🪳 🪳 🪳 Cockroach Café Late Summer 2024

Sorry for you loss @Earlydarkdays

So sorry for your loss@Earlydarkdays 🌺🌺

@Earlydarkdays
Sorry for your loss. I'm glad the end was peaceful and comfortable.

Sorry for your loss @Earlydarkdays, glad it was peaceful remember to also take some time for yourself as well as supporting your DM. After the funeral can be particularly hard once you stop all the doing that comes with organising everything. Sending you strength at this difficult time 💐

@Earlydarkdays your poor DM. That's no age.
Glad your DF could slip away relatively peacefully.

@Earlydarkdays

I’m so sorry @Earlydarkdays I’m glad your DF was comfortable at the end after such a difficult few weeks. Wishing you strength and peace.

My condolences to you and your DM, Earlydarkdays.

Really sorry to read this @Earlydarkdays but I am glad that it was a peaceful passing. Wishing you peace and love in the coming days

DF died yesterday after a long week of palliative care. He was entirely with us throughout until Monday night when he went to sleep and didn’t really wake up again before he died. It has been a very long, drawn out month of ups and downs in hospital but he was comfortable and peaceful. Now to support DM who has been suddenly widowed at 72.

@Morenicecardigans that sounds like a great plan and brilliant that your MIL is on board. Please feel free to share what I’m about to type with your BIL for some food for thought about the future.
Our parents were told Dad required nursing home care almost 2 years ago. Not a care home full nursing care. My sister and I sat with them and were just stuck as our mother refused to see the reality. Dad was in hospital when this happened. Rather than listen to the advice of Dads consultant or the medical team she roped in the golden child - our brother and they set about buying a hospital bed and stair lift. Eventually the medical team invoked a DoLs - deprivation of liberty on Dad so it was taken out of our hands and he was admitted to a nursing home. Eventually with carers it sounds like it would be a struggle for your ILs. My advice is that you clearly know what path to take and now is the time to do it before everything unravels as it did for us. There comes a point where family are simply not qualified to be there.

We are going to visit some local sheltered housing for MIL which is next door to a care home that has space for FIL. MIL was so enthusiastic about yesterday that DH had to stop her going off to pack her bags.

Sounds perfect except BIL doesnt agree and he thinks FIL just needs to wear incontinence pants at night and he can happily go back home to MIL. As if that was all that it needs never mind the not eating not taking medication, not washing, wearing dirty clothes, shouting at MIL daily and the general chaos of having someone with dementia living with you.

Pretty much all day down there today as herself wanted a second eye on some paperwork.
DH volunteered to come with me and I accepted gratefully - somehow it's easier with him there, even though I can do it all on my own. I suspect, because on some level, deep down, it reassures me there's someone to look after me!
It's a lonely place to be the one looking out for people with nobody looking out for you. And I know quite a few posters on here are in that unenviable position 💐

@EmotionalBlackmail am going to do just that. Sick to the back teeth of it all. She's more agitated about not being able to get her emails than the fact her daughter had a 💔

She was deemed by hospital Assessment Nurse to have capacity last week bizarrely. I am the only Attorney on Finance, my partner is also an Attorney on Health.

Capacity? Yeah right. Convinced hospital was trying to kill her. GP visited her last Friday. Got her to fill in one of those medical Respect forms. Has specified that she never wishes to be treated in hospital again but wants to be resuscitated as often as needs be! Refused to believe this is best done in hospital rather than your own front room 🙄

You wouldn't be back at work yet after a heart attack! I recently supported someone relatively young and fit back into work after one and that was a 12 week process of gradually increasing hours, providing support and making sure they're not stressed! At four weeks they were beginning to consider when to start the return to work.

I'd tell the lot of them you're unable to provide any assistance for at least another two months, then ignore. It's up to the neighbours if they support or not, point out to them that you can't help and it's up to them if they do. And you're not taking any more calls about her whilst you recuperate.

"I am recuperating from a very recent heart attack and she has been deemed to have capacity.
She is refusing help as you know.
If a fresh capacity assessment deems her to lack capacity then it is a different situation."

The thing is, even if the finance LPoA says you can act straight away (check) -- it's not a huge amount of help, if she is refusing care & has capacity!

If she doesn't have capacity ... then you can use the health PoA to arrange care, the finance LPA to pay for it, and do most of that via WhatsApp, pointing out you are under strict medical orders.

I take it you're the only attorney, there's no-one else?

@anagram32 firstly and you already know this - hard as it is you have to put your own oxygen mask on first. As @SockFluffInTheBath and @countrygirl99 advised. Keep it short but polite but make sure it’s a firm no.

What Sock said. Constant "Sorry, no can do. Too sick myself". On repeat. I'd be tempted to block anyone who tried to guilt trip me too.

Hi @anagram32 i hope you’re recovering physically. In your shoes I would email what you’ve written above to her sw/assessor and say you are not getting involved anymore as you have to prioritise your own health. Stop answering your phone/ listening to messages. I would imagine ss react faster to a pissed off neighbour than a tired relative.

Hello all - joining here to hopefully keep my sanity. Some of you were really supportive to me on another post about my elderly mother (94, end stage heart failure, been spiteful, vindictive and unreasonable all my life) whose behaviour was making me ill. As I posted on my latest update there, I had a heart attack on 1st October. I had been going NC for 3 weeks with her prior to that happening

The night I was discharged from hospital, she was rushed in to hospital with breathlessness. (She lives 150 miles away and I am her only child)..She was kept in for 3 weeks which was bliss and gave me some much needed peace to focus on my recovery. I insisted to the hospital that it would be unsafe to discharge her without a care package because she lives alone and I cannot look after her. But they assessed her, deemed her to have capacity. She refused all care and was discharged home last week with a massive oxygen unit.

Since then it has been a horror story. She fell in the bathroom the first night home. Neighbours piled in and took ages to get her upright as she was behind the bathroom door. Worried neighbour arranged for emergency care from a charity for a week. Mum gets them to make her a slice of toast in the morning and tells them not to come back later. Refuses to pay all future care even though she can well afford it. Has locked herself out of both her emails and online banking 5 times now as keeps putting in wrong password/details so has no access to money as now permanent block. We have a Financial and Health PoA for her but cannot activitate as she is deemed to have capacity. Tells me she can manage, not to interfere.

Here I am four weeks after a heart attack getting 7 phone calls yesterday from a) worried and increasingly irritated neighbours telling me I need to arrange care because she keeps ringing them and asking for help/errands b) worried charity provided temp free care, c) worried carer and d) social services assessor who found her stubborn and uncooperative. Do I just leave her unable to pay bills or communicate with the outside world? (She is profoundly deaf and relies heavily on email). I want to have the peace to be able to focus on my health and recovery instead of confused, sobbing messages or accusations.that I am 'emotionally blackmailing' her for telling her I will not put up with all this stress after a heart attack. She's just vile. Anyone else had a similar experience? She clearly does not have 'capacity' but GP seems reluctant to do anything.

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@Morenicecardigans at least we're old enough that "needing my own bed, for my back" will always hold a grain of truth! When it's also an important thing to get back home to unwind and de-stress a little.

So many familiar stories. DH is going to visit MIL tomorrow (just a 400 mile round trip) He doesn't want to stay over particularly as MIL is miserable and just sits on the sofa in silence with the curtains closed. FILs respite stay is due to finish at the weekend and MIL is in no fit state to have him home again. We have no idea what to do next and BIL has helpfully gone silent.

DH took early retirement from a very stressful job it makes me sad to see him looking just as stressed all over again.We have vowed to never put our kids through such an awful time.

Having cancelled our trip, we were looking forward to our regular weekly activities tomorrow, but I've been asked to help check through paperwork etc and will need to come early to do that & hospital visit.
Briefly thought if I went down today for paperwork then I could still fit things in but was told it was too much driving. Fair point.

Thank you. Yes, it’s sad and exasperating in equal measure. I’m sure you’re keeping your boundaries clear and that’s so important.