Dreading the phone ringing

I did have mine on Do Not Disturb overnight, but then Dad's nursing home had to call an ambulance for him in the middle of the night and the paramedics called me on their phone rather than the home one (which I have listed to break through DND) and I missed the call. But I have muted texts, Mum is the only person who sends me them, the rest are 2FAs and so on, everyone else uses whatsapp and messenger. But I still check the texts a couple of times a day and reply and then if I'm not careful I get sucked in. I have missed important calls during the day through having DND on too, so mute texts works better for me. But she calls quite a lot too.

In my case it is because she is completely floundering without Dad who used to do all their admin, but the anxiety is off the scale and always has been, it blighted my entire childhood and adolescence and she has never sought help or acknowledged it's an issue, she just copes by dumping on other people and was content to let Dad do all the paperwork and house maintenance etc and not make any effort to learn (realised recently that she only had a vague idea that a credit card is different to a debit card). So I am less sympathetic than I could be,

To add, it means that I can group the things she wants me to deal with/sort out into a time when I choose to do it, rather than loads of small things coming up and disturbing everything else I need to do.

Mine was driving me up the wall with the calls and messages but I’ve started using Do Not Disturb on my phone to cover my working day and commute which has been a massive improvement! I’ve set it up so that my DH and my children’s school phone numbers will still ring through.

The time there was a crisis I didn’t see the calls until about eight hours later which wasn’t a problem as the hospital
staff dealt with the immediate stuff.

My mum was determined to try to text me but her failing eyesight meant that she could no longer really do it - and she kept sending them to the landline number rather than my mobile which meant it cost us money each time for an automated voice from BT to try (and usually fail) to read out the gobbledygook that she had sent.

I can fully sympathise - I was exactly the same. Mum died in June and it's only in the last week I realised that I no longer need to take my phone upstairs when I retire for the night.

Very hard. Probably lonely. Its tiring though as you say.

It's very stressful. Was she reliant on a partner to do these things who is now deceased?
She might be really lonely if she lives on her own. Do you think she is making excuses to have conversations, does she have any friends or might she developing signs of cognitive decline?
Potential solutions really depend on the reasons behind her behaviour. If she is becoming forgetful she might be very scared of what is happening to her.

I hear you. My mother can no longer make phone calls but I dread the care home calling. Every time I see her she talks about her death and cries, I dread the call telling me she has. Though it’d be a blessing in some ways.

Oh yes I know that feeling it’s horrible, for me it was the worst thing about caring for my parents. Every night I went to bed it was my last thought, would the phone ring, what time would it be, such an awful way to live.
If your mum is constantly ringing it might be time for a care home instead there’s obviously things she’s not coping with. When my mum went in a care home she used to ask the carers to ring me, until I told them not to ring during the night unless she was very ill, she had dementia by then and there was nothing I could say or do to help. She had dementia by then. It was such a relief after 40 years of caring.

I've changed the ringtone for DM so when I hear the Imperial march I know it's her. It just takes the edge off.

It's texts for me, I've had to mute her, she just dumps every passing thought on me and gets highly anxious about the most trivial matters all day every day. And this is at early stages for us, she's still at home, no carers, no dementia diagnosis, just not coping emotionally but everything i do to try and help is wrong.

My DM stopped answering when my GM rang. Listened to the message and ignored the vast majority of them. It only resolved when she went into care, and a crisis had to be forced to enable that.
The wants of those at the end of life don’t trump those of others in the prime of theirs.

Yup I know this feeling so well. I used to change my ringtone every month to try and reduce the automatic stress response a bit.
Its a lot better now they are in a care home, but it’s so awful when DM phones because I can’t understand her over the phone anymore due to dementia related speech loss, I don’t answer it because there’s nothing I can do. We visit ( DH and I no siblings)2-3 times a week so I figure if it’s something important we’ll find out then.