🪳 Cockroach Cafe 🪳 Autumn 2023

Oh god @countrygirl99 that must have been a horrendous few hours but very glad your DH will be ok. Bell Palsy is a nuisance but not at stroke levels of concern!

Oh @countrygirl99 im so sorry. Hope he’s ok.
sending sympathy and gin for those with ornamental/ goldenballs siblings.

After a nightmare week with mum last week DH ended up in A&E this morning with suspected stroke. Thankfully it's Bels Palsy so waiting for a call to collect him. He didn't want me to go, I think he convinced himself it couldn't be serious if I wasn't there.

I'd like to reserve a space for my Goldenballed brother.

Apparently this life long alcoholic is off the booze and working hard. Meeting friends for coffee. And there he was via a video call in a pub with the biggest glass of wine at 4:30 Friday afternoon.

Can't even save a few hundred quid out of his perfectly normal salary.

The pair of them deserve each other.

@Lightuptheroom what an awful and sad situation. But also, and also sadly, that won't be sustainable for long. Something will go wrong and there will be an intervention. It may be a fall, or an infection - whatever. That is your time. Go in big and heavy on how neither of them can manage.

I have 5 siblings.. just this one is especially useless but has a job where he visibly helps other people all the time!

I'm now back home and nursing a large gin

@Lightuptheroom the too far away sounds familiar.. funny I thought phones worked over the whole country. I got a phone call from mum's neighbour at lunchtime. Had to let my boss know I needed to cancel an important meeting. I'll need to finish data for an important report to the FCA over the weekend. Drove an hour to mum's to find out there was not only the crisis the neighbour had called about but another crisis needing immediate attention and several important problems. Messaged golden balls to make a phone call about 1 of the problems and he refused. I spent 5 hours there and cleaned the stinky fridge and shit encrusted loo as well as spending over an hour on the phone and having mum alternating between sobbing she needed to go into a home as she couldn't cope and indignantly rejecting any suggestions of cleaners /gardener /admin help as she manages just fine. Also, when she wants to go into a home, she wants to go into a particular home because it has a bus stop outside but it doesn't take people with dementia and she has alzheimers.

Sometimes I'm very glad to have no siblings.

Can I join you @countrygirl99 my brother (also goldenballs) visited parents today and told my mum (just being assessed for dementia) that he can't get involved because she and my dad are both as bad as each other! Apparently my dad has crashed his car but he can't get involved in that either because he lives too far away...

@StiffyByngsDogBartholomew

Or patio installation !

I think I might be in the dock too. Overseas sister is doing my head in just because I've been working overseas and I asked her to call mum more often!

We could maybe arrange a Mumsnet Jury

Go on, @countrygirl99 . It always makes me feel better to see sibling animosity in other families.
To clarify: tell us more. Not actually advocating goldenballsicide.

I could happiky murder golden balls brother this afternoon. I'm sure I'd get a justifiable homicide verdict.

@MereDintofPandiculation unfortunately, my dad is extremely stubborn. He has decided that he doesn't need any care (basically because he'd have to pay for it) and still expects my mum to do it all. She currently can't remember what she's supposed to be doing when she walks from one room to another. He has a lot of physical needs. We had a care alarm installed as he can have multiple emergencies caused by his catheter, he refuses to use it as he 'knows' they will take him into hospital. My mum can't remember which number to ring when the catheter blocks. Dad is also extremely deaf so has a habit of not talking to anyone on the phone, which then means any communication is filtered through my mum.

A lot of their decisions are based on people supposedly trying to put them in a care home, whereas if they would work with us it can be avoided for quite some time yet. They have carers twice a day fully funded, but won't allow them to do anything other than make a cup of tea.

Their decision making processes are impacting very negatively on the other. Social care got my dad a place at a lovely day centre to try and provide respite from the swearing etc and he refused to go. He truly believes that mum can still do everything he needs and she can't

Up until this week she has been calling him regularly on that number. He moved 16 months ago.

@countrygirl99 the frustration over the phone was so wearing. My DM loved her phone. She wouldn't leave the house without her mobile etc. But in the last year or so she was at home she couldn't cope at all. She would phone me every afternoon to say that her phone wasn't working (she always managed to get hold of me somehow!). So I would drop everything, go to help her and she would have the tv remote in her hand and be trying to use that and complaining that the tv had gone silly as well.

Many thanks @MereDintofPandiculation I'll try and speak to the GP, perhaps they ask social care to assess again. Unfortunately mum is a swearing, spitting bundle of hate at the moment, which makes any support very difficult to give as she decides that everything is my dad's fault. She also has no insight at all into things like not retaining information and no insight into her behaviours. She can be talking to me fairly normally and suddenly become very very verbally aggressive because my dad has refused a book that she bought home for him.

New one from mum this week. I've had 5 phone calls asking for DB1s phone number as she "doesn't have it since he moved". He moved in 2022 and it's his mobile number so hasn't changed. It's in all 3 address books (don't ask!), on a pin board in the kitchen and programmed into her landline and mobile. I've given it to her every time she's called.

@MereDintofPandiculation thank you. Do you know what happens if there's significant behaviour problems too, who would be responsible for looking at those?
The assessor said that mum has refused any further assessment including scans, she said mum was very confused, so my guess is that we get told that she has significant cognitive decline, is that then left for another agency to work with the consequences?