How do you deal with the nastiness?

[NormaLouiseBates]

My 77 year old dad has always been a difficult man. Demanding, selfish, arrogant and generally a bit of an arsehole. Not all the time of course; he can also be charming, kind, generous and a lot of fun.

As he's got older and sicker he's got more and more unpleasant. He's currently in hospital with suspected sepsis and also awaiting confirmation of lung cancer (PET scan a couple of weeks ago, biopsy 10 days ago). His moods are swinging wildly from day to day. He's so rude to me, my brother and my mum and also to my adult daughter who he has always idolised. I don't know how much of it is the possible infection or if it's just old age or even the start of dementia. He's getting more and more confused too, telling us things that we know aren't true. Tonight he was accusing the nurses of stealing his medication. He's rude to the hospital staff too, it's so embarrassing and upsetting... he's racist, impatient and seems to think they're all out to get him. He's accused them of lying to him, waking him in the middle of the night to take his blood pressure for fun (wtf?) and refusing to give him his painkillers. All of these are untrue. We are there visiting him every single night and sometimes during the day too and I'm starting to dread every visit.

I can't kid myself that this is solely down to either illness or old age as he's always been an unpleasant man; it's just magnified lately.

How to deal with it though? Pull him up on every rude, nasty comment and we're either met with more aggressive rudeness or sulking and silent treatment. Try to ignore it and surely it's giving him the okay to continue? I'm so very tired. My poor mum is at her wits end with him and is dreading him coming home as she'll get the brunt of it then. With the cancer diagnosis a mere formality things are only going to get more difficult.

If anyone has been in a similar position I'd love to hear some coping strategies.

When we've pulled him up on his behaviour before he usually replies with something like "you don't understand what I'm going through, you don't know what it's like to be in this much pain" (he does have other conditions that do cause pain but he is on a lot of pain meds) usually accompanied by some crying; so of course then we feel guilty.

He really is a master manipulator I'm starting to realise...

So then you could say, 'I'm sorry you're in pain, but that doesn't give you the right to say such horrible things to hurt me. If you do it again, I'm leaving.'

Ideally your mum needs to be on the same page too. But I can imagine this will be really hard if she's put up with his behaviour for years.

I feel for you op. I have similar going on. He can make me feel so small. I've had to get stroppy with him and tell him when he's upsetting me. Sometimes visits are okay and I come out wondering why I've been dreading it but other times I come out so sad. Also he's very different with other sibling, not nasty like he's been with me

If he starts being rude and nasty can you say that he is obviously not up to having visitors at the moment, say goodbye and say you'll come back when he's feeling a bit better. Stay calm, don't argue, just leave.

Yes, I had this with my Dad; always been a bit arrogant but UTIs and probable vascular dementia made him really hard work, nasty, foul mouthed and self pitying and by the time he passed I didn't like him much at all. It's taken me a few years to forget all that and start grieving properly for the lovely dad I remember from my childhood.

As I suspected he was absolutely fine last night. Happy to see us (adult daughter came with me but I told my mum to have a night off) and chatting normally. He asked 2 or 3 times why my mum wasn't with us (so he's still confused and not quite himself) and each time I said quite pointedly "she's having the night off tonight Dad, she needed a break" and he just looked at me slightly sheepishly.

@headinhands I 100% get you. I came out of the hospital last night feeling annoyed that I had spent all day feeling nervous and dreading going to see him and all for nothing. But then who knows what this evening will bring?