I dream that they will die and I feel bad

@Alunayou are so right x

But it would ease things with his parents too. Because it’s not actually safe to have someone with dementia and someone disabled together. Believe me, I know how that can go wrong.

My DM messed with the stats on that one. 13 years of dementia it took, before the body finally followed the brain.

I’ve said this to my dh, I’ve begged him to step back a bit. But he refuses. Sil visits once a week then maybe one more quick visit on a weekend. When I’ve suggested she takes on more I’m stiffly reminded that she works full time and has a family , we do too ffs.

its coming to a head in our relationship now and I’m quite sure if I give dh an ultimatum then he’d rather leave us than let his parents be forced into making decisions that would ease things for their dc.

Afaik 'stage one' dementia is symptomless though they can pick up slight changes on brain scans. There may be a couple of years of increased 'faffiness' (in my mother this seemed^^ to centre on bags and handbags) or an inability to deal with very complex paperwork, finances etc, or vocabulary might become less sophisticated (though all those things could describe me in the menopause, to be honest).

Exactly. Dementia is a very long drawn out illness. My father was diagnosed 10 years ago and they say it’s usually been coming on 15 years or so before diagnosis.

One of my aunts was in a dementia home for 10 years at the cost of approx £900k.

They might not be so keen on keeping him at home if DH didn’t fill in the gaps.

If MIL & SIL want to keep him at home, that’s fine, they do the care themselves or pay for it.

My father is late stage Alzheimer’s, he lives with us but has 24/7 care.

Not every person with dementia has those behaviours!

MIL died in her nursing home with vascular dementia and Alzheimers.
She was cared for at home until the usual continual fall-hospital-home-fall cycle... her carers said that she would need a nursing home. The carers did such a good job for her, she was ready to "go" when she moved into the home. DNR and no extraordinary measures were requested, she passed away of an infection within the year. The doctor was called by the nursing home, he rang dh to ask if she should be given antibiotics, with a bit of a "hmmmm maybe we should just let her go" tone, so we were able to just let her go, and be there to say goodbye.

The median with dementia is 2.5 years (Bruck et al, 2025).

Yep, know that feeling

We are living the same hell atm. FIL in the later stages of Alzheimer’s and a whole host of other serious medical problems. Carers in four times a day, nurse once. Mil has really awful painful mobility issues too. But mil and Sil seem intent on keeping him home. So that’s meant dh having to work full time then go and fill in the gaps in care, fetching meds, shopping etc. I hardly see him weekdays. Weekends he’s running errands for them.

fIL is just a shell of the great man he was. He would never of wanted to be like this. Pil didn’t have any care duties for their parents fortunately so I don’t think they understand the pressure it’s putting on their dc. The stress it’s putting on our relationship and the time it’s taking away from our dc and grandchildren.

five years and counting. Five years of no real holidays and certainly not abroad, just two or three day breaks that end up being stressful due to phone calls. And once fIL does succumb my poor mil will be next needing care as she can hardly walk now. I don’t see an end in sight. At the moment fIL is being subjected to a horrendous daily procedure that is making him distressed. I often wish he’d pass it’s just awful to see him suffer like this. There have been many many times where they could have let him just slip away but instead they insist on invasive treatment and are intent on keeping him alive.

I hear you op. I understand x

This is why there should be a pill to check out . What’s the point of indefinite suffering.

Over a decade is highly unusual. Average care home stay is well below two years.

Thanks.I've since found out that a living will holds no legal weight in N Ireland and that doctors can override it as they see fit, i.e. it's pointless. 😡

You can do a living will in which you can refuse certain kinds of medical treatment from resus to antibiotics, DNR, RESPECT form.

Is there anything you can do earlier in life to demand that you don't receive life-prolonging treatments when you're very old and your body and brain are utterly f*ed ? And I mean demand, not 'request'. I have heard of living wills and letters of wishes, and I've also heard of arrogant doctors overriding those and browbeating relatives. To me, it's a human rights abuse. No civilised country would permit forced marriage or forced birth, and yet we deny old frail people this basic autonomy.

My MIL is in a similar situation. She would not want to be alive. We all feel terrible for her. She had a stroke with expected good recovery and we agreed to a PEG feeding tube. She had another, bigger stroka few weeks later. She would be gone long ago.had we not done that.

OP don’t put off your holiday. Things aren’t going to improve so go when it suits you

Book the holiday. Give them a hug and a kiss and say goodbye before you go, and if one of them dies while you were gone then it was her time. Waiting for them both to die before you can go on holiday is madness.

This is how I feel. Completely understand. My other fear is that my husband will die before her and we will never have spent time together again. She never had to worry about her mum in the same way and I am bitter that she has put me in this position.

I think people who haven’t seen this have no idea how horrific it is.

When posters say “a death from infection might be painful”. At least it will be relatively quick.

I guess they’ve never seen someone bedbound with dementia for 3-4 years and dying very very slowly… until they can’t breathe or swallow… that’s what happened to my aunt.

Equally my grandmother had a very long out painful death from cancer.. meds were withdrawn, still she didn’t die, eventually the doctors withdrew nutrition and she essentially starved to death.