Cockroach Cafe - Autumn

Also fire safety. It has been raised by welfare team that house is not safe and MIL is a smoker. But she will not let me get fire safety team in to check alarms which I know have not been checked for easily 3 years and probably more. But she doesn’t want to be bothered by people coming in, and she’s never had a fire yet…

Oh, I love this place!
I too am in the throes of bin wars, and thought I was alone! MIL had left them on the pavement since BIL died so nearly 2 years. Either someone complained or council spotted them but she was asked to move them. She has a drive they can sit in, literally five steps away and carers will pull them to edge of drive on bin day and bring them the 2 steps back when emptied. I have also contacted council and at some point bin support team will kick in.
But this is not good enough, or at least not enough to mean we don’t have to discuss and dissect the whole issue every single day…

@MermaidMummy06 my DB is very much like your DH. Absolutely determined that all efforts should be made to keep DM alive.

You know what? After 2 years of repeatedly getting to the brink then somehow pulling back I dont care anymore. And I dont feel guilty about it.

While you cant (or to be precise your DH doesnt want to) drop the practical rope re DFIL, you can drop the emotional rope.

Re your DParents, decide now how much you are prepared to support them. And do no more than that. Your DB has already done this. You are allowed to do the same.

Welcome, there’s lots of squishy sofas and beverages of choice.

As you read this thread you’ll notice many of us are battle weary too. So we are able to say - what is your FIL’s quality of life? Does he benefit from the antibiotics for infections? Do you have children? Do they resent their father spending time with his father instead of them? What benefit does your DH/FIL get from the amount of time he spends with him?

Sorry, you probably know all of this, especially if you’ve been sacrificing your own choice of career and living location while your DH remains embedded in his family of origin. I hope you find support here for you to draw your own lines on what you are willing to do for both your own DPs and your FIL. It’s ok to say no.

Perhaps in the traditions of all armies our unit of care-duty escapees could have our own special nickname? Napoleon's Guards were Les Grognards (The Grumblers) which might fit.

Or along the traditional lines of the Old Contemptibles we could be the Old Unmentionables?.

DH has just tried to suggest a flaw with my running away plan. He says I have to speak French. I answered with a Gallic shrug ofc....

I'm having tea now and feeling a wee bit calmer. As ever grateful for this place and the chance have a vent and get helpful advice.

Culpa ante indignationem

I wonder what sort of platoon (?) we would all make in the foreign legion. I'm guessing the ailments of middle age and alcohol consumption might make us sub par physically, compared to the intake they usually attract. But oh the wiles and IDGAFs that the enemy would never see coming. Our motto could be "Guilt before resentment". What's that in Latin?

Well I've found this forum and it's a huge relief. I'm exhausted, and tbh, resentful. We've been in the care cycle for years with IL's. MIL passed, after years of care, and demanding to not be left alone for a minute. FIL remarried then fell apart health wise. He's now in a care home. We had to cancel our holiday earlier this year, and race home a few hours after arriving, because he 'wasn't going to make it through the night'. The hospital deployed every measure to save him, and my holiday was spent cooking & cleaning up after his Dsis & family. He did survive & went straight into age care as he was too weak to even walk or hold a spoon, or toilet himself anymore. I'm resentful because SIL & BIL have freedom & exciting, high paying careers & refuse to help. We're stuck here because DH is pressured to stay local to focus on looking after them, on low paying jobs (no good jobs here). His DF could linger on for years and has constant health crises, but DH thinks every breath will be his last, so every Sunday, holiday, birthday, he spends with FIL & drops in during the week, too. There's no family time. We almost had to cancel our second attempt at a holiday as FIL got another infection & the care home ignored it. DH had to push the nurse to get a doctor (had noticed apparently but shrug). Thankfully it was averted. Just.

Even worse, my own DPs are going downhill. Each had parents who lived until 100, and DM can't even manage bank account, and DF has mishandled their money, so it could be 20 years of managing them. DB couldn't care less. I'm just.... tired.

If anyone manages to find a way to get in to witness protection (without the danger of actually witnessing a horrific crime of course) please can you let us all know. We promise it will stay between us.

I have been at a work event for a few hours and come home to 20 missed calls from Mum. I'm not replying until tomorrow because I know she is with Brother and she will be calling so he can shout demands in the background. After many months of trying to persuade them that we should outsource lots of things for Mum (including a day care centre for dementia sufferers that I've suggested and even successfully applied for attendance allowance to pay for) Brother still insists that this absolutely cannot happen. Instead he expects me to be available whenever she needs anything that would be inconvenient for him, including anything needed during working hours, oh or during weekends. I've taken a huge step back. It has not gone down well.

I think my mum's confusion is starting to gently lift.
I think we're at 65% confused, 20% sort of there 15% lucid and in control.
She's asking sensible questions, did I drive or catch the bus? had I been working in the morning?

But, couldn't tell me what she'd had for lunch and wondered if something bleeping was a fire alarm.

I'm also finding that no on is reading back through her notes. They're changing her blood pressure meds... I think they're putting her back on the one the falls clinic took her off?!
FFS!

I'm joining @HoneyButterPopcorn on the Valium. Full blown falling apart here, all day. The very small straws that finally broke me - support worker calling in sick and DM blowing up the electrics again.

I just can't face any more long journeys, advice being ignored, no consistent help coming from anyone except DH. My life feels like it been on hold for years with the needs of DF, DM and DMIL, and I just cannot do this anymore.

I am contacting my GP tmw and hoping for witness protection too. Failing that more Valium. Or perhaps joining the Foreign Legion?

Blimey, I hadn’t realised that was the final straw for your mum. It was always my fear as I knew mine wouldn’t process the sound of the smoke alarm at all. I got a water alarm for when she overfilled the bath and the carer walked into the water pouring through the dining room ceiling (again) and a deafening 100+dB alarm and mum in bed totally oblivious. She could hear the alarm but had no idea that it indicated something needed her urgent attention. It’s actually quite scary to think that the basic thought process of “what the hell is that noise, I’d better go and find out” disappears while one is still physically capable of causing havoc.

@roundaboutthehillsareshining sympathies. Might sound a bit hard, but if she did set a fire is her house detached or would there be neighbours affected? We had an incident with the gas fire and filling the house with gas, so I had it isolated from the supply so she couldn’t do that any more. I thought a gas explosion would impact neighbours a lot more than a fire. Once I fixed that, we lived with the risk as she didn’t cook any more or do anything with a naked flame.

@HoneyButterPopcorn just flgo for the wine and forget the valium. Tastes nicer

The advice you were given on here when you posted under a different name was to move out, I remember.

Oh dear @HoneyButterPopcorn you sound very frazzled.

I like the sound of your doctor. That's very funny.

This was the final straw for mum to go into a care home. Got a call from the carers to say they'd walked in to the kitchen and hallway filled with smoke, a pan in flames and mum looking puzzled wondering what that noise was. It is as 3 smoke detectors.

This is another vent, her demeanour lately is one of suspicion, paranoia and resentfulness against me too. Even though I do so much to help.

Oh my goodness, I need to vent. She was chopping vegetables today for her lunch. Then a while later I found she had trays of chopped onions left in many rooms all around the house - the sitting room, the bathroom, the spare room. It smelled horrible.

I asked her why she had onions all around the house and she said it gets rid of smells. She said she read it in a magazine as a tip or life hack. To put cut onions in rooms.

I didn't recognize any smell until I was hit with onion smells today. Bear in my mind there's no smoker in the house. It doesn't smell of smokers.

She has been engaged in some increased OCD and cleaning over the past week.

I went away for the weekend the weekend before last, just for a few days. I think maybe it was that, that spurred an increased OCD spell from her. Maybe loneliness or boredom or whatever it was.

If I had a diagnosis I would be able to tell people that I am living with someone with a cognitive decline and I would be able to advocate for her better and draw on supports.

My siblings live abroad and they don't understand and they are writing if my concerns in favour of a textbook style of senior senile behaviour.

@roundaboutthehillsareshining Isn't this another example of there being nothing at all you can do to prevent a very predictable and preventable crisis, because an elderly person has mental capacity and is therefore free to make bad decisions. Clearly no one wants to end up in a situation where older people are not allowed to live their own lives but I do think where there is a real safety risk it should be easier to get some sort of intervention. It's not just about the elderly person's safety- what about the fire fighters, neighbours, visitors (which could include carers etc). A friend of mine had a similar situation with an aunt who on several occasions 'forgot' that she had the gas oven/hob on. Social services basically said nothing could be done unless there was a fire or injury. Luckily friend managed to persuade the Aunt that there was a problem with her cooker, had it removed and installed a microwave (and supply of ready meals) 'just for now'. If Aunt had refused there could well have been a dangerous fire.

She wrote soaf. She had dettol soap down on her list and in the same list she had soaf anti bac.

Either way I closed whatever this was. I wasn't going to spend a few hours browsing online for her.

We've had the fire brigade "safe and well" team round many times. They've always been very honest, the house is dangerous. One of them told me never to let my family sleep there at the same time, but to have someone awake in the house at all times on fire watch. But it's ER's own home...

The new smoke alarms are "smart" and apparently alert a call centre as well as the fire brigade automatically. But they're 20 minutes away, ER is in the middle of nowhere and the fire brigade reckon about 15 minutes for the house to be well ablaze, so it is relying on her hearing the alarm and getting out, no messing about.

The risky behaviour isn't about cooking, it's about heating, regardless of how many safe heaters are provided.

I don’t know how it works but DM’s smoke alarm is somehow linked to her Careline alarm. I’m not sure if the signal sets it off, it’s a bit mysterious. She had a fire engine and several firemen there last year when she burned toast and set it off.
I only found out when neighbours told me of course.

@roundaboutthehillsareshining I'd ask the fire brigade too, but also you can get smart smoke alarms that link through the house with more chance of them being heard and can alert you on an app, so depending on circumstances you could get round there/call neighbours/call fire brigade. They tell you which part of the house the smoke is in and also monitor for carbon monoxide. My mum very rarely cooks now and never deep fries but I worry about the amount of extension leads everywhere and their wiring being old etc. But of course she won't let me change anything.

https://www.firstalert.com/pages/sc5-smart-smoke-co-detection