Cockroach cafe 🪳 Summer 2023 🪳

It must be the local health authority and/or general Northern friendliness and/or my mum looking very frail and wobbly but whenever I take her somewhere we inevitably get all sorts of folk helping, even with me standing right there. Last week the dental nurse offered mum her arm and was walking her through the surgery and both the nurse and the dentist were helping mum on and off the chair. (Back up and bum first mum, don’t try and climb on it!) We get receptionists and clinicians helping her at hospital appointments and I’ve even known porters stop in the corridor and offer their assistance.

One of those situations where I’m sorry the experience isn’t replicated everywhere, we’ve rarely had trouble finding someone to help.

I totally understand that

my sister visited this week and specifically told her that I was fine to do banking and medical appointments. I wonder if it's a case of mum deciding she thinks she knows what's best for me but more likely she wants to prove a point. A scheduled hospital appointment where I can make myself useful is much easier than the "can you just..." requests.

MIL is in the Midlands and the care home charge for a hospital escort at £10 an hour. She has patient transport door to door and one of the staff goes with her.

I will sit on the bad DIL's bench because I have declined to take her. I didn't mind with mum because she still liked me even when she didn't know who I was. I've had six years of running the hospital taxi for MIL (two hospitals, four complaints) with zero parking when you get there and no thanks. Yes, she has a blue badge except one of her family has that, fifty miles away. I couldn't face starting the hospital runs again with MIL especially now that her mobility is so poor so I said no. At the time I felt guilty but ever since then I've felt nothing but relief.

Re hospitals, there's never anyone around to help? I remember mum pushing dad in a wheelchair herself about 10 years ago, because she assumed there'd be a porter and there was no such person for an outpatients appointment.

I didn't have any offers when I had a major injury, was just told to bring someone with me.

She has capacity, I'll find out if they plan to send someone with her but the home would surely have a hefty fee.

Unless, as I've not been in contact yesterday, Social Services have offered to send a companion?

If she's in respite care, I'd be surprised if she went totally unaccompanied (or if she was allowed to do so).

@EmmaEmerald , does she have capacity to make this decision? It may not be a sensible decision but if she has capacity, she is allowed to make poor decisions!

Let her go on her own if she says that’s what she wants. If she’s at a hospital there will be plenty of people about who can help her if she struggles. She might have to wait until a porter can be found but she’ll be fine.

she’s in respite care isn’t she? Do they offer to escort residents to appointments?

These scammers have somehow got to someone I know this week - she's a young professional with a legal background. It's shocking.

You guys will know how parents get the wrong end of the stick on what help is fine and what isn't...

Mum has emailed to say I shouldn't take her to her hospital appointment this week.

I wouldn't interfere with her privacy, of course I understand if she wants to see them alone. I always say that but she normally wants me to sit in. My main concern is her navigating taxi and hospital with walking frame - keeping in mind she has a wrist fracture - but I suspect she wants to prove she can do it alone.

What do you all think? I'm seeing her tomorrow.

Barstards

We had elderly neighbours taken in by roofer scammers. They wanted to do some work for us too and we flatly refused but they tried again, then they tried when I was on my own (presumably thinking a woman on her own was a soft touch!). We tried to warn the neighbours but they were reluctant to admit they'd been taken in by them. Then they recommended them to more elderly neighbours - three sets had work done in the end! All 'recommended' by people who had no clue what was going on.

We also let the children of the neighbours know, where we had contact details for them as they lived a long way away. But the neighbours were also reluctant to admit they'd made a mistake.

I did phone the local trading standards but I'm not sure if they did anything.

Those roofers must have made £1000s!

My mother paid a fortune for crap lock replacement too.

My brother fell victim to a cold-calling scam promising him 50% returns on wine investment. He eventually told my mother when the scammers got threatening (don't know how much money they'd taken but I suspect it was probably all the money he got from our grandmothers will). My mum then paid the scammers off!

I'm trying to work towards my bro getting a PoA as well as my mother doing the same but it's taken years of persuasion, explanations and nagging and we're still not there yet.

In the meantime Ive suggested that they ask me if anyone tries to sell them something over the phone again.

DF and DM were massively taken advantage of by a locksmith not long before DF died. He charged not much short of £300 for changing a broken lock and used the wrong size barrel. DH noticed it wasn’t fitting correctly after DF died and changed it himself at the cost of a fiver. Of course DM couldn’t remember who did it and couldn’t remember why they hadn’t just phoned us when it broke.

@funnelfan DB took away her cheque book in January when she got in a mess and there were a load of missing cheques. But she got hold of another one and told him she was going to tell the police he had stolen it. DB is going to see if he can get all the remaining cheques she has stopped.

Horrified to hear about the scams and financial worries. My mum got ripped off a couple of times in her last few months before her stroke. It's despicable. One was the 'friendly' local garage that she trusted. My sister had a satisfying moment on the phone cancelling something Mum'd been charged £2k for - instant capitulation, they knew we probably had a case against them.

im sorry @countrygirl99 , it’s such a large amount of money - everything to me now is how many weeks of carers visits it could pay for. Is your mum still in denial about it? I would be tempted to hide her cheque book so similar future payments are referred to you or your DB to action. I’ve hidden my mums bank cards for similar reasons, although thankfully she relinquished her banking to me a while back due to her failing eyesight. It’s one job I don’t mind at all.

@Juneday sheen npnanind nnmy cheque so that goes through automated processes. If she'd paid by bank transfer it would be more likely to flag but it was in 2 payments. Possibly to reduce the likelihood of it being spotted.

@countrygirl99 it is difficult, I hope you are able to find out a little more. MiL started struggling to understand her bank statements over a year ago and one day we found she had gone back to bed feeling ill and anxious because she misread her statement. Where it said something about her permission to go overdrawn (which she never did) she thought the statement was saying she was thousands overdrawn! Then she transferred nearly all her savings, which are quite low but nevertheless a strange thing to do, telling the bank it was to pay for a chair she had already paid for. Luckily she was happy to relinquish the account ! She was asking the Carers to turn the heating right down in January and February too because all the news stories were scaring her. We would turn it up when she wasn’t looking. She understood the small amounts but got confused over the larger ones. I hope the bank set up some alerts for your mothers account if they can. I am surprised they didn’t question unusual spending. 🙁

Not surprised you are resentful. It's not right at all.

the song is by Princess, called After the Love Has Gone.

i had my phone off for about 7 hours yesterday. It was amazing!

Sunshine I understand, mum's positive outlook means she doesn't like to plan for things. To be fair, dad was a bit like that. He was amazed when I brought a bag of practical stuff on his last emergency admission. When I told I had a grab bag for that sort of thing, he appreciated it, but mum just mutters "you worry too much".

Internally you have nothing to be ashamed of.

@SunshineGlamourIfOnly your post really resonates with me, everything has to be done immediately/that day and I'm expected to drop all my plans, then when I go round it's not urgent at all
I'm becoming resentful and I'm ashamed at that
They don't want outside help as 'they are not at that stage yet'
I've told them I can't do it anymore several times, they nod then it all starts again

My brother phoned mum to find out what she had paid for when he saw the cheques go through and she told him it was none of his business so we've no idea. He's going to see if he can find out via the bank. When I went up Wednesday evening ahead told me she had trimmed the hedge and shrubs but she told my other brother she'd had someone in to do it when he went Friday. I tried to find out who she'd had do the work but she said she couldn't remember. She had someone trim the short hedge and shrubs last autumn and it was £250 so the only extra was removing a small bit of grass and putting down gravel. They haven't even put a membrane underneath so it's going to be full of weeds really quickly.
The really frustrating thing is I offered to do the grass and gravel bit last summer because I was so fed up of her telling me she was thinking about it several times every conversation but she said she wasn't sure she wanted it done.
Mum thinks she manages her finances with no help from anyone but DB organised direct debits for utilities as they used to pay bills at the PO, he pays her paper bill by monthly bank transfer because she got in a complete mess with it ladt year and she doesn't realise she pays for her daily care visit despite telling me she checks her bank statements every month.

@countrygirl it is sad and shocking to hear about the scam price for the gardening. Do you know who the gardeners were? If you can’t claim some money back can you at least name and shame on local groups, neighbourhood watch, WhatsApp groups, ‘next door neighbour’. Even at SW London prices that amount would get a lot of gardening! Whether your mother understands it or not, this sounds like dreadful people taking advantage. Someone claiming to be a roofer tried to charge similar for a friends DF - luckily he mentioned it when she was visiting and she can cellar the work and got someone she knew to fix the small issue for £100 not the thousands he thought he had to pay. Usually if payment is via the bank the banks will ask questions, I assume it was a cheque and too late to stop it. 🙁

thanks all for the responses about mums blood sugar test. It’s not just the transport aspect, mum needs someone with her to advocate and “translate” if she’s having a bad day cognitively, when she just can’t process what’s going on. I do have POA, but as she’s still deemed to have capacity (such a low bar!) I’ve got limited influence as it won’t kick in until her capacity is gone. Having said that, her GP is lovely and very pragmatic and willing to talk to me as next of kin so I probably could have a discussion about it with her if I really wanted.

no one has said anything here that’s made me change my mind though. @TheShellBeach was pretty much on the same lines as my thoughts. As far as I know, her blood sugar has only ever got as high as “bit higher than normal, we’d better keep an eye on that” levels, and were still in normal range when she was in hospital over New Year. So I’m going to keep ignoring the invitations for now.

I appreciate that there’s probably a bit of a NHS culture of doing everything you can based on some patients expectations, doctor training and avoidance of being accused of mistakes/negligence. I do think in general it can lead to an over medicalisation of old age. Maybe I have an idealistic view of being allowed to just quietly fade away and not get propped up for a last couple of difficult years. And maybe I’d have a different opinion if mum had an underlying condition that needed to be treated, but on her last hospital stay she had a full work up and her heart, blood pressure, lungs, kidneys etc are all fine for a woman of her age so technically she’s in good health.

@Hellokittymania , in the UK you can get pull-up incontinence knickers for adults; Tena Lady is prob the best known brand. Apparently they are reasonably comfy and discreet! Might something like that be useful?

Hi, thank you for the birthday wishes, I have just arranged to go to an accessible hotel in Crete, for anyone who does need to know this information there is a hotel that is disability friendly, called the Eria resort, and it only has 13 rooms, but it has lots of facilities and two restaurants and is quiet. I won’t have to share the pool with loads of children…

my mom is having tests done, they are not happy with her thyroid, but we don’t know much else yet. Does anyone have any ideas for what to do when a parent doesn’t like wearing diapers, is there anything else that would be comfortable to wear that she could just dispose? Also, she is housebound and doesn’t even really do her gardening anymore, partly because of her constant diarrhea. I don’t know if there’s a way to set up a little garden in the house, so she wouldn’t have to go outside. She lives in Florida, so it is very hard. She also loves painting, which she has been doing a lot of lately.

Mum has been scammed. She had had some work done in the garden value £1200 at a generous tops. She's paid over £4000! We knew nothing until after the event and she'd already paid. She can't see that she's been overcharged. This is the woman who thinks £40 is extortionate for an outfit for her grandson's wedding and £2.50 for a 2 portion chicken ready meal is a rip off. But £4000 to trim a hedge and a couple of shrubs and dig up a fiesta sized patch of grass is fine.