The second new shiny 2019 thread ...

[MereDintofPandiculation]

... for anyone caring for elderly parents. Come and join us to ask for, or to give, sympathy, ask for advice, or have a good rant.

Brilliant news Yolo, I'm so pleased for you and your DH, it's been a grim few months for you both.

Hope your head isn't too sore this morning!

(10/10 for pissed typing).

yolo wonderful wonderful news!!!!!! So happy for you!!🌺🌺🌺

Wonderful, yolo!

yolo that's great news, really pleased to hear that.

Bert sorry, that must be so hard. Is it just respite or will your dad have any extra help when mum returns?

Dint I guess if you like going through that stuff, it helps. But I find it all boring, depressing etc. I live in a small flat, so no chance to accumulate stuff, and I'm really overwhelmed by the amount of stuff, I just find it mad, though I'm sure it's normal for 30+ years in a house.

Part of my frustration is definitely that I would just bin it and mum thinks it's a shocking waste if someone, somewhere in the universe might want it. I talked to mum about how it was stressing me out. She apologised and said "I thought it was light hearted conversation, working out what to do with things".

I said "it makes me feel as if you are adding to my endless to-do list when you want suggestions about how to dispose of specific things - but also, I don't understand why it doesn't just get binned".

She said she'd deal it with herself from now and apologised for stressing me out. I was thinking about how we communicated with each other and how it is influenced by who we are. One of the issues, I think, is that mum doesn't really believe a single childfree woman can be stressed out by just a job and commuting etc.

she likes to be busy. I don't. I feel busy enough.

You know there's an "unspoken judgement" thing that maybe goes on in some families? Both mum and dad are do-ers - dad did a huge amount of charity work on top of his job. I find the thought of all the things they did at my age absolutely exhausting.

I have also told my mother that I won't spending the night there this weekend, so I'll be there most of tomorrow but not tonight. I said that going forward, I really need to think about how we do things because it's not relaxing for me to stay there. I think she found that a bit sad but I had to say it. When Dad was alive, I never thought to stay overnight there - just always wanted my own home and own bed.

Well done Grace! Staying over away from home is a huge ball-ache, dressed up as "saving you a trip". Ugh.

Mum is in for 2 weeks. She settled ok so Dad and I (and maybe the boy) will visit her tomorrow. See how that goes. When she comes out Dad will still have a companion carer coming in 3 hours 3 days a week, but it is a drop in the ocean. He'll be exhausted again in 48 hours, she consumes energy and attention, and he gets no sleep. I hope he will realise it is unsustainable. I try and take her away when I am off work, but it is so hard, she just wants him. She's like an incubus or succubus or whatever.

Bert to be fair, I did really embrace staying over there initially. Where I live is quite rough, I'm sandwiched between pubs that now have late licences and Friday and Saturday is a nightmare.

so when I first stayed there, I was quite overawed by the peace and quiet and niceness of it all.

I'm not saying I won't stay over again at all - I think I'm just in a phase where I need to spend time at home, especially returning to work as well - I literally get cravings for my sofa!

Be it ever so beset by vomiting screaming drunkards, there's no place like home

Bert "when she comes out Dad will still have a companion carer coming in 3 hours 3 days a week, but it is a drop in the ocean. He'll be exhausted again in 48 hours, she consumes energy and attention, and he gets no sleep."

so this is the situation as it stands, and the plan is to return to it in 2 weeks?

how was your mum in terms of agreeing to this 2 weeks? I wonder if perhaps 2 weeks in the home might help her to see that this is too much.

not sure of the ages of your parents....I know there are a lot of elderly looking after each other, but I would have thought that's not realistic beyond just "keeping an eye". Is the lack of sleep due to worrying? Also the "companion carer" thing - I understand he might not want to go out, but could he chill out and read a book or something when the carer is there?

Mum doesn't have the capacity to agree to anything. She has severe cognitive impairment. She has no capacity to understand the burden she places on us. She has no understanding of anything but that she is frightened and confused and she wants Dad right there right now. Every minute. If he leaves the room she pursues him. I can more or less keep her from going, but if he is in the house she will hunt him down.

It's horrific. They are both 80. He worships the ground she walks on, inexplicably to the rest of the world. He could quite easily kill himself trying to care for her, it is astonishing that he has agreed to this step.

Watching this, I have begged my partner not to do this if I go the same way. It is unbearable to watch.

Fantastic news, yolo!

Still plodding on here. All I can do is echo the advice about self-preservation. My mother too wants to make plans for the upcycling/recycling of every item in the house, which I would then have to implement - it’s time-consuming and exhausting.

Just sharing my good news - Dad was noticeably more agile when I saw him on Friday; my son brought me chocolates for no other reason than "I had a good day at work and I wanted to share the happiness around" and we spent today stroking cats as the first step in finding a new set to share our home (or as DH said - put the house back to normal). I don't know what tomorrow will bring, but tonight is good.

My mother too wants to make plans for the upcycling/recycling of every item in the house, which I would then have to implement My Dad wanted me to continue his one off donations to umpteen charities. I told him no way. Told him to decide what percentage of his worldly wealth he wanted to give to charity and we'd sort it in one lump sum - but no way am I going spend my life deciding "now which of Dad's charities shall I give £10 to this week?".

I too have a house full of stuff which needs recycling. I've made a list for the children which points out which stuff might be worth more than £5, and which stuff ha sentimental value and why, then they can decide what to do. But it make me sad that stuff I value effectively dies with me. I'm making an effort to enjoy all my nice stuff on a daily basis (and not to acquire any more).

Yes, one of the reasons I don't want to deal with my mother's stuff (or rather I don't want to deal with it in the way she envisages) is that I'm already struggling with the houseful of random tat priceless objets d'art we have here. It's hard enough decluttering here, without mother assuming that, because retro and vintage are in fashion, everything in her house is valuable and I must take it to be auctioned (and, arch capitalist that she is, when we did auction something she was miffed that the auctioneers took commission).

Monica what do you do then, have you actually dealt with any of it?

There's a bunch of crap being collected from mum's this week and then I think even she's had enough. Well I hope so. She seemed really tired yesterday.

apologies if repeating myself but I think sometimes what brings me down is what she looks like rather than how she actually is. She has lost a huge amount of weight, is permanently freezing and wrapped in shawls, and looks a lot older than she is - all since dad died. But when I offer to do certain things - yesterday it was planting something in a pot - she looks baffled and says "well I'm perfectly capable of doing that". The fact she looks as if she might snap like a twig is probably freaking me out.

Nothing is ever straightforward. Just back from seeing surgeon. There are 2 possible ops: one complete removal including anus, so bag for life (there's a joke in there somewhere), the other a resection so just a temporary bag but with potential very nasty side effects including dual incontinence and the possibility that then couldnt switch to permanent bag option. Plus, the tumour seems to be fixed to something, which means they would need to take a much wider lump out.

No decisions yet, his case goes back to MDT on Thurs and he will call us Thurs night. If case too difficult for local hospital means we will have go to another one about two hours away. Rather takes away the elation of Friday night, but ho hum.

Yolo

Oh yolo 🌺🌺🌺🌺

{{{{{yolo}}}}}

Oh, yolo. Have a hug or supportive squeeze of the hand, as you prefer.

Grace - I’m studiously doing nothing. We’re at an impasse, although occasionally she donates to the local jumble sale.

yolo I'm so sorry today has been disappointing. Hope the MDT can come.up with some more options/reassurance on Thursday.

Dint your DH and DS sound lovely. I have just read the chocolate story out to DD in the hope she takes the hint, although tbf I want to go beach horseracing when we going hols in October and need to shift at least 2.5 stone to reach the weight limit . 4lb down...31 to go!

I'm lucky in that my mum is something of a minimalist and she and dad don't really have any hobbies - they also have very different taste to me. Dad's little used art stuff will be absorbed into my collection when the time comes along with some of his books (mum's extensive collection of Princess Di conspiracy theory tomes can go to the charity shop!). Aside from probably a couple of drawers worth of personal memorabilia there won't be a lot to sort when the time eventually comes.

Yolo. Sorry that's awful

Hug sent from here too Yolo xx

Yolo
This might be tmi, and apologies if it is, but when my mum had her permanent colostomy ( although by then cancer was very advanced and in reality she only lived 11 further weeks ) But because they did not remove the anus ,she still lost ( let's call it secretions ) and had to wear pads/ nappies. She was never told this and it was a terrible shock for her.

yolo sorry to hear that. I hope if the MDT meeting will bring better news. It sounds as if there are some "to be confirmed" factors there?

Monica so you mean your mum waffles on about it and you just listen?

I have to say, it's turned into a bit of a Pavlovian reaction for me. She had a bunch of crap taken by a charity shop today. Then she called and said to me "at some point we will have to think what else could be useful for charity".

and I said "why WE? I am not giving headspace to the mountains of crap, you are stressing me out".

and she said "oh sorry, I don't mean to stress you out, I just say "we" because I think of it as your house too. I won't ask you to look at anything this time".

I really do not want to think of the crap mountain as having anything to do with me. I know she thinks she's doing me a favour so I won't have to pay for skip hire or something when she's gone, but in reality, if there are a squillion bits of crap, and she gets rid of them slowly, then there will still be a squillion bits of crap to move if she goes into a retirement home.

yolo husband of a friend of my DH has had a colostomy bag for about 10 years. He has a very active life, mostly spent with horses, and I've never been conscious of it (I'm thinking of htinks like needing to know where the nearest toilet is) so try not to be too scared of the "bag for life" option.

Grace If your Mum has lost weight, she will be feeling the cold more. And if she's being more sedentary than usual, that will make it leas easy for her to generate her own heat. Hence shawls.

Dad keeps wanting to sort out his house so it's less bother for us. It would actually be less bother for him to leave us the whole lot, because then we can make our own decisions as to what needs to be kept. (I keep telling him information is valuable only if it can be retrieved; and that random boxes of papers, newspapers and photographs do not count as a retrievable data repository)