Cockroach cafe 🪳 Summer 2023 🪳

@funnelfan agree about the over 50s retiring. I've been able to go part time as DH is still full time. Blowed if I'm giving up my job completely, for all the reasons!
I'm not messing about on the golf course as some seem to think we all are.

Your post really resonated today. Its just a very hard thing to see. Sending much love.

@EmmaEmerald your unconscious self protection mechanisms have kicked in and your brain is trying to protect you from the adrenaline overload. I have a very similar physical reaction when I am very stressed too. I hope you can find a way of letting out/working off all the stress. For me it is lots and lots of sleep. What you are feeling is understandable and imho normal for someone in your situation. Take care.

@emmaesmeralda

Put your own oxygen mask on first

Take care x

@EmmaEmerald We understand. Take care of yourself.

Oh @EmmaEmerald please look after yourself

Hi
Was here for a while under a different username a few months back
Looking nice 👌 😊
Mum continues to be difficult
Just had a week away, though, which was lovely

Back with a bang to:

1. Fire doors at the sheltered accommodation aren't working. This is my fault in some way
2. A couple of her neighbours are very noisy - she point blank refuses to complain (except to me). I've pointed out several times that there is nothing I can do
3. She has stopped using her walking stick (hurts her shoulder), refuses a trolley

1. A stack of junk mail which is "important" apparently

Taking her to town tomorrow, which should be fun

Cockroach all x

Oh @EmmaEmerald you poor thing! Your body is telling you ♥
Take care of yourself and let the other people pick up the slack.
At work hence short reply but have a hug from someone who's been there too xx

I'm honestly not sure if I'm having a breakdown of some kind

Having twice turned down respite care, mum announced this morning that she feels unwell and would like to go

I was about to head home on the edge of a breakdown myself. I also feel sick but that's probably psychological.

I became completely hysterical - mostly because, if she couldn't have spared me the last few years of dealing with her, she could have at least spared me the last few weeks.

I have left her with a friend in charge and my sister is en route. My sister barely uses a phone, has no idea where her PoA papers even are and no emergency skills.

But I feel so unwell, if I thought a paramedic could give me a valium injection, I'd call them. I'm home now.

Sorry if this isn't the right place to put this.

@MissMarplesNiece , it's so hard isn't it. I used to then get phone calls from tgeir friends telling me what I had to do. Funnily enough they have backed right off and are limiting contact with them which is so sad but understandable

@BestIsWest it’s clear to me that one of the key factors of the Great Resignation/early retirement for people in their 50s is people with caring responsibilities who have either already paid off their mortgage or are at least in a position where a partner is still working. And for whom it’s just too hard to keep working and also fulfill a caring role. Jobs/employers such as ours are like hens teeth.

Even so, there are days when I’d happily pack it all in and give up all luxuries just to have some time back. However, I know long term it’s much better for my mental health (and pension!) to keep working, so I soldier on.

@InternallyScreaming my mum does this too - if I don’t pick up, she then rings my kids repeatedly at 5am/when in school lessons/Uni lectures. Drives us crazy.

I'm so glad this thread is here - yes because of the scones and raspberries which are always welcome - but also because its so good to have a group of people who understand how difficult it all is.

I'm bracing myself for the anguished, sobbing phone calls this afternoon. I told DM I'd go see her today but I've had some kind of bug since Friday and last night with a temp of 38.6 and not being able to stand or walk, I called 111. I want to stay home & sip ginger tea. I know that I'll get the calls - like you @Nodancingshoesmy DM tells me she only wants me and she puts an awful lot of pressure on me. I find it so difficult.

@InternallyScreaming if I turn my phone off to get a bit of respite other family members get her calls catastrophising what could have happened to me, am I in hospital, have I had a car crash & am lying dead somewhere. It's so wearing.

@MereDintofPandiculation Many thanks for new thread. I’ve brought ginger nuts.

@funnelfan an understanding boss and good working culture makes so much difference. I honest don’t know how I’d have coped without that the last 5 years. My boss was caring for his 99 year old mum at home so he totally got it ( he was amazing, I don’t know how he did it tbh).

My mum died of breast cancer around 18 months ago so she shielded me from most of it, but since she died he's got so much worse.

I here you ladies.

Mine too.

Electrical design engineer. All gone.

Dementia exacerbated by the pandemic and then killed by covid.

thanks

Thank you @funnelfan but then they ring the house phone , my husband and children and their partners, repeatedly, literally
It's fucking relentless

Mother phoned at 3.30am to demand new slippers. Not a please, thank or sorry passed her lips.

It's the never-ending-ness of it that I find draining. For the past 3 years we've been hoping that 'the next phase' of care woud ease the load on family, but each stage - from cleaning support, meals on wheels, carers, befirenders, through 24 live in care - each stage just seems to bring a different set of challenges, and different ways in which PILs continued to call on us for support. Now, even though PILs are both in an excellent nursing home, there are multiple phone calls and issues to resolve (FIL wandering in the night and waking MIL up). Our family what's app has never been busier!

On top of that their house has been sold so there is all the business of clearing the house.

Maybe next month will be quieter...

@InternallyScreaming can you put your phone on silent and/or mute conversations from key people? I found doing that reduced my stress enormously as my phone wasn’t pinging every few minutes, and I could then wait until I felt up to it before reading messages or listening to voice mails.

I’m at my mums today, third appointment in a series to get a new set of false teeth. Heaven knows what happened to her old ones that she lost. I presume scrunched up in a tissue and binned. On the one hand she always says how grateful she is for everything I do. On the other, she’s quite blasé about me rearranging my work to come up during the week with my laptop (I stay overnight) and I got greeted with “I’m not sure I can be bothered to go to the dentist today’. Aaaargh.

i got a new WFH job earlier in the year and I really landed on my feet with an exceptionally understanding boss and a department culture that isn’t rigidly orientated around 9-5. I’ve no idea how I’d manage if I was in a job that was fixed hours and me being physically present. I’d have had to go part time or even resign.

Sending hugs to you all.
I'm scared to turn my phone on as yesterday everything was so awful
I don't want to hear the sarcasm and negative comments today.

Morning all. Thank you for our new thread and how nice to 'see' everyone.

My personal breakthrough is recognising that mum's irritability and occasional angry outbursts are borne out of fear. She has, I think, started to recognise her own mental decline and the strategies she's previously used are not always failsafe.

My siblings, who see her less than I do, and her carers for whom she is always on her best behaviour, are seeing and acknowledging it too now. I am finding this helpful, as I was beginning to feel that it might be me that was the one getting confused. It felt like I was shouting into the wind, trying to get those around me to listen.

I doubt very much she'll acknowledge it, but it's helping me realise that these days she really can't help it. As yet there's no chance that she would allow us to help her get diagnosed, but in this moment (aware always subject to change) I'm feeling more able to work with her and feel slightly less ruffled by it all.

Grateful as always to have this thread!