There’s nothing I can do, is there?

[timeistight]

I’ve posted on the support thread about general issues with MIL, but I now have a specific question, so I hope it’s all right to post separately about this.

MIL had a hospital admission at the end of last month. The first doctor we saw in the Assessment Unit was horrified that she had had no follow up since a previous admission in 2013, when she was diagnosed with hypertensive heart disease. She had never seen a doctor or nurse re this, or anything else, in all that time and the doctor said he would write to the GP to ask why there had not been any follow up and to ask him to follow up on a three monthly basis in future.

MIL was back in hospital for the day the following week and a doctor who couldn’t get any coherent account of her symptoms from her said that he would write to the GP and recommend that he refer her for a full mental health assessment. There are clearly major capacity issues that have not been addressed and I’ve refused to draw up Power of Attorney documents unless/until someone tells me she’s OK, which in my view she is not.

DH has followed this up today and the surgery have not received either promised letter. He has called MIL and asked her straight out if she would like to go to the Memory Clinic and of course she has said no. I wish he’d be more diplomatic.

As her DD, who is supposed to be caring for her, is basically only doing the very minimum (I say it’s neglect - DH disagrees), and DH and his DB are so deep in denial about her physical and mental condition that it’s not true, I was relying on those two interventions to get MIL back in the system and properly supported and assessed.

That’s not going to happen now, is it?

It’s taken a month of me pleading, and awful rows, to get DH to make the call he made this morning and I just feel so let down. We seem to be stuck in a loop where we can’t do anything unless or until MIL asks for help. In the meantime, she will be presumed to have capacity and remain at risk. Her children seem OK with this, which is beyond my comprehension.

There’s nothing I can do, is there?

so has she offered to sign the power of attorney forms and you've said no? Getting them signed is your best bet.

No. The three children have discussed this among themselves and agreed who would be the attorneys and on what basis. So far so good. No-one's mentioned it to MIL yet.

I said I'd do the forms, but then I spent an afternoon with MIL and she was all over the place, very chatty and plausible, but actually talking complete rubbish and couldn't answer a question that required a yes or no answer. I was concerned at that point and when the hospital doctor obviously also had his doubts, I was clear in my own mind that I shouldn't get involved unless she's been properly assessed.

There are some very odd family dynamics and I have to be seen to be transparent.

Since I last posted, I spoken to the Alzheimers Society helpline, who advised me to have a ‘what if’ conversation with Social Services. I’ve done that this afternoon, but you only speak to a Customer Advisor, not a social worker and he struggled to answer my questions.

However, he did say that I was welcome to report, but they won’t get involved in a case if the person doesn’t consent and, although a memory test would be part of their assessment, they also wouldn’t do that if the person didn’t consent. My issue is that we don’t know whether MIL can make those sort of decisions for herself. I certainly don’t think she can and it’s clear that there’s no decision making process going on, she just says ‘no’ straight out to everything.

So it looks as if there is no way to get her into the system that way.

The lady from the Alzheimers Society did suggest we speak to the GP again, but MIL won’t agree to see him and he won’t go out to her because she is not an emergency, and there's still the consent issue, so that looks like a dead end as well.

So, she stays at risk and my marriage stays teeters on the edge of divorce, because I don’t want to be with a man who doesn’t look after his DM. Happy days!

.