The new shiny 2019 thread for anyone caring for elderly parents

[thesandwich]

Continuing the long running series of threads. 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!
And a few laughs and the odd cockroach or gin....

Beware whinge post so scroll on by if not in the mood!

How do you cope with it all,how do you manage to do everything and your own life or even be poorly yourself!

Crisis phone call this morning from Mum about her heating making a funny noise. We get a lot of funny noise phone calls and a lot of hysteria. This time she has been told to turn off her heating but is in a major panic and unable to follow instructions.

I need to go to see her but have been off work myself ill all week and really do not have the strength but will have to get out of bed to sort her out.

The emergency/paniced calls are relentless and demand immediate attention not sure I have the energy or where with all to deal with this. so often.....

Just popping in to send🌺🌺 to detox- whinge away. No answers but huge sympathy.

How do you cope with it all,how do you manage to do everything and your own life or even be poorly yourself! No idea! I tried to do it all and manage at least part of my own life, then I went down with flu. Now I can't do anything. Walked 1/4mi round to my Dad's and had to have a sit down half way there. Thought I might get a day off today, then just after breakfast got a "heavy breathing" phone call - could just make out it was DS1, who has lost his voice, asking for a lift home after work. Fortunately DH agreed (no way do I trust myself to drive at the moment), and has spent the rest of the morning sitting in front of a fire trying to think. DS1 is back in bed. I blame my DF for all of this, getting himself into hospital just before Christmas, what did he think he was playing at!

thanks theSandwich much appreciated and you have nicely sidetracked me from my whinge by how you did those pretty flowers . I can only do

Mere so sorry for your stressful Saturday - Iam with you in spirit! bugger that does not ease your load though

Wow - this is a great thread. I wish I’d found it last year! My mum died over Christmas and I have to say that it was a big relief. She had had dementia and things had been getting almost unbearably difficult.

We now have to figure things out for my dad who is 90 and still living in the family home.
I am getting incredibly anxious about his health, he seems to have gone downhill rapidly in the last 2 weeks, but also the speed with which he seems to want to sell the house and move into a local retirement community (independent living
Place where he will have his own flat). The funeral was this week and the estate agent is coming round on Monday! I am concerned with whether or not this place is appropriate for someone who may (or may not?) need additional care at some point in the near future. It is also mind-boggglingly expensive and I am concerned about the longer term implications of this kind of property.

Anyway nice to “meet” you all - I know how very difficult it is to be in this situation.

The way to avoid SWs relying on you is to put on a very strong New York accent and channel your inner Travis Bickle, look in the mirror a lot and say "you talking ta me? You talking ta me?"

Thanks, detox by I managed to deflect most of the stress on to other people! So far I have been dabbling in mumsnet, cleaned the kitchen so DH could skip his usual Sat am super-clean, and I've done an on-line groceries order. So I feel I've been super-productive!

I have read this section avidly for the last 12 months plus, and lurked mostly but posted once when picklemepopcorn was ever so kind to me.
This /these threads were a source of such solace, wise words and information and helped me get through the last year. Mum passed away 28/12 after 6 weeks in hospital.
The end was tough going, she hung on far longer than any of us thought possible but eventually she let go. We had had the loveliest possible visit the day before, lots of us came including grandchildren making the long journey for the final time. I sang to mum, and I think she heard me. Then the next day she "stopped breathing" There was no dreaded call to say she was about to go, she just "stopped breathing"
The staff on the ward were wonderful. Kind to a fault and willing to sit by their patients' beds if they were anxious and needed comforting. They comforted us as well- just simple things like trays of tea and biscuits, even sandwiches on one fraught occasion. Unutterably kind.
And now, after nearly 63 years of having a mum I don't have her any more. And there's a great big mum shaped hole in my life which I have no idea how to fill.
Her funeral has been delayed because two family members had holidays booked and we all agreed that mum wouldn't mind if we waited but lors it has made it hard going.
I have written her eulogy and I will grit my teeth and deliver it- she deserves it to be one of us saying the goodbye . If it has to be read whilst tears roll down my face then sobeit.

Silly thing- we were pranged up our rear end yesterday by a complete idiot and all I wanted to do when I got home was to ring mum. But I will never ring her again and that just makes me ache.
I couldn't have wished for her to stay, her life had almost come to a halt, she spent much of the last 6 months sleeping, hugging her little dog to her. But every time I arrived her face lit up and she made me feel so very very loved and I just hope she knew how much we all loved her. I think she did.

I am so very sorry, Threetoedsloth

I'm sure she knew how much you loved her.

Threetoedsloth I'm really sorry to hear that

Apologies for navel gazing folks. I had a realisation today that I had earlier, immediately after dad's death - which is that I find the idea of taking responsibility for someone else really hard and I still have that sense of having a child to look after, when I was always someone who didn't want children!

This has been triggered by more stress from mum about what I consider to be ordinary everyday stuff (bank related). I suppose it's one thing if I get things wrong for me, but if I get anything wrong while acting for her, it's going to give her a panic attack, even if it's minor.

she is really working hard on all this and she said to me today that she was unhappy with herself for not being stronger and she feels I am under too much pressure. But after acknowledging it - what do we do then to fix it? She said something to me like "do you think you should go on a finance course" - I pointed out that I run my own bank accounts and shares etc without any trouble and asked what she thinks I could learn. and she said "well you might be able to help me more". but the trouble is, her questions are things like "why is this tax calculated in this way" - bloody hell, I don't know, ask HMRC!!

I get doubly frustrated because she goes on about this for ages, and I'm used to living alone, so not accustomed to having someone doing stream-of-consciousness prattle, and then also I think, why on earth is she thinking so deeply about all this?! And if anyone saw my post on probate, because she won't do anything on a computer, any query she has involves her writing letters, so now she is fretting about how long people take to get back to her, when actually everything is perfectly fine, there's money in the bank etc.

sometimes I think she does it because it takes her mind off grief?

yolo Notaflying
Our house hasn't been assessed by any NHS workers, but she has been living here with poor mobility for a number of years. The OT at the hospital also promised a look around, but of course that never materialised due to the intermediate care. Her bed is like the Princess and the Pea's, so we'll take a few layers of that to make it a normal height.

Private care is now organised, 3x a day - no help from local services. TBH, we used these carers for a week when she broke her arm - they're local and lovely. In fact, they're the only people who've assessed the house for safety!

Dm was very confused today. Very paranoid about the home. At least they've stopped all the useless meds she was taking (several of which were exacerbating the problems), so we won't have to get them down her .

I'm really hoping the doctor will help in some way.
(I'm rambling - sorry)

I suppose I'm also wondering - those who do paperwork for elderlies, do you just do it and not show them anything? Because that's what I'd want to do, but mum's plan for me to do it would be that she could ask me millions of questions instead of asking the bank or the solicitor.

gutrotweins you are the second person I've heard saying about an elderly parent having a bed like princess and the pea. I'm wondering what it's about?

Detox it’s ipad icon magic!!!🤪🤪🏅🏅🔨🐾. Glad it distracted you.
sloth so sorry about your dm. You will do her proud at her funeral. So sorry for your loss.
🍷🍷to everyone- hope you soon feel better dint and grace it is really early days...... sounds like your mum is really trying to do stuff but not making it easy. It must be a distraction from grief. Just take it really gently and look after yourself. cockroach everyone- can’t find icon.
yolo thinking of you.

Her bed is like the Princess and the Pea's DF is the same. A divan, and then another foam mattress on top, which is shorter than the divan mattresses, and which keeps shifting so that it overhangs and tips him on to the floor. I think it's the "make do and mend" mentality. He wants the third mattress for height, but is suggesting that we instead stand the bed feet on 6inch block of wood - what could possibly go wrong? He also wants us to bolt the wardrobe to the wall so he can use the doorknob to pull himself upright. And it's impossible to find out what he actually needs, for example if we had a bar fixed to the wall, where he would need it, because a) he can't hold a coherent conversation long enough to explain what he needs and b) "not invented here" so it won't be any use anyway.

Grace when I took over some of DFs paperwork, I did it on the condition that I would not tell him anything about it ever. His idea would be that, eg, a savings bond would mature. I would print out for him all the small print for every possible savings bond that he could move the money to, he would read all the small print in fine detail, then talk to me about it in fine detail (incidentally getting everything muddled up), worry about losing all his money because of some obscure clause that he didn't understand, until finally, months later, he would make his decision, and I would find out that the chosen bond was no longer available and we'd start all over again. Sounds like your Mum might go the same way! So I suggest you activate PoA only for things she agrees to hand over to you entirely.

SS seem to think it's so easy - they make a suggestion like "we'll put up a grab rail" or "he can have a call alarm", and have no idea of the hours of "discussion" that go into persuading the elderly to accept the idea. I think they just think we're not looking after our elderly very well. They'll find out, when they have elderlies of their own to look after!

cockroach The Archers board managed to get MN to produce them an Archers icon (a pub sign with a bull on it). Would we get anywhere asking for a cockroach?

Grace- my DH and I ran mum's finances this last year. Mum had been very independent up until being very poorly Christmas 2017. Just before she fell ill she had (thank goodness) given us PoA.
When mum first came out of hospital she retained some interest in her financial affairs but we batted her off because she would have fretted terribly about the cost of private carers 4 times a day.
She quickly stopped asking about her accounts and let us run "Mum Ltd" without any fuss.
I appreciate that your mum still very much has capacity (as did my mum for the first two or three months of last year) and I understand completely that your mum asking a million and one questions will be terribly stressful for you. I do feel for you. You are in an invidious position.
Thanks for the kind thoughts. I do appreciate the good wishes and flowers.

Threetoedsloth I posted on the bereavement board a bit after dad died....things like junk mail still upset me. It's a nice board but it can be a bit overwhelming, though perhaps that's the situation rather than the board.

re financial stuff and control, I have no objection to mum doing it 100% herself if she didn't ask a million questions or have panic attacks. I'm hugely impressed with how quickly she has learned a lot of stuff.

but as Dint says, the million questions is how delays will happen and things will go wrong - and at the moment, she has a lot of letters to write, which she wants to hand write, meaning she'll do a draft, do a second, then ask me to check it, then check it over herself 100 times while muttering and asking me not to leave the room....

I appreciate that she and I have honest conversations about this, I think that's very big of her that she's not lost her temper (even though I have!) but I just can't see how to move forward when the help she wants is the kind of help I wouldn't give if you paid me. Like if you said "here is a job being PA to someone who lives in the Victorian age" as I posted on the probate board when I started on that....

also she refuses to let me put in any kind of filing system. She and dad apparently thought it was logical that the car insurance document was in a biscuit tin full of other random papers in the kitchen, the bank statements are in random drawers upstairs in no order, the tax receipt for the car might be in a handbag.....I mention the idea of a simple file and mum has kittens, because to her, the random dotting around the house is logical - presumably because she's kept her car insurance in a biscuit tin for years!

the beds - so that is a thing? But why do people want high beds? The last mattress dad bought was a disaster - too high and didn't really fit the bed. Mum couldn't face telling him to change it and now says she's used to it, but even when I sit on the bed for a moment, I feel like I'm about to slide off it!

why would people losing mobility want a bed that's hard to climb into?!

sloth I am so sorry for your loss, and you sound like a wonderful daughter and she will have known how much she was loved.

The princess and the pea: mum was like this, with the bed on extra wooden blocks, plus at least 12 pillows she could sleep propped upright. I am not sure this was good, as the minute she woke up she'd get up and fall over, ad infinitum, rather than waiting til she'd properly woken up. She did have a furniture route, luckily it was all pretty stable/solid until she got to the door into the bathroom.

For Sale board went up on her house today which has made DD2 very sad. First viewing today - no feedback yet - and another lot coming on Mon.

why would people losing mobility want a bed that's hard to climb into?! Because getting out is a bigger problem. When your thigh muscles have gone, it's difficult to stand up up your bum is lower than your knees, and a bed doesn't have a pair of convenient arms to lever yourself up with like an armchair does. So it's easier to have a really high bed so that you slither down into a standing position, if you see what I mean.

Dint I hadn't thought of that, how depressing.

this is why I worry about mum's weight loss - I appreciate some people just get thinner as they age but she will be losing lots of muscle mass as well.

sorry I keep double posting

in terms of how depressing it all is....I posted a couple of weeks back about a contact who moved in with elderly parents and seems to be handling all this just fine, in fact is much happier than before.

I have since met a couple of other people also living with elderlies, complete with high bed stories - and they seem to be fine with it. They have factors like the ones I have - gives them a chance to live in a nicer area and do less job work - but they have definitely become more cheerful and accepting of their elderlies in terms of weathering how depressing it is. Perhaps it just takes time. I had to be careful how much I asked them about their experience because I don't know them that well.

We have princess and the pea bed syndrome with DM and it's exactly as Mere says - it's easier to slide out of. But heck, watching her painfully inch her way into it is hard to do

Funny someone should mention junk mail. A crappy catalogue arrived today addressed to DF......he died in 2007.....

Grace if she's losing subcutaneous fat, you'll also need to keep an eye on bedsores - she can get those from sitting down too long. Current thinking on cushions is thick wodge of foam with a layer of memory foam on top. And get up once an hour and get the blood flowing back into the bum.

I really don't want to get that old.