Thread 12 - TalkLair: “I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.”

[Kucinghitam]

(Previous thread 11).

The days are gradually growing longer, but the worst of the winter weather is not yet behind us. In the TalkLair, we remain hunkered down keeping cosy and warm. The hearth is glowing, the walls covered in dubious artwork, books by non-approved authors line the shelves, rugs are down on the floors (and assorted pets curled up on them).

We just won’t mention the gnawed bones of our prey over there in the corner of the cave…

I would love to be a fly on the wall watching that!

Me too! Sounds utterly joyous!

I flew Transavia to Amsterdam yesterday, the seats were so tightly packed that my knees were jammed into the seat in front. I'm glad it was less than an hour!

The Bee Gee thing sounds fantastic especially as it sounds like it will be a performance to an appreciative audience of one amongst a larger confused (and, I assume, highly amused) audience.

I'm just going to have a leetle self-indulgent moan on here, because sometimes I need to let the mask slide a bit. The reason I'm went back to Malaysia wasn't actually for a holiday, but to see my parents and grandmother.

My grandmother is 97, she can barely walk, is deaf and incontinent, and has advanced dementia. She's not been able to recognise anybody in her family for the last couple of years. The latest thing is that she can't speak in recognisable words any more, just babbles like a baby.

Worse though, is my dad, who is 78 and was diagnosed with Alzheimer's and vascular dementia right at the start of COVID lockdown. He still knows who most of us are, but has forgotten major events - for example he started talking about looking up his brother "Haven't heard from him for a while" and we couldn't explain that he died 10 years ago. He's never been the easiest personality and now he is constantly combative and adversarial, convinced people are out to get him. He's become utterly obsessed with certain things and convinced that my mum is stopping him from achieving them. As she's his sole carer, this makes their home life really horrible for her.

And my mum is really struggling with it all, running the household, managing the appointments and activities, the constant battling with dad about taking his medication, etc. It's become really clear on this visit that my mum is also showing signs of cognitive decline, due to the stress or maybe she's getting demented too.

My brother and I don't really know what to do - we both live abroad and have our own work and families and households.

I'm sorry to hear that you and your family are going through that, Kuc. I'm sorry, I can't think of anything useful to say.

Oh, that's shit, Kuc.

At least my stepdad's obsessions tend to be confined to 'finding the thing I need to fix the thing', or his bed 'not working' (it's just a normal bed, there's nothing to not work) rather than being thwarted by a person.

If you want a place to vent among people in similar situations, there's a cockroach cafe over in Elderly Parents.

Oh Kuc that must be so difficult for you. I hear you on not being on the same side of the ocean as loved ones when they have problems, and I guess if I ever start being demented they might feel the same way about me.

Oh Kuc that sounds so very hard. What is social care like there?

That's tough Kuc - it's hard enough when you're with them. Can you and your brother afford to pay for either nursing home care or good home care? Also for whatever adaptation is needed to make their living space safe and accessible?

There are forms of words for things like the brother situation 'Oh you know, we haven't hear from him for ages either. I think he's away.' No point talking about who is dead. Lots of misdirection, agreeing, not confronting. Has your father ever had experience of being cared for? - I think one of the things that helped my father cope with the later stages of his illness were the years he spent in hospital as a small child and in a sanatorium in his 20s - being looked after by 'nurses' (and obeying their instructions) seemed natural to him.

One of the problems is that because short term memory has gone, people have no way of knowing where their anxiety or fear or anger has come from, so can't set it aside, and adrenaline just builds. People in that stage of dementia can be very angry, and it must be hard on your mother.

I'm sorry, kuc, that sounds wretched. Is there any other family there that can help?

Thank you everyone, it's just good to get it off my chest occasionally. I lurk on the various Elderly Parents threads already, but haven't yet felt like posting. This thread feels more like "home"!

There isn't social care in the sense it is available (theoretically!) in the UK, but it is possible to arrange for paid carers/assistants. And when the time comes, care homes are far more affordable there. Between me and DBro, we can just about afford to pay for carers and (eventually) a care home for dad.

My parents' troubles are compounded by the state of their apartment. Before my dad became obviously ill, he was obsessed with trying to make money from various businesses. His last business attempt was some sort of second-hand reselling scheme, and he filled up the apartment with boxes of "stock." Then not long after that came COVID, lockdown, and his dementia diagnosis. So, combined with my mum's longstanding hoarding tendencies, their apartment is absolutely stuffed full of crap. Myself and DBro have been trying to get their mess under control for years, to no avail. Although the main working areas have been kept clean (bathroom, kitchen, half the dining table, living area for watching TV) the higher areas throughout are thickly coated with dust because mum can't physically reach all the boxes and stuff. When I was there last month, I tried to clean up as best I could, but it's impossible to keep control of the dust on top of all the stuff.

Now that mum could do with some help caring for dad, she's too embarrassed to allow "outsiders" into the apartment so she says she has to care for him by herself. Ditto whenever anything breaks down - if my brother can't fix it on one of his trips home, it just stays broken because mum won't call a repairman.

Mum also says that it is "too soon" to put dad into a care home because he still knows enough about what is going on around him, and will know that he has been "abandoned." I suppose she is right.

It sounds as though the first job is to get someone in to do a radical clearout - can you hire a storage space to placate your mother if she thinks you're chucking out her treasures? If there are two bedrooms that would be good, as if he needs overnight care she can still sleep. Then any adaptations needed to make the place wheelchair accessible, put in shower seat and grab bars, get a bum-washing loo.

People to help with the care are important, but safe physical space is important too.

That all sounds really tough, Kuc! Knowing they're far away and in difficulties must be enormously stressful.

I lurk in 'Elderly Parents' too and whilst it's awful seeing how many posters are dealing with demented parents it feels less lonely knowing you're not alone and can connect with others when the time comes.

My parents are the ultimate toxic combination for each other!

So my dad brought all this secondhand tat in, and one of his repetitive demented behaviours is to constantly root through the accessible boxes examining all his "stock" and then repacking it. And he also hides things that he thinks are valuable in the various nooks and crannies, then forgets he has done so. He's constantly worried that "somebody" will steal his valuable stock. Often my mum will get the blame if he loses any of his preciouses, or sometimes if he hasn't actually lost anything but has a lingering impression of loss. So, my mum says we can't risk removing dad's boxes from their familiar locations, because he'll go apeshit about her stealing all his things.

DBro and I suggested at least chucking out all the contents of the lower boxes and just leaving them empty. But then mum's hoarding tendency comes to the fore - "But I need time to go through them in case there's useful stuff I want to keep!"

FFS.

This trip, my dad rooted out several large handfuls of crappy green-rash-inducing costume jewellery and gave them to me as a special present. So I thanked him profusely, agreed that they were all very lovely, and pretended to pack them into my suitcase. Then I went out for a walk by myself and chucked it all in a public bin. Later, my mum was appalled I had done that because she wanted to "check it first in case I want it."

I was wondering why you were visiting at what seemed like an unlikely time but really sorry to hear it was for such an awful reason. It must be hard being so far away especially as your brother is also far from home. It sounds like the answer must involve carers (either at home or in a home) but no idea how that works there (it seems pretty random here and I’m guessing that’s true of lots of places).

That reply was started some time ago but in the meanwhile my not demented just very old mother developed an urgent need to know what Labour Prime Ministers there’d be in her lifetime (or anyone else’s come to that). I can hear her heading upstairs reciting their names!

It sounds as if some kind of experienced carer coming in would be very helpful if it could be financed and if your DM and DF would agree.

First, @Kucinghitam that is not a moan you are telling us - and thank you for trusting us - about an appalling situation. Doubling up on some of the things already said. If you can find a storage unit I think it would be really helpful. I know it will be harder to convince your dad given his current obsession, but hopefully you can convince your mum that if she needs to look for something she can go to the storage unit and she still has everything, just a bit further away. Tell her, as well, that it will help her have some assistance at home. It might not work but it's worth giving it a go.

Your dad is at a horrible stage of the dementia and it will change but I won't pretend I know when or how just that he will get less combative. I agree with not telling him that people he thinks are alive are dead. From a close friend whose mother went through many of the stages but thankfully died before she got to where your poor grandmother is, she remembered some people but even those she wasn't a hundred percent sure of she remembered she loved them and became very loving. She was very distressed early on, talked constantly about going home - she was in a home for the last three years of her life - how everyone was horrible to her, etc, that changed. It's hard, so very hard and I'm sure you have many long moments of not knowing how you can cope. It's worse for you being so far away and all of the other issues that predate it. I wish you the strength to get through this and the love of your family here to help you with that.

That's it. I wish there was an easy solution but there isn't. If any of us could wave a magic wand and make it better and easier. I feel so much for you mum because it's going to get harder before it gets a little easier. So, just love to you and feel free to unburden yourself any time.

I had my chemo today and all went well. I'm home feeling pretty good now and should be for the next three days - steroids for the win! It's getting through the shit bits that are coming up,which will hopefully be a little less shit this time, and then onward to radiotherapy.

I was reading The Travelling Cat Chronicles as I lounged on my recliner and got to a bit that had tears falling down my face. I had to stop reading because I worried that other people would think I'd had bad news or something! Not a book to read in public except when it is and Nana the cat is being a total dude.

I was listening to radio 4 on the way to the hospital this morning. The last of Woman's Hour and then the 11:00 news. Of course the news is "King cancer, King Cancer" and I'm okay with that. A bit less, but whatever. Then they said that people were gathering outside Clarence House to wish him well and I literally said, out loud in the street, "Oh you can fuck right off with that and get a fucking grip!"

It's all a bit bloody tedious.

I remember the combative stage with my grandmother too, and her talking about how horrible and neglectful everyone was. Very hard. Then she became much more chilled out.

Re KC, yes, it is bloody tedious.

I suspect the king’s cancer will be very tedious for a long time to come but it’s still good that the diagnosis has been made public. People gathering outside Clarence House is bloody stupid. I am, as ever, baffled as to how anyone can see the monarchy as anything other than an anachronism.

Cross legs firmly before reading:

www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5001743-to-warn-you-to-never-spray-orange-scented-perfume-on-your-pubes?

I sprayed perfume on my nethers as a teenager. Read too many American bonkbusters where women were all about scented douches. It would be like that, I thought. It was not. The burning! There are so many stupid things we do in life that we repeat far too many times before the lesson is finally learned. Spraying perfume up your floof is a lesson learned instantly. So, there's that.