🪳 🪳 🪳 Cockroach Café Late Summer 2024

@Gardencentrevoucher when mum had mice in the kitchen her solution to mouse poo in a mug was to tip it out and carry on making me a cup of tea in it! Couldn't understand why I insisted on checking and cleaning everything and why I chucked out a "perfectly good" toaster just because it contained a lot of mouse poo.

Hi all, this thread is such a lifeline. Although I wish I could offer advice I have no idea what I'm doing. DM is getting more and more confused and her house is falling apart. Yet she is still refusing help except from me. Even when DB calls she tells him everything is fine when actually she's got chest pain that lasts for hours at a time and has stopped cooking for herself now, and is apparently living on sandwiches and cereal this week.

The latest disxovery today is mice in her loft. Her solution was to move downstairs and sleep on the sofa. Not to call pest control or actually do anything about the problem. So I spent an hour today hunting about in her loft insulation for signs of mouse activity and an hour trying to find a pest control that will visit tomorrow in a gap in my meetings on a WFH day, because I can't take any more days off and my boss is already on my case for late work since I was off today to see her. Meanwhile DB is 400 miles away and oblivious. Or he thinks he can be helpful by phoning her, which does nothing to help at all. Ugh.

Sorry for the rant. I am just sick of it today. DM has no idea how it affects me.

I was an avid reader and poster on this thread a few years ago. The companionship on here is a life saver. Those that are going through the same thing, those that give invaluable advice and those managed to make us laugh despite the horrors. My tormentors have been dead a good few years now.

i often thought that I should have cut contact many many years ago. You don’t of course because those demons are only replaced with others. Relatives, friends and officials who have no idea what your life is like.

Some of you have had guilty feeling about a wish they were dead and can only express those feeling to this gang who have wished the same. With relatives living so long it seems never ending. There is nothing wrong with wanting your and their suffering could end.

I am sending huge hugs to you all.

I'm bleeping knackered and I'M RETIRED.

I've been dealing with something immeasurably easier than most posters on here, and already, after a couple of weeks, I view places where you can't get a phone signal in a completely different light, because I've already lost count of the number of times I set out to do something and the phone went in the middle (inevitably somewhere both cold and noisy).

There's a lot to be said for trash fiction!

I think it’s the open ended timeline that is hard to deal with and sucks energy. My situation is currently easier than that of so many here, as my DPs are still doddering on at home and I visit once a week. However, even that is draining after a decade and I look into the future and see more things that need doing, probably several crises to come, and ultimately I’ll have to deal with their house (in a terrible state) which I reckon is a year’s work. And I don’t know when that will be. I know it sounds awful to want to know, effectively, when they will die, but that’s the reality of it and because it’s uncertain, I think after some time it just grinds you down.

(DF had diarrhoea this week because he was constipate and took 3 - THREE - Laxido sachets. I ask you. He’s getting constipated because he’s not moving around as much as he used to and he doesn’t drink enough fluid. I have told him and told him to drink more, but he won’t.)

@SockFluffInTheBath I used to read every day and I feel so thick now, I can't concentrate on a normal novel. I can also relate to putting the career progression on hold. I see so many opportunities I usually would go for and have to be depressingly realistic - do I actually have the time, energy and headspace to do this? The answer is usually no.

@Choconuttolata
I know you're right. Although I was finding it difficult before, I had a tiring but manageable routine (outside of times of crisis which were a sh-t show). Now she's on end of life care, there have been more, new, things to do and learn. I also have no idea how long she'll live for, so don't know if/when to scale back on visits. I've taken your advice and gone out to my hobby this evening, though! I suppose doing it tired and not very well is better than not doing it at all...?

Sorry, not my most constructive response on here. @Choconuttolata is spot on with boundaries, get them in early and they’re easier to maintain.

You have to set boundaries and put those things that you wish to do at the top of the list of importance rather than the needs of the elder you care for. You have to put your own oxygen mask on first otherwise you will burn out. I have just had to take a month off work for just this reason.

In my experience the more you do or jump in and rescue a situation, the less likely they are to recognise that they need or accept external help. You cannot do it all, you are human and have needs and your children need you too.

Oh how we laugh. I’m a walking pair of eye bags. I am 3st heavier than when this started and unable to concentrate on the kinds of books I used to love to read because I’m permanently exhausted. I have given up on further career development because, well, I don’t have it in me. Seriously, if someone finds the magic answer please let me know 😅

The solution I found was to drop my hours at work to 30, so I work 4 days a week now, care for DM on one day and then have a "normal" weekend.

On the one hand I'm resentful that this is the least worst option but still involves taking a hit to my income and future pension prospects. On the other, part of my brain is reminding me that my longer term plans always considered the prospect of going part-time about this age. I think it's more that the choice was forced on me. Oh, and I'm also on medication (HRT and sertraline).

It's working though, last night I actually picked up my crochet and worked on a project I've cast aside for nearly a year.

I'm wondering if anyone has advice on how to have enough energy to do the things you actually like doing?

I'm finding that after work, housework, and caring with the travel involved, plus navigating this end of life stage, I'm left with very little time or energy. I'm not playing with the DCs as I usually would and feel too tired for my hobbies. I wake up tired, spend the day tired, and go to bed tired.

It feels like everything goes into the necessary things with nothing leftover for fun or enjoyment, or seeing to my own needs. I think this needs to change but not sure how to go about it.

@PermanentTemporary and @MysterOfwomanY sorry for your losses

I'm currently acting as BILs PA sorting out short notice visits to care homes this evening. Yes you read it right in the evening. I could write a lot more about BILs input but I will keep it in my head for now.

This is the sad thing, isn't it. You can be very old, unwell and frail, and yet still get some joy out of life.

@MysterOfwomanY , I’m sorry for your loss.

Thanks, PermanentTemporary. She’s physically safe, clean, fed, hydrated - but she has no pleasure left in life and there’s no prospect of any. Someone on here said a while ago that wanting to go home isn’t about wanting to go back to a place, it’s about wanting not to be old and infirm any more- especially if you’re mentally unmoored. I think that’s what’s happening with MIL, but it doesn’t make it less sad and awful. And she’s physically tough as nails - survived Covid and a broken bone in the last year, so she’s going to go on like this for a long time.

DH agrees that we shouldn’t take DD to see her again, so at least that’s settled. I can’t bear that she’s forgotten DD, she longed for a grandchild for so long and was so overjoyed when we told her DD was on the way, and such a devoted grandmother until she started to decline.

@MysterOfwomanY @PermanentTemporary
Sorry to hear of your losses.

I've been away for a short while and just catching up with everything here. Strength and cockroach vibes to all X!

@SockFluffInTheBath thanks. It had got to the stage where it was a relief. Poor man. But the hospital did seem to keep him very comfortable. Quiet room on his own from the start five feet from the nurses' station.

Everything should settle down a bit now, because from this point onwards nothing is time-sensitive in the same way.

@MysterOfwomanY condolences to you both. I hope he was calm and comfortable.

@PermanentTemporary sorry to hear that.
Long story short, himself finally passed away. We got back home at 2am. Props to DH who'd had the foresight to fill the car up yesterday...

Here's the thing: because of our respective family histories, neither of these elderly relatives had ever seen anyone dying, ever organised a funeral or dealt with probate.

We both have and it's definitely odd having to explain things to someone over 20 years older than yourself!

Sorry for your loss @PermanentTemporary. I’m glad it was peaceful.

I had one of those « little griefs » last week. I spent some considerable time on the phone to Barclays for DM. She has hearing loss and she can’t cope with the endless menus and often can’t make out speech if there is an accent, but she does know exactly what she wants to do with her finances and can still very much make her own decisions, so I do lost of the talking and hand the phone to her when she has to express her wishes/ consent. I’m sure it’s all ok to the person listening but I see how nervous and upset she gets, fearful that she can’t hear and wont be able to understand, that she’ll get it « wrong. » She flapped her hands and strained to hear and swore a few times and nearly got up and walked away, but we completed the call. I see the young girl who was humiliated in maths lessons as a shy teenager - as well as the woman who won’t wear hearing aids. And I feel so sorry for her, even though she frustrates the hell out of me.

Thank you all.

@NefretForth that sounds so sad and tough. I agree that it's so hard to relate the elders we knew in their prime with what happens later. I hope she is safe at least.

Sorry to hear about your MIL @PermanentTemporary, it must be difficult navigating sensitively around family at this time whilst trying to support your DH and FIL 💐

My Aunt was also disinhibited like this towards the end too @NefretForth, one of my DD's wanted to visit her with me, but for my Aunt's dignity as well as not impacting on DD's positive memories of my Aunt I didn't let her come. It is so sad, my Aunt wouldn't have wanted to be remembered in that way, if she had still had her faculties about her she would never have chosen to live that way.

Been at my Dad's today to sort out a fraudulent payment from one of his cards. He can't read his statements so had no idea about it coming out, luckily the bank were helpful. So easy to become a victim of this type of fraud when you are unable to keep on top of your banking.

My condolences, @PermanentTemporary , and belated sympathies to @Earlydarkdays too. I'm very familiar with difficult family dynamics, and it isn't easy when you can't simply gather together in grief.

So sorry for your loss @PermanentTemporary and I’m sure your DH understands and he has other support.

I’m sorry, @PermanentTemporary . Sending good wishes to you and your DH.

We visited MIL in her care home yesterday. She’s so unhappy- doesn’t really know where she is but knows she doesn’t want to be there and doesn’t understand why her parents don’t come to take her home. She’s also very disinhibited and doesn’t notice or care that her nightie is up round her waist and keeps kicking the sheets off. She would have been so upset by what she’s come to. I think I won’t take DD to see her again, I want her to remember her grandmother as she was, and it’s not as though MIL knows who she is.

We could have years of this still to come, I just want to howl. DH says if he had the courage he’d kill her himself.

My condolences @PermanentTemporary. I am glad it was peaceful.