🪳 Cockroach Cafe 🪳 Autumn 2023

@StiffyByngsDogBartholomew this is the emergency situation - he now can't look after himself or your mum & he expects you to drop everything & come to his rescue.

Sending hugs. Hope you've been strong & told him no & let ambulance/ social services deal with the situation he's created for himself.

Unfortunately as long as you keep running to the rescue, he'll just continue doing it

I'm not talking to my dad now. I asked him why he was ignoring professional advice & he says if I was going to start, I found just hang up. I said ok, bye & did just that.

I hope after a few days pondering (he knows he needs me) & OT's firm words tomorrow, he finally sees sense

@StiffyByngsDogBartholomew unfortunately we have to stand aside and let them make bad decisions and judgements. Absolutely nothing you can do except let your father get on with it. I think they get into a habit of complaining. It is not your responsibility to fix everything.
I had this with my dad for several years, he complained non stop, was constantly angry, tired & fed up, not how he expected his retirement blah blah but he would tell SW everything ok!!! then call me hysterically, what he wanted was for me to give up my life and do it all. I just walked away in the end, my mum died recently so I am hoping my dad gets some peace in the time he has left.
It is so hard when they try to make it your problem, that is what social services or paid for care are for (which they begrudge when children are free!) maybe take a step back and let the consequences of your dads decisions sink in, his decision, his problem. It sounds harsh but they will suck the life out of you.
My dad went into hospital for 4 weeks last December my mum was having 3 care visits a day and other than her screaming and carrying on (not getting enough attention) the whole world didnt stop and she was just fine. Sometimes we need to let go and trust in the system, what they want (24/7 attention) and what we can give, often worlds apart.

Oh my god these dads, they just WILL NOT admit defeat will they. Stubborn as mules and expect everyone else to make their lives more difficult to fall in with them

He's perfectly capable of removing the shower screen himself & swapping for a more suitable one. He won't spend money on that so cheaper option is cheap short curtain & extendable pole.

He won't remove it & won't let anyone else do it either.

There's no way they'll be able to get a walk in shower fitted as he won't allow means testing for any grants. He's just so stubborn & infuriating

We had to have this conversation with social services so we knew what would happen. In an emergency she will be admitted to hospital as a social patient until a respite place can be found. If necessary they will send an ambulance to pick her up. Social services departments should have emergency placements available so if you are lucky it will only be until appropriate transport is arranged but they are currently under pressure so it could be longer. However the emergency placement could be anywhere in the county.
But you do have to make it clear that no you can't cope and be prepared to tell paramedics that they need to contact social services and not be woolly. As soon as you say you can cope for a couple of days the pressure is off the authorities.
At that stage ILs had a very good social worker who recognised the issues and she told us to be very blunt about how we would need to avoid being saddled (her phrase).
In the end it wasn't needed as when the shit hit the fan we already knew MIL would be going to our preferred care home in a couple of days. If that hadn't been arranged we would have had to go nuclear as he spent his last few weeks in and out of hospital, never home for more than a few days and was already not really capable of coping and falling regularly himself. The last month before he agreed to her going into a home were a nightmare. MILs sister walked out of a meeting with SW and wider family as she thought he was going to hit her when she said he wasn't coping and we were getting daily calls from carers saying they were concerned about his ability to cope or they had had to help him up after a fall. He was angry and lashing out, sometimes physically, at everyone who wouldn't promise that MIL would get 24/7 care at home and some of his barrack room lawyer mates wound him up dreadfully by telling him.he just had to insist and the LA would have to fund it.

I'm glad you are on this morning @countrygirl99 as I know you had a similarly inclined FIL.

But in all seriousness what will happen with her ? Will I be expected to look after her at home, will social service step in and put her in a home ? I'm not sure whether she would be classed as a medical need

If he ends up in hospital he won't have a choice

Oh and he refuses to go to the doctor for his sciatica because he hasn't got time, can't leave her blah blah even though I am there for at least 15 hours a week.
respite care for 3 weeks to recover is not an option either, he resolutely refuses to even countenance it

Well my Dads absolute bloody minded approach to martyring himself for my mum's care has come to a head this morning. He has sciatica and has been complaining for the last week that he was getting a lot of pain in his hip. Still insists on lugging her around and will not, under any circumstances do anything to make life easier.

so now instead of having a day at home to catch up and go to a birthday party I have to go over there because he can't get out of bed, has no food as they were supposed to be coming here for lunch. No doubt he will have got mum out of bed totally unnecessarily 2 hours before the carers come to get her out of bed and will refuse to allow them to out her to bed.

I don't know where we go from here. I work full time, have my own home and family and I am not prepared to sacrifice all of that when he won't even make the slightest of compromises. 4 years we have had of it now. What happens if he has to go into hospital or cant look after her ? She is wheelchair bound and can do nothing for herself apart from use her left hand

Is it partly caused by fear of change/disruption? Even though it looks quite minor swopping a shower screen for a curtain it's something different and means more people in the house doing the work. Mine got to the stage where dealing with anything out of the ordinary like that felt like a step too far?

We had this with mum a few years ago after dad fell and fractured his pelvis. He has osteoporosis and had had a few fractures of various bones. At the time they had a shower over a bath and OT had recommended a walk in shower. Mum was adamant she wasn't giving up the bath and I had a row telling her it would be her pushing dad in a wheel chair if he broke his pelvis again because she was selfish. She didn't speak to me for a month but they did get a walk in shower .

He understands that current shower screen isn't suitable for her needs but he doesn't want to remove or replace it for a suitable one that would allow my mum access to bath / shower.

Fingers crossed OT can talk some sense into him or report as safe guarding

I think re sink washes it's up to your mum what she wants. If she insisted on only doing a sink wash, and was considered to have mental capacity for that decision, then no further action would be taken, though I think it would be considered an unwise decision. But if she would like to be able to shower or bathe, then your dad doing things to prevent that could be a safeguarding issue. Why won't he entertain this? Does he understand why it would help (I have to say I don't)? Tbf to him, are there any other options? Often there's more than one way to achieve the same result.

Hoping someone has some advice as I'm at my wits end with my dad.

My mum had emergency surgery & then had sepsis & nearly died 3 times - abroad with no travel insurance 🙈

After 16 stressful weeks, she's home but needs lots of support & some adjustments to the house.

Occupational therapist (3 different ones) have all recommended removal of the shower screen & a shower curtain to be fitted but my dad won't entertain it. Means my mum can only sink wash & can't wash her hair due to mobility issues.

The OT is coming again to speak firmly with him. Can she refer to social services or is a sink wash considered sufficient ??

All siblings live abroad so other than trying to reason with him over the phone, there's not much else we can do

My DM took her hearing aid out before she went in for her appointment at the diabetic clinic. I strongly suspect it was because she knows her blood sugar is not under control and she thought she would get told off about it. A sort of "if I can't hear it, it's not happening".

@Juneday the absolute classic was the time DH got to their house with just over 30 mi uses before the appointment because there had been an accident ( on the road to the hospital naturally). FIL had booked someone to come and cut his hair and they had only just started!

@countrygirl99 oh dear, logic seems to vanish and I think not wanting to have their children what to do perhaps 🤔. MiL was opposite, she wanted to get to appointments 20 mins early so without the badge I would drop her at the front entrance where she would sit on a bench and wait. One time after queueing for a free space, driving past many blue badge spaces, I met her and she shouted ‘did you break down? I have missed my appointment take me home’.

That was 6 months pre dementia diagnosis but I think anxiety about time was part of it…. This was the appointment where audiologist suggested she ‘download an app’ to show her how to change a battery in her new hearing aid🤣. The same hearing aid she only wore when DH put it in for her on visits that got lost at the nursing home.

FIL got rid of his blue badge when he stopped driving. He didn't think about being taken for hospital appointments. So DH would drop him off at the front of the hospital. Go and park in the multi storey then have to find him after he'd wandered off. Add that to him insisting that as it only took 10 minutes to drive there they didn't need to leave more than 10 minutes before his appointment. No allowance for parking, for walking from the car park to the department or any traffic delays. He used to book the carer to sit with MiL to arrive with the minimum time and to finish as early as he might possibly arrive home assuming they weren't running late. He had a personal budget that covered 8 hours a week for a sitting service and rarely used it so the money was piling up in his account.
Many a time DH had to run from the car park to the appointment to tell them his dad was shuffling his way through the hospital. So many arguments were had But he was bloody stubborn that he couldn't leave MIL with a carer for a second more than absolutely necessary.

@MysterOfwomanY the form filling is so true. I filled in the long and detailed form for MiL disabled parking badge for family to use, it stated ‘do not contact doctors’ so I took all info from discharge letters etc. MiL hadn’t walked since fall and physio didn’t work because of dementia. 4 weeks after I sent the application someone rang me to say she may not get the badge. They told me to get a doctors letter, but I said your instructions make it clear not to bother a doctor! I was so stressed with all that was going on, poor Carers, infections and another fall I started to cry …. I said I don’t have time for this and don’t understand why my mother who can walk but slowly, and has no health issues, had a badge but my mil who can’t walk, has hearing loss, a heart condition and dementia can’t have one. 2 weeks later a badge arrived but MiL was by then too frail for us to easily take her out anywhere. Ironically the places we needed it for most were the hospital and the dentist!

@WhatHaveIFound they do the same at my mum's care home. It's so lovely to see her smile.

@Diamondshmiamond we bought our house from my parents. The loft is still full of their belongings. There are shelves and shelves of DF's books still in place. I can't bring myself to move them. I am not attached to much of DM's stuff - we never had the same tastes - and she was not sentimental about the past. She would however display anything that was given to her by friends. I will be very pleased to dispose of the 3D effect picture of the Last Supper!

Lurking on here. The relatives I have POA for are all coping so far, for which I am v v V grateful.
However we have a friend - a little younger than us in fact - who had a massive disabling stroke last year. Single and no nearby family. So has carers coming in and we're part of "the village" of friends doing XYZ. We're retired.
I learned a lot from reading this board. But it's recently been born in upon me how tricky the catch-22 is of ... having to fill in forms which will benefit you when the reason you need that, is something which has screwed your ability to fill in forms.

She has capacity to decide (just about) but really doesn't have the mental stamina and memory to sort all this paperwork.

The stoic attitude, coupled with sane boundaries, advocated here has been SO helpful. I have said, "No, can't help with that," to some things, and have greeted with equanimity the many occasions when the appointment we were taking her to turned out not to exist. And when we collect her from the appointments which DID exist, and see the shellshocked look on the faces of the people who had to deal with her - we just laughed.

I am, of course, praying for merciful aneurysms all round (after long and healthy lives) for all the people I have POA for... especially as they all live 1-2 hour's drive away. In different directions...

No cockroaches yet, but the home did have some lambs wearing nappies in spring that raised an eyebrow!

Alpaca at my dad's care home the other day. I wonder if they were house trained?

I like that the new manager posts photos of activities on their Facebook page. It means I can keep an eye on dad when I'm working away.

Your dad clearly attended the same course on caring as mine