The Cockroach Cafe Mark 3

[MereDintofPandiculation]

Morning all! regulars or newbies, coping with your oldies is a frustrating, exhausting and difficult business however much we love them. The Cockroach Cafe is open to all, a place to vent, rant, ask questions, get advice, and hopefully laugh too.

If your question is big, it's best to start a new thread, and get all the advice together in one place. But for everything else, the cafe is the right place.

For newbies: why cockroach? Yolo's DM attended a 'small animal event' in a nursing home, and was presented with a "small animal with a hard back" the name of which species she couldn't remember. Her ever helpful DB suggested cockroach, and it has become a toast on here. So cockroach mes amis/amies, and may you all live to fight another day.

Ditto Minty. I put off everything I possibly can for myself, but am getting inundated with messages about all sorts of things to sort for DM.

nota so sorry to hear this. It’s relentless isn’t it. When the agencies meant to be lifting the load add to it. 🌺

We always think of "caring" as being doing the shopping, helping with cooking, cleaning, lifts to doctors and hairdressers, and later, toileting, falls etc. But actually the admin can be what feels like a full time job in itself. I've now got one filing cabinet for household and personal, and another filing cabinet for my father's admin. And instead of doing one filing session a year when I sort and put away the heap of papers that has been growing under the desk in my study, I now have to do three.

It’s relentless. And lockdown means that instead of enjoying reading the Gardeners’ world mag I’ve given her, dm is busy finding things in the small ads she needs........
Heaven help me when I tell he4 edinburgh woollen mill is on line......

Been round here all day...managed to get home for an hour then had a call from mum to say she'd had to call an ambulance for dad. Took two hours for them to get here, can't do anything for dad who is OK-ish now, they are currently therapising my mother...God help them!

Minty Is it a positive that she called an ambulance rather than dithering about or calling you?

She called me first to ask what she should do. I said call an ambulance, she opted for the emergency button as we've been told that usually gets a result faster.

It took a couple of hours for them to get to us during which time dad settled. Asked carers if they thought we should cancel and they said no, given his confusion and they felt he might have a temp. About 30 seconds before they arrived Dad sat up in bed demanding tea and biscuits!

They checked him over - vitals ok. I mentioned how challenging mum is and they spent and hour or so with us after, gave mum a really good talking to about getting additional support in place etc.

They were amazing but this should be the GPs job, not the responsibility of a paramedic.

I got home at about 8pm and have had mainline Shepherds pie and an entire bottle of rioja

I thought that she'd been unusually decisive.

My husband had a call once that ran "I think your dad's having a heart attack, what should I do?" She didn't want to call for an ambulance, would he drive twenty minutes over there, take a look and call for one? It was the only time I heard him swear at his mother.

I'd already given him two doses of pain meds and spoken to the Echo team when I was there earlier so I can kind of see why she called me, and tbf she did get straight on the case.

Round 2 today apparently. Have had 3 messages from her already.

Latest is she's given him paracetamol this morning and since has had a full dose of oramorph and his is still in pain 'what shall I do? If it carries on I'll have to press the emergency button...'

Suggested she call the Echo team and explain he's had all the pain meds he can orally and needs someone to come out and administer the injectable stuff from under the stairs, and keep me updated:

"Oh don't worry about it, I'll sort it out..." and hung up on me.

The thing is, if I was at work I couldn't keep dropping everything and dealing with this kind of thing, and whilst I'm not at work today, it's a perfectly straightforward thing to address.

AIBU?

That's what the emergency button is there for....

The only way you can establish that she is not coping is by having a visible pattern of not coping. It's either that or that the simplest thing for her is not to do any thinking for herself but run it past Minty first.

Don't worry about what you will do when you get back to work. Today we'll get through today. Tomorrow can wait for tomorrow.

I rang back after 10 minutes to see what was happening and he was still in pain.

Have you called anyone

No

But he's still in pain

He doesn't need to be pumped full of drugs he needs a doctor ro come and see him and diagnose him properly

But that's going not to happen and in the meantime he's in pain...

I've called the Echo team and explained the situation and they are going to call Mum. I've told them what he's had and that he needs injectables. There's no point pressing the emergency button or calling 999 because he's logged as 'end of life' and therefore immediately goes to the bottom of the priority list.

I've also phoned the funding team (who I called on Monday and are supposed to reply within 24 hours) and left two fairly terse messages for them to call me back to discuss residential care.

Spoke to GP who said I can self refer back to counselling service and have have discovered some other local support organisations this morning.

Frankly I've had enough now. We simply can't care for him at home, Mum isn't up to the job and tbh she deserves not be having to deal with all this for whatever time she has left. He needs to be somewhere residential, and then mum needs to make a decision about her future and we'll sort it because when Covid is over, selfish or not, I want my fucking life back.

Great.

Echo Team asked GP to call me. They won't give him injectable (ie stronger) meds because he can still swallow so GP is now prescribing morphine tablets for me to pick up and take round.

He is in need of a review so they are sending the practice nurse out tomorrow...why they won't send an actual GP is anyones guess, although the last two have been a shower of shite anyway.

I feel like running away tbh...just to get a few days peace

I've been reading through this thread and so much of what posters are writing chimes with my experience with my elderly mother. I hope you don't mind me joining in now and again, even if it only to vent to others who understand and won't judge me as an unfeeling cow.

Welcome leatmarmite. Vent away, you will find plenty of sympathy and advice on here.

minty you might find the nurse helpful in convincing your dm to have more carers.
What has she done since paramedics talked to her? Does she feel a care home is best?
Keep pushing care for you.
marmite welcome- vent away. Regulars here listen and support but never judge. We get it.

Just got home.

I think mum is on board with looking at residential care options for him now, its just getting hold of the right people to make it happen as they are all working remotely so its a case of leaving messages and hoping they bother to call back. Have left 3 since Monday and will be calling every day and making a pain in the arse of myself as much as I have to.

The 'companion' has told her they can't message on FB anymore as 'he's been told its against the rules'. Mum is now convinced someone has reported their illicit friendship. I suspect he's finally realised how non-existent her boundaries are tbh.

Anyway she's devastated and I am sad for her as she's going through enough but it should never have reached this point. Going to try and do something fun with her tomorrow afternoon/evening.

Dad was fine was I left after feeding him a ham and cheese omelette and a yoghurt, and he's got the slow release morphine now if needed.

Welcome marmite sorry you've had to deal with this crap as well.

I did the Adur Carers Project session on OU Free Courses this morning. So many of the difficulties of being a carer...lack of support, not feeling listened to by medical/social care professionals resonated.

Then I realise the interviews I was listening to were carries out 21 years ago

Minty It may be the first time the companion has run up against it but the guidelines on maintaining a separation between professional and private activities are there for a reason. It's as much for his protection as for the clients.

I do hope you get a residential placement sorted out quickly.

Oh I know Knot...I've worked in education for 12 years, the principles aren't radically different.

Trying to explain that to mum is like trying to nail jelly to a fence post

He is in need of a review so they are sending the practice nurse out tomorrow...why they won't send an actual GP is anyones guess Presumably a Nurse Practitioner, who is allowed to prescribe. Part of the attempt to reduce loads on GPs. The weekly visit to my father's nursing home is done by a nurse practitioner, who can deal with most things, occasioanlly going back for discussion with a GP.

I know...and the nurse practitioner can be lovely, but the last couple of times she's come out, she's spent precisely 20 seconds with him, declared he's asleep them buggered off.

The last two doctors we've had out have literally stood in the sitting room after looking at him and said 'what do you want us to do?"

Last time I replied "Are you saying we just have to keep struggling on as we are and wait for a crisis to happen?" and he just shrugged his shoulders and said "pretty much".

You can see why I'm disillusioned. The paramedics that came out the other day were horrified, the carers can't understand why the hospice won't help and said they can only assume that GP hasn't stated his needs clearly enough for them to realise the condition he's in.

At the moment it feels like I spend every day banging my head against a brick wall of useless agencies and mum's antics. I'd planned things on Tuesday PM, yesterday PM and this morning, all of which I've had to put off.

But then something happens with Dad and it just takes the edge of. I stayed to feed him his dinner last night and when he conceded defeat with 3 mouthfuls left, he said to me "You're more determined than your mother, I'll give you that," and then agreed to a yoghurt for pudding

I know...and the nurse practitioner can be lovely, but the last couple of times she's come out, she's spent precisely 20 seconds with him, declared he's asleep them buggered off. Oh dear, not a very good one then.

Our NP is male, so my father assumes he's a GP. But he doesn't think much of him. "Complete twit" was one phrase that was used.

Surprisingly productive phone call this morning from a hospital consultant. I got DM referred to a dermatologist in Sept for what I suspect is a recurrence of skin cancer. She drew a pic of the area affected plus some other bits she wanted looked at. When the appointment came around DD had to take her as I was working, and they didn't actually look at the bit she had been referred for, but the other obvious bits on her face. They hadn't let DD go in with her, and clearly didn't look at the diagram.

On my to do list has been trying to work out how on earth to follow this up, and where to start. Consultant phones me out of the blue with the results of the biopsy, letting me know she will need treatment, I use the opportunity to ask them to look at the right bit next time. He said I need to tell them 'left temporal scalp' when she goes in.

God bless the NHS, but what would happen if DM didn't have a 'daughter round the corner' to sort all this?

Our NP is male, so my father assumes he's a GP. But he doesn't think much of him. "Complete twit" was one phrase that was used.

She was out first thing this morning and the funding peeps have called about finding him a residential place.

He's not good this morning. Told me he's been been having delusions for three months (we'd realised obviously) and is half asleep but seems to be interacting with some unseen entity atm. He was talking about him mum yesterday. She died nearly 40 years ago so that was a bit creepy.