This is a tricky one.
She is single, lives alone, and I’m an only child.
The past 2-3 years her health has declined significantly and combined with the pandemic this means fewer visits to the GP and none of her usual group activities (she’s not online and refuses to try).
She’s always been quite a tricky character so moving in with me is not an option, but I help out as much as I can - shopping, driving her to appointments, I visit at least twice a week and go over for all her telephone medical appointments to make sure she hears / understands properly and so that I’m fully aware and up to date of changes to medication and follow up appointments etc.
Let’s just say she wasn’t particularly kind to me when I was little and she’s not a maternal kind of person. But she’s still my mum and struggling to come to terms with her diagnoses, medication, declining health.
Have any of you got any words of wisdom?
All she does is read and watch TV. She has a couple of friends and when the weather is ok they’ve been meeting for a walk or to sit in the garden. Weather obviously not helping.
She does come to mine occasionally but she doesn’t drive so it’s much easier for me to go to hers. Plus I have a dog and she doesn’t like animals.
I asked her yesterday if she thought she might be depressed and offered to call her (fabulous) GP to see if he might give her something to lift her mood. But she just went mad at me as if I was talking some weird alien language. I know it can’t be easy coming to terms with declining health but I guess it’s something that happens to us all.
Sorry this is so long.
She’s not going to get better. The conditions she has will be with her for the rest of the life. How can I help her come to terms with ageing?