🪳

Oh no @Hellokittymania that sounds really difficult being in a new place. We did a big relocation two years ago (albeit within same country!) and I found it took a lot longer to settle than I thought it would. We're very very happy with the move now but it's been a big of a slog to get to this stage.
I tried to do something I enjoyed every day (even if it was only reading a chapter of a book with a coffee!).
Good luck!

Permanent temporary, no, she lives in Florida, the healthcare system in general there is not great, and she’s on her own and she doesn’t advocate enough for what she needs. My sister‘s boyfriend is a urologist and went with her to one of her appointments when nothing else was working, he might have to do the same to get her the care she needs.

@Hellokittymania there are possible other treatments, has her doctor said anything?

Emotional blackmail, that is very hard. My mom is old-school, but she has a very difficult time understanding that I need to actually be doing things, including working, I am visually impaired. I just bought a home a couple of months ago and I’m struggling, partly because I still don’t have anything to keep me busy and feeling like I belong in the community here. I live in Greece, today has been a rough day in general and it’s one of those days where I wish I was in the UK.

@Juneday mine simply doesn't understand WFH. She seems to assume it equals a day off, possibly because she has no idea how online meetings work or documents as her IT skills are very limited. But she also never worked in an office and hasn't worked at all for decades so she has little idea what I do all day anyway.

She got a shock when she invited herself to stay one time and stayed over onto a day when I was WFH. She appeared to be anticipating lengthy chats over cups of tea. Instead she spent the day on her own with my home office door firmly shut as I was in meetings all day!

June day, my poor mom is on her own, I’m trying to find some help for her, and I’m hoping that being around somebody who has something as contagious as C. difficile won’t keep them away. My mom is having difficulty even with things like changing her bedsheets, and as you say, yes, it’s difficult because she doesn’t like drinking liquids, And she hast to try and drink things like her Pedialyte

DB called he's come down for the weekend and visited mum no joy re who did the garden work and charged her about 3x a reasonable price. And her fridge has rancid food again, other brother gmfound the same last week. She has 1 care visit a day, self funded. They only have to check she's OK (I.e. not on the floor and not obviously ill) and check the fridge. Even if they did the fridge check twice a week it would be enough but yet again they are failing.

@Hellokittymania I have no medical training but some life experiences and used to work for environmental health many moons ago - this sounds truly horrid for your mother and for you to watch. The worry is obvs dehydration, in hospital they would likely give her a drip to get in fluids if it has gone on this long, is someone checking her BP. Who is looking after her? If antiobiotics aren’t working a dr should be reviewing.

I have to hope that some youngsters have and am sure do have more empathy - I know a few 20 year olds at medical school …. Although that’s another story. But on the other hand I like to think that they are not carrying the weight of the world just yet. Maybe those you work with just don’t know what to say.

So many of you having all sorts of tough issues, too many to know how to answer but some familiar and some that I think will become more familiar as now my DM showing more signs that she is struggling. With DD telling me just now that world war three has broken out (between him and DM) because she doesn’t know what time we are arriving today - for a weekend visit. He got told to ring and ask ‘how we are getting on?’ I have made it clear on the phone many times and on emails confirming this trip, that when DH works from home on a Friday that means he is working usual hours, 7.30 am to 5.30 pm. ! So my mother thinks he can ignore that and stop at 4 to avoid the traffic. I don’t know if she forgets or is just stubborn and thinks if she says it enough DH will risk his job to please her🙁

good news - Barclays sorted out online PoA banking at last for MiL. Really fab young women was determined to get it done without me having to make a branch appointment etc. She had empathy! I told her she was a genius😁.

hope so of you get a break and biscuits and a glass of something over the weekend.

And also, if anybody else’s parent has had C. difficile, and the antibiotics haven’t worked, what then? What happens then? Especially if they have other health conditions. My mom doesn’t really like to drink liquids, she has Pedialyte, but she’s losing a lot of weight and it’s very scary for me to watch, and since it is very contagious, she’s isolated. And I don’t know what to do…

Hi everyone, can I just vent for a second, I am having a really difficult day, and feeling very down. I canceled my holiday for my birthday because, just too much is going on. My mom was diagnosed with C. difficile, we don’t know what it is, but the antibiotics aren’t working, and she is in a lot of pain. I really wish I could go and do some thing, nothing is working and she has now had diarrhea, and I mean constant, diarrhea, stomach pain, and you name it for 65 days. I’m trying to look and see what care options? There are for her in the area, but she is also , one of these people who gets upset when she sees me upset. And right now, I’m upset and I’m trying to hide it.

also, I don’t have young children, but I do have younger friends, or people who work for me that are in their early 20s, who just think they know it but they don’t and they don’t have the life experience yet to be able to understand what having an elderly parent who is going through a really tough time is like. One of them said to me just casually. Oh well, I run away from the place where I live, because I am still working and still trying to run my organization, and we are running a project in September. I own my own home, which my mom had also really wanted me to have, and loved, and has not been able to visit because she has been too sick . And these young people think you can just stay in a good mood, and everything will go away. Again, I know they just can’t understand, but I was trying to explain, first of all what, owning a home means, and the big responsibilities, and the bills, and the repairs, and everything else that come with it. and I was just trying to explain what is like taking care of elderly parents, who can be in really bad moods, really upset, in pain, it’s painful to be around and smiling just doesn’t make it better sometimes.

I hear your pain at the effort getting DM ready @MissMarplesNiece. I factor in 30 minutes in advance of a pick up time. She will either be ready 3 hours early and phoning to see where I am or there’ll be panicking and tantrums or she’ll flatly refuse.

That’s infuriating about the cataract op. Please complain.

Going back to the cataract procedure - I was too shocked and annoyed to think of questions to ask them. The hospital concerned were meant to have written to DM's cardiology consultant after a telephone pre-preop she had, and then I had taken DM for a preop where no questions were asked about her heart condition/pacemaker. I was so disappointed for DM. I can only assume - PP mentioned this - that private hospital's make a risk assessment and if it's above a certain level then they won't take the patient on. But, I don't understand why this wasn't done at pre-preop stage instead of us then waiting 3 months and being turned away.

From a purely selfish pov, getting DM ready while quelling her terrible anxiety which leads her to having toddler like tantrums, getting her in the car then out the car at the other end etc requires such a mammoth effort that it's not something I want to do for no good reason.

As pp said, it's a risk assessment. A 60 year old with no health problems would have been accepted, I reckon.

That's exactly what I thought

Thanks everyone - she has full capacity and I have told her how much it upsets me which works for a little while but she's soon back to saying it... I've never minded visiting and helping her before but it is soul destroying at the moment.

@countrygirl99 same. All conversations are steered back to her medical conditions.
@WhatHaveIFound that sounds so hard :(
@MereDintofPandiculation I wish nan was like your dad - bless him. She says she likes the carers but she is the same with them as with me.

@Nodancingshoes my mum is similar. She's not interested in any conversations about what people are doing just talking about how miserable she is and how lonely despite having a much busier social life and seeing far more people that I do now I work from home. And if I do steer it to something nice like DS1 has just come back from holiday it's straight into "woe is me I'll never have another holiday. I had wonderful holidays with your dad. X and I were looking at going on a cruise bit she's just been diagnosed with cancer and is waiting to find out what the treatment is". I've been getting the story about her best friend just being diagnosed for 18 months and her friend had actually been clear for over 10 years at the point it started.
It's hard not to leave any conversation totally depressed.

Nodancingshoes
My mum did something similar when my father died, or a few months after.

She was more mobile back then so I sat her down and said "I understand that's how you feel, but you make me ill talking this way, can you tell someone else or keep it to yourself please".

She took it on board and stopped. Is it worth a try or does your nan lack the cognitive ability for that?

WhathaveIfound hugs for you if wanted.

@Nodancingshoes I totally understand what about your Grandma and what she's saying about being lonely etc. My DM is the same and I know how exhausting and upsetting it is. I'm afraid I have no advice on how to deal with it.

Back again. I'm so sorry for all those who are going through a tough time with parents and grandparents.

We're now on day 30 of dad being in hospital though apparently he is optimised for discharge. The hospital requested 4 daily care visits with 2 people but we have made the decision that he'll need to go into a care home.

Mum did not cope well with the news and there was a full on screaming match between her, my sister & BIL which DH and I witnessed. Thankfully once she'd calmed down we could explain it's best for both of them. I think after all these years she's frightened of being on her own.

Dad had said previously that he didn't want to go into care (though he did have a recent respite stay) and the hospital states he still has mental capacity which we're disputing. Most days he doesn't even recognise who we are any more, he thought his brother was visiting when it was his nephew. He doesn't even he know where he is now and when asked what he wanted to do next he just said - stay here.

He can't walk any more, can't feed himself, can barely communicate and is incontinent. I hate Parkinson's and what it's done to my dad.

@EmmaEmerald
I go in each time forcing a cheery greeting and she just responds with how awful her life is, how lonely she is and how she wishes she was dead. I get it but it's absolutely draining. I'm dealing with a teenager struggling with severe OCD on one hand and then dealing with a very depressed grandmother on the other plus a full time job. It all feels too much but I can't walk away from her - she's done too much for me. When I lost my parents, her and my grandad took over this role. I don't want to resent her but I do and it feels awful.

Risk assessment - so they won't take anyone above a certain level of risk (which is why it seems so daft in this case with the cataract op/pacemaker) but that clears all the straightforward cases out the way reducing the backlog at the NHS hospital.

And not all private hospitals have the same facilities. Bigger ones will be able to provide more care. Some are private wings attached to an NHS hospital. The one I went to was tiny, strictly day surgery only (not staffed overnight) and fairly new.

I suspect it’s a matter of risk and capacity. So easy healthy 40 something has a 1% risk of complication, 80 something with pacemaker has a 10% risk (or whatever) and they go on that basis.

But if you were refusing to operate on the basis of lack of emergency facilities, how would they justify any surgery being performed at private hospitals? Whether paid for privately or by the nhs?

That's awful they left it so late to tell you. I've had surgery as an NHS patient at a private hospital and it was made clear a long time in advance it was day surgery only (so anyone possibly needing an overnight stay had to go to the NHS hospital) and they had no emergency facilities (which essentially means intensive care beds), then they went through it again at the pre-op check and again on the day itself!