Just posting for support and perspectives really. Long story, but my husband and I have my elderly parents living with us. They were at the other end of the country and starting to battle with health issues, I'm an only child, so we decided to sell our respective homes, DH and I bought a large house - large enough that my parents have their own living space on a separate floor and we just share kitchen/dining area/garden.
Part of the idea of this was that I'd be on hand to help if they needed it as they got older and more infirm. (I'm 50 and I work from home, although one of the problems I'm now encountering is that my parents often seem incapable of distinguishing 'working from home' from 'being a housewife' and there are DAILY attempts to get me to run errands for them etc, during work time, despite my constantly saying I can only do this in an emergency and that they need to write down what they need and I'll do it for them outside working hours.)
My father now has various pain and health issues, was very ill for most of last year, thankfully now seems to be doing a lot better.
My mother is fine health-wise 'on paper', but she is very forgetful, vague and inattentive and my father and I have started to wonder if she is in the early stages of dementia.
People often express admiration for what I have done for my parents, but when they do I tend to feel like a fraud, all sorts of reasons really, but to put it in a nutshell I am struggling terribly. I'll try to keep this brief but there is a lot here and I don't know how much longer I can cope. I'm in the process of trying to seek out some kind of counselling or other mental health support that relates specifically to my situation as a (sort-of) carer, as that's what's causing the main difficulties at the moment. I just feel permanently awash with a mixture of frustration, stress and terrible guilt. I don't feel like their daughter any more, I feel like some sort of unpaid carer and I know that sounds selfish, but I can't ever seem to move past the fact that I was rushed into this move without any proper discussion of what the expectations were, and that I feel they constantly underestimate the impact this move has had on me. Then the guilt kicks in because I do love them, I am massively grateful they are both still alive, and I do want to be a good daughter and look after them, but feel so ill-equipped emotionally for the task.
Before we made this move I tried to get them to clarify properly what would be expected of me if/when their health failed - would all the cooking/cleaning fall on my shoulders? My mother currently helps my dad with dressing and bathing on days when he's in a lot of pain, but what if they were ever both immobile/ill on the same day? Would I be expected to do the washing/toileting etc? (That question has never been answered by anything other than silence or 'let's not cross out bridges before we come to them', BTW.) Lifts to doc and hospital, obviously, I do all of that. But there are days when I feel I can't effectively co-care for them because I have my own health issues: chronic fatigue, fairly severe depression, currently going through menopause. You get the picture.
Currently the biggest stumbling block is my mother. I'm fairly convinced she has narcissistic personality disorder, not helped by the fact that my dad waited on her hand and foot when he was more mobile. I know she loves me and tries to be a good mother, but she doesn't seem to be set up for it emotionally. I've been invalidated all my life, whenever I've said or done anything that challenged her notion of herself as perfect. If I'm ever upset she turns it around and makes it about her 'How do you think this makes me feel?', tears, etc. If there is ever anything that needs a frank discussion now in terms of how we do things in the house, stuff that may be worrying me etc, she reacts with tears and invalidation. Recently she's taken to rewriting history where my father's hospitalisations were concerned (she tends to 'zone out' when he's seriously ill and starts to drift around the house humming to herself, so it's been left to me to call 111/999 or whatever's needed. 2 days ago she claimed that she had been the one to ask me to make those calls. This is total fiction. She once left my dad unable to breathe for 10 minutes during what turned out to be a panic attack until I got back from doing errands so she could get me to call 999 for him. When I challenged her on this the reply was 'There's always time with these things, you don't have to act on them right that minute, that's not how these things work.' She used to work as an occupational therapist, and according to her no one else's opinion on any of these things is valid, only hers, because of her past job and because 'I watch your father every day.'
But I just don't trust her judgement. Twice last year my dad almost died and I was the one who had to push that he needed to go to hospital. The first time around he had an acute kidney injury and when I pointed out he needed a doctor her reply was to snap 'Just leave it!' and storm off in tears, I ended up calling 111 behind her back because my dad would have died without intervention. When we finally got him to hospital and got a diagnosis all she could do was snap 'I was going to leave it until morning so we wouldn't have to sit around like this.' No acknowledgement that my judgement was right, that my dad would have died if we hadn't acted.
Similar situation last October when he had pneumonia plus another AKI, when I questioned my dad's breathing my mum's response was 'he's just got a bit of a ruttle' (WTF?!) - again the resistance to calling doctors. Again the whole incident has been retconned - I called 111, couple of days ago she calmly informed me that she'd been the one to do so, this is fiction, she was against calling them because 'he doesn't want to go into hospital'... she can't keep track of the numbers 111 and 999 BTW... a recent statement was 'If I'm worried I'll just get you to ring that number, you know the one.' (When my dad is well enough he makes all the phone calls, my mum won't make them, just one of a list of things she won't do because other people have always done them for her.)
I'm aware I must sound very angry and bitter towards my mum, because I am. I do love her, and I rarely let any of frustration creep out because they have enough to deal with, but neither of them seem willing to accept they're asking too much of me. They receive allowances for my dad's care but my mum refuses to have anyone come into the house, she even turned on the tears for some reason when I insisted on getting us a cleaner. I just feel that all we ever do is disagree, and all I ever do is upset them and let them down, although I'm not sure how realistic their expectations ever were in the first place.
If you're still with me, thanks for reading this ramble. I don't really know what I'm hoping to accomplish other than to vent, hopefully get some support, and if anyone knows of resources I could get in touch with, that'd be massively helpful too. (When I try to discuss this with my parents I'm told 'there isn't anything', and I know that's not true.)
Thanks again for reading. I feel like the world's worst daughter even thinking these things, so please go gentle on me with feedback.