Caring for elderly parents? Pop in for support/advice/a bit of a rant...

[picklemepopcorn]

Pace yourself, it's a marathon not a sprint!

This is a safe place to offload- don't be embarrassed about how you feel. No judgement here...

There are lovely people here with practical experience of some of the issues which crop up who'll share their hard won knowledge!

Hi all, Been lurking for a little while as things begin to settle since DM died. Been following the updates from those I know and also new people who have joined us. Big hug and to you all. Sadly I'm spending Friday night in A and E with my dad as his continued deterioration has caused concern.

@notaflyingmonkey that's really good to know, thank you, we'll look into that a bit more then.

Sorry to hear that @whatever45

Just popping in to say hugs all round
Just knowing I can share here is really helping me so I hope it helps other newbies too.

Oooh I need to catch up!
Welcome newbies- sorry you have to join us.
yolo you must be knackered. You deserve your respite.cockroach
Billy- sorry to hear about your dad. It is so hard
Velo please get poa, you don’t need to use it until neccesary but apply now- you can get forms on line for health and finance. It must be so worrying for you and your dm.
Whatever- so sorry about your dad. Hope he gets treated soon.

Thank you everyone for your support , one thing that I have realised is that we all have to go through this at some stage

Dad is reasonably comfortable and the home has been brilliant , the whole family have felt very reassured and that Dad was safe when he was there

Every time we were in hospital we could not wait for him to get back "home " as he calls it

I had a very old view of a nursing home based on lack of knowledge and poor understanding however Dad has been very content there and speaking to other people that have relatives there I am not alone

One resident spent the night on the floor in her own home next to the panic button with an alarm button around her neck before her family said enough and took the hard decision to move her here

Several elderly relatives and friends have visited Dad and a couple have joked that they have already made their reservations

Its been an eye opener whereas at the hospital everything has been a fight , every appointment ,waiting for pigeon post letters even when Dad was moved to Palliative care it took a day and a half to get him discharged back to his nursing home whilst we waited for discharge notes and prescription , without my chasing as his advocate this could have easily been 3-4 days

He is a 3 hour round trip away so it is frustrating to take a day off work to get to an appointment only to be asked a few questions and blood pressure taken

So back to the waiting for the phone to ring x

Thank you everyone, we are so lucky that MIL is still at home and reasonably independent, I know it won't be that way forever. Thanks for the thread @picklemepopcorn it's really good to be able to chat to people who understand and won't think I'm awful for getting stressed about it all. I'll definitely look into the POA, it's good to know that we can use it as needed rather than take full control.
to everyone, I hope it's a peaceful weekend.

I agree it's very comforting to know we are not alone dealing with this time of life.
I'm pleased to say Dad's issue was quickly identified as a reaction to the Codiene that he was put on for back pain. This has been stopped and he has virtually gone back to how he was before and so has been safely returned to the care home.
Thank you for being there, thinking of you all

Glad things are calmer @whatever45, and we're always here

Saint DB and Saint DSIL arrived today (I adore them both!). DM was on fine form with them, but this is what she does: puts on a show for anyone other than me and mine. Anyway, having driven almost 400 miles today I plan to leave them all to it while I recover for a bit. Lots of practical stuff to sort out, like if we return the unused bed she ordered me to buy for her to use downstairs it will pay a week's care home fees; get DB to get her to sign LPA forms and the one that allows me to speak to her private health insurers.

Private health: what a joke. She has paid at least £3k a year for the last 20 years, but it still doesnt entitle her to very much at all. We kept telling her, but she didnt get it.

billys my dearest dream is that DM will get back to the lovely local care home; when you find a good one they are worth their weight in gold so I am glad your dad is in the right place.

whatever hope dad remains relatively stable and comfortable.

When my Dad fell ill back in January my sister and I organised POA on medical and financial and it took a few weeks to set up which financially caused a few problems however hindsight being a wonderful thing it is something we should have done years ago
It has not made a huge difference on the medical side as I have had the luxury of involving Dad in every decision
Since January as it came out of the blue I have always been overtaken by events rather than felt all organised

Up until then Dad has spent one night in hospital in the last 65 years so has had a great run

Interesting the comments on private health as it is something I am considering for my partner and I

my gripe with private health is that it is no use at all for emergencies. Great if you want your minor op done quicker, or you want to see that nice man who spends 45 mins discussing your ailments rather than 10 mins with an overworked GP.

But the minute anything goes wrong the NHS deal with it - your minor op goes wrong, or as in DM's case, you are just too old and broken, the NHS god bless them pick up the pieces every time. She could have saved that £60k and just paid for the treatment every time, rather than the situation she is in now where she cant understand why her health insurance wont get her a better bed or a nicer home.

This morning I have weeded (sort of) a 30m bed, planted 2 trees and a fuchsia, and reclaimed some reasonably new shrubs from a rather pretty but extremely invasive wild dock weed. Knackered!!

So glad you are getting out in the garden yolo great therapy.
Dm took out a policy for care costs many years ago which I think is no longer available- wAs v expensive but has paid out for the last 7 years at a fixed rate to help with care costs.
cockroach to all.

DM's latest idea is to uproot herself and move 200 miles away to live in a care home close to DB and family. There are several barriers to this: she is on a shitload of meds and this is a huge decision. She is likely to be in hospital another 4-6 weeks and then go to a 'non weight bearing bed' in some sort of facility for rehab and physio for 6-10 weeks.

Because DB and DSIL can spend up to 4 hours with her (told you they were saints) she thinks this will continue, which of course it wont once they are back to normal life.

I dont think she has thought about when she doesnt see me daily, which has been for the last 10 years or so, or my DDs who visit when they are home from uni.

Fuck it I dont know! but guess given the time frames we dont have to decide anything anyway. I brought her cat home to live with us on Friday, all going pretty well with our 2 resident mogs!

Morning. Sorry to not have read the full thread before posting but I have an urgent situation with my parents.

My mum has dementia and dad is her carer and has no help (they live 200 miles from me).
She is recently out of hospital and needs help with personal care but doesn't want dad to help because of her confusion. He is not coping and I'm worried about his physical and mental health.

The hospital wont take her back so I have found a care home for respite care. She is refusing to go (but is so confused that she is refusing everything). They say they can take her with her social worker's help but she doesn't have a social worker.

So my question is, how quickly is it possible to get SS involved? I have power of attorney if that helps.

Thanks and to everyone in difficult situations

glide I would get on to the council where they live and ask to speak to someone in adult social services (that's what it's called here anyway).

Hope you can get something moving asap.

Can you try speaking to the care home to give you some contacts

My Dad is in a Nursing home but the manager is a mine of information and contacts as a lot of the people are already involved with other residents

yolo, is your mum doing that thing where she just sees the person sitting by her as the saviour?

have you all got Power of Attorney?

My dad is refusing to consider it at the moment - refusing in general, so not for mum or for me. He is out of hospital but very weak and constantly returning for blood transfusions etc. I have realised that I will just have to take things as they come and can't really plan anything.

Yolo, sounds like your mum is captivated by the idea things will be different there. As you say, dB and sil are able to do less frequent longer stints while you do all the grunt work and bearthe brunt of her frustration. And have to give the bad news.
As you say, not for today but I would try and deflect conversation as much as you can....... hope she is being well cared for.
cockroach all....

yes lighthouse, because DB and DSIL are away from their own home, routine, looking after DGC etc etc so they can spend time with her, although how they have the patience I dont know. No POA yet, DB doesnt want to raise it with her, wants to talk it through tonight.

I sympathise with the being unable to plan, it makes life very difficult and just adds to the stress. At least we have the DNR in place now - have you broached that yet? I got the hospital staff to do it, thinking she would take it better from a doctor (pref in a white coat, male and English or if must be forrin then a product of one of our better public schools!). Quite frankly it is a relief to think that she would not be resuscitated if her heart stops, its brutal and would break all her ribs. They still treat infections etc.

Not been here in a while, DM 90 is still driving us mad, changing her mind every day. She wants to be alone, she wants a carer, she wants to be in a home, three down and checked herself out every time, with all the hassle and cost. We are back to full time carers now, the lovely Czech lady who was with her for 3 months has returned home, in the end she really needed the break. So, Mum tries some time alone, but doesn't like it, so we arrange another carer. This throws up some problems with regards to "blackness" of carers. Mum doesn't want anyone black . So they have a Sri Lanken lady available who we assure her is "brown". Unfortunately Sri Lankens can be quite dark, and this lady is........ oh dear, she has lasted only two weeks. So now we await a Russian..... ummmm.... we shall see. I have worked with quite a few Russians in my time, and they are generally pretty tough, I wonder who will win this one, Mum or the Russian. Mum doesn't need any care per se, just a servant, she likes to be served and pampered, we are not holding out much hope.

yolo, yes, I hadn't thought of that, it's not just the "enamoured with who is there" - it's also the novelty. I mentioned on another thread about having spent time with an elderly neighbour, she had no one in the UK so we took her to hospital and so on.

when we finally tracked down a relative, she said all the nice things she said to us "you are my sunshine" etc etc!!

re DNR - dad signed one while in hospital. It's not something he'd do a separate instruction for ambulance etc. My mum was about to set it up for herself, but generally he's not keen, it was only for while he's in the hospital.

I have heard about paramedics ignoring DNR instructions which is a worry, and one reason mum wanted to get a formal document in place generally.

When you get a DNR double check that it is filled in correctly ,Dad had one and an ambulance driver pointed out a couple of mistakes
It didnt affect anything as we have never needed it but worth checking

Shot up to see Dad this morning as I had a call saying he was asking for me , hour and a half up there to have a vague confused conversation about nothing and an hour and a half back

Think it will be any day now as he is so frail

billysboy "When you get a DNR double check that it is filled in correctly"

thanks. tbh I think both my parents will forget about it now unless they go in hospital again.

it's alarming, all this admin. Makes me wish there was a medic alert bracelet or something - I don't want any extreme measures taken at all so for me it would be DNR, no intubation, no artificial feeding, no blood transfusions etc etc

maybe I should get a tattoo....!

billy, I'm about 90 mins away as well and I can imagine the time will come when they don't really know that and will just be insistent that I must get there...

I see it's warming up again just as we might have to take dad for another blood transfusion....the hospital is incredibly hot under normal circumstances.

re DNR forms, I can't really go with my mum when she does it - I think it would look bad, like her daughter trying to influence her decision?

Tbh I've no idea how these things work but when she asked at GP reception, they told her to make an appointment with her GP. I thought it would be a legal document and was puzzled they want to use a GP appointment - an appointment which has now been cancelled anyway due to the situation with dad.

older I so sympathise with the 'not right' carer scenario. We had a lovely woman from Zim, perfect English but a bit, um, brown - well not really that brown at all. DM referred to her as 'the maid' and 'that girl', she lasted one night. Then we had a local woman, white but NQOCD (not quite our class darling) and I think that lasted 3 nights before she walked out because my mother was so bloody rude. OTH she has been exchanging fist bumps with the male, African nurse, and was very taken with the African doctor she met recently.

I put my money on the Russian!

DM's plan to move 200 miles away to be near DB is on hold: we have told her she stays in hospital (4-6 weeks) until she goes to a rehab unit (6-10 weeks?) and this time round she sees it through before anyone, including her, can make a safe decision about her future.

I am adamant she will not return to her house, she needs to be in a care home either near me or near DB. (This is after facilitating her to leave 2 different care homes because she claimed she would go mad...). But I guess if she has mental capacity to decide to go back to her own house she then has mental capacity to arrange her own care because I am battle weary now.

cockroach all round, is it really only Monday?