To scale back care to elderly mum as I can’t keep travelling 300 miles

[AutumnSalad]

I love my mum and she is a fantastic Granny to my 3 daughters. She’s 78 but because of a lung disease she is very frail and is finding a lot of things really difficult, she can’t walk to the shops, she just about manages in the house but gets very tired. She lives on her own.

My problem is that she lives in the same town as my brother, and they both expect me to do the majority of the care. I can do loads remotely, I do all her appointments, medications, online shopping. I’ve battled her pride to get her a cleaner, gardener and Attendance Allowance. I’ve set up power of attorney. I speak to her for an hour every single day. And I’ve visited every 3 weeks or so, sometimes just to interview the cleaner with her, or go to the Doctors with her.

I don’t mind doing stuff for her but it’s unsustainable, I am a lone parent and one of my children is disabled. I just can’t simply keep coming down every 3 weeks. But my brother seems to expect that I take care of all her medical/care stuff. He doesn’t visit her, he sometimes brings her to his house. To be fair to him he’s really busy. I think he likes that she lives near him, and his wife berates me for not visiting enough! I find my brothers family increasingly demanding on me also. They also don’t really understand how ill our mum is now, she puts on a good front for them.

I had a really honest chat with my mum last year and said that I’d be really happy for her to come and live with me, I have the room and she could be surrounded by kids all day which she would love. She won’t move, which is fair enough her decision. But I did say that if she continued to need people to go to appointments with her etc I can’t keep coming down.

But in practice I’ve found this really hard. She ends up in situations where if she goes to the doctors alone she forgets what they’ve said, or says she’s fine etc and then talks to me later in a real state - so I end up rebooking and going with her myself. In reality there is no one to take care of my mums needs, but I cant’ do this from 300 miles away! What on earth do I do.

My brother is impossible to talk to, he just makes me feel even more guilty, he even got mad with me about doing the power of attorney as it ‘wasn’t done in the right way’ and doesn’t think she needs a cleaner. He would take it very personally that I even asked my mum to live with me, as if I was taking her away from where she loves.

YANBU. On a side note, I wonder if Medical Professionals allow people to record on their mobile phones, what's being said. Probably wouldn't work for your mum though :(

Thanks so much for all of your comments, I think I need to reduce my visits to every 6-8 weeks and also will ask her to consider staying with me even for a few weeks over winter. She will say no but there it is.

My brother is a good man but I hate this dynamic, his wife is also very openly critical of anyone living far from their parents.

Maybe my Mum and brother will consider whether living close to each other is really the best if I don’t fill in the gaps. Although part of the problem is that no one sees the problems. My mum wasn’t putting out the bins, food going rotten but neither her nor my brother thought she needed a cleaner! As well as doing the care, cajoling I also have to battle them both.🙄

I understand what you are going through. I’d pull right back and let them fully understand the situation. It’s the only solution to it. It’s so hard to do but necessary.

your child needs you, you can’t split yourself in two. You offered her a place to stay. Your job is done. Step right back and you will be glad you did. Good luck.

By doing so much you are masking the problems. Pull back, let the problems become obvious to everyone, and see what happens.

And don’t worry too much, some things can pile up to quite an extent before they become dangerous and it won’t be nice to watch but resist temptation to bustle in and clean or whatever.

Yep, they're treating you like staff.

Step back, they are all adults and until your mum has lost capacity, she has to be left to make her own decisions.

Good advice. I need to stand right back. I do feel a bit sad as I think she is quite lonely, and sometimes lets things get to crisis I suspect to get her sons attention. She would love to move in with him but that's not going to happen.

They don't. I know lots of lovely men who provide care for aging parents. What is different in their cases is that none of them have sisters. Not one. I honestly don't know if they would have been different if they had sisters, but I suspect they were brought up differently because they didn't.

TBF to my brothers they are very involved though none of us live close.

Actually I would second this . Neither of them understand how untenable this is because you are papering over the cracks.
If you don't go your mum will realise she needs help and your brother will realise a plan is needed going forward because your mum will get worse just because she is aging

If your mum.has savings of more than £23,250 then she will have to pay for the full cost of her care. However, if Adult Social Care assess her as having eligible needs then she can ask them to arrange care on her behalf.

https://drivingmissdaisy.co.uk/

Perhaps look at getting your mum a carer? I have worked as a private carer. Some of my clients were 7 days a week but others just a couple of hours. Many of my clients got a financial contribution from the local authority towards their care needs. A carer can support your mum in whatever way she needs. It can be things like dr and hospital appointments or taking her out shopping. If it's a private carer then your mum will have the opportunity to build a relationship with one person and it will lift your burden.

I has to be really assertive with my mum. She lived 6 hours away ( we both moved from original hometown). I was one of 3 but everything fell to me. It was utterly unsustainable.
In the end, it was clear thar she could not cope with the actual selling of the house. So, I found her a retirement flat to rent and said if in 6 months she didn't like it, she could move back.
6 months later I sold the empty house.
I still do everything but 2 and a half years later she is still living independently.

Words cannot express how much of a cunt your brother, and his wife, are. Ugh.

I understand your brother being busy - adult life is difficult often / but his wife berating you? What a cheek!

How have you not told your brother and his wife to eff off? YANBU at all. Their choices have consequences.

I would organise a family meeting with your brother. Involve the GP/Public Health Nurse if you can.
You are 300 miles away.
He is probably doing a lot day to day (along with his wife) and bitterness may have set in.
Yes you may be helping from a distance but caring for an elderly person daily takes its toll.
Are you sure he doesn't visit her?
Old people get forgetful, I remember MIL saying she hadn't spoken to x in months, x had visited the previous week.

Só DB is the golden child who can do anything wrong, who put himself down as next of kin no doubt because in his mind he’s the most important person in the family - but he expects you to do all the donkey work of making things happen. Your mum is happy to go along with this & wants to stay living close to DB because of the dynamic above.

OP as others have said, you really really need to step back. You’re papering over the ever increasing cracks and facilitating ‘D’B in his lazy arse arrogance. Why does his busyness count more than yours??

in the nicest possible way let them get on with it. Be unavailable to sort things. You have offered solutions but they don’t take them up. That being the case, they have to see how bad it really is without you running around like a blue arsed fly to sort things.

I was in a similar situation, and I understand how hard it is. I couldn’t afford to keep visiting at the frequency I needed to and I was burning out because I am also a single parent working full time. Like your situation, it was unsustainable, I would have got into serious debt and made myself unwell without action.

I stepped back and told everyone that I was doing this (important!) when offers to relocate them near me were not taken up, and other relatives did not step up. It was very hard because my relative’s welfare was compromised without me being there to the extent that they had a fall and were admitted to hospital. That felt awful, but you must tell yourself and others that you have suggested realistic alternatives. You must be prepared to hold firm boundaries with social workers and relatives.

They won’t though, adult social care is so overstretched they will simply signpost private care.

1. Your sil doesn’t get to criticise the care you provide for your mum. Shut her down everytime, rudely if you have to. Tell her in most cultures it’s the sil not the DD who is expected to provide care so she’s damned lucky all she does is sit on her bum and criticise you.
2. Your DB needs to know exactly what you do. In writing. He then needs to decide what he is prepared to take over. If he doesn’t use PoA to arrange a home for her or force her to move to yours (get legal advice if needed but it’s pretty straight forward)
3. Call social services if DB is down as her main carer but not doing any caring.

I feel so sorry for you, it's such a difficult position to be in. All I can suggest is that you start introducing help slowly, so maybe one hour a week someone helps out and then build the time up over a period of months, so she gets the help she needs. Good luck.

This is very good clear advice.

Please stop referring to your brother as a good man, he may be in other things but he is not in this.

Hope you can work something out for both you and for your mum.

My goodness I have no idea how you have kept doing this. Do you take you child with you ?
I travelled 100 miles every week for about two years to visit my mother in a care home to give my sister who lived 10 mins away a break from her almost daily visits . Before that I went every 3 weeks or so for several more years. When my father was ill before that the visits were weekly for a while

I had a 4 day a week job and a son with ASD and ADHD who was hard to leave. DS came with me every other visit, if he was with me it was much harder to focus on my mums and the visits had to be shorter but she did like seeing him so I tried to find a balance.

I found that whole period of my lifer exhausting and I had a supportive DH who did everything at home at the weekends and with whom DS could stay if needed

I did do some of things you are online shopping organising carers and some appointments etc but my sister did the bulk of the work. You brother is being completely unreasonable but he doesn't sound like he will change. You need to talk to your mum again and insist that she come to you or reduce your visits. Who will take care of you dependants if you get Ill from stress and taking too much on.

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