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.

Dad's new care home has just announced arrangements for in person visiting. One per week, one nominated visitor. Lateral flow test and PPE required. Hand holding permitted so it sounds like i get to be in the room with him.

I feel this may be the only place I can admit that, to be honest, I'm dreading it. I feel like it's going to cause both of us more anxiety, not less. So many things have changed since last time I was in the same room as him. Will he even recognise me under all the gear. I guess I have to try and see how it goes. But it seems like every phase of this process just throws up new things to worry about - even the good ones!

Dint (and everyone else in the same boat) I am sorry that visiting is still not an option, it must really rub salt in the wound when so much publicity is being given to the new changes. I shout at the radio everytime someone witters on about the NHS being open for business - my experience is that doesn't include not audiology, nor the falls clinic or the memory service in a meaningful way.

MIL has started getting hospital letters calling her for the many appointments that were cancelled last year so I'm taking that as a positive sign.

dint I’m so sorry about the non visiting. And daal it must be so hard.
We get it on here. You can say the stuff others would not get.
minty glad you had a break at the weekend and can find some new routine which works for you And dd.
knot sounds like you are juggling so much. Spent ages last week explaining to mum that no, she couldn’t go to see her gp and would have a phone telecon.... most indignant.

Laugh or cry?

Last week DM insisted she'd lost her hearing aid when she took her mask off after coming back from the supermarket. I knew it had been in her ear when I helped her take her mask off so assumed it was lost either when she took her coat off or it had come loose where she'd been sitting to drink a cup of tea. DSis and I searched everywhere we could think of; nephews even turned the sofa upside down and took the bottom off in case it had gone down inside. I was lying on my stomach (not an easy task when you're unfit & overweight ) poking under a giant Victorian sideboard to see if it had been kicked under there, all the while fending off two very excited dogs. Then all of a sudden, Hallelujah! It's found. In her ear.

Fast forward to yesterday. We get in the car after a trip to Morrison's and DM declares her hearing aid lost. I go back into the store to retrace our route and ask if it's been handed in, with no luck. We fruitlessley search the car - under seats, between seats (my car desperately needs a good hoover and I'm banning eating in there, lol). We search her clothes and finally decide to give up and go home. Get home and there on the table, in its box, is her hearing aid.

Replacing them is either expensive and quick or free and a wait of several months. A loss would be worth crying over.

My first job when I arrive is to find hearing aids and glasses. As mum doesn't open the battery case when she takes them out (that turns them off) I can find them as they have spent all night whistling. The day that they were lost without trace was the day my car broke down and I couldn't get there, of course that was when the batteries went flat and they could hide silently. They turned up after ten days and numerous searches but I don't know where they had been. They appeared magically on the mantelpiece and that was that.

Oh knot my mum's hearing aids are the bane of my life. She'll get up and potter around for an age before putting them in. I can't understand why you wouldn't do it immediately like I reach for my glasses/contacts lenses.

As for laugh or cry...my dad announced after lunch yesterday that what he could really do with was 'a good cry...get it all out of my system, and - I know I shouldn't say this - but a good shag!'

Oh minty never a dull moment!!!

I hope everyone is okay, or as okay as possible

I didn't think there was much point starting a separate thread as probably all those who will answer are here

Does anyone know about BT Call Minder?

Mum is fairly well trained in ignoring nuisance calls. But today she had just paid for something on the phone and then got a call saying "your card has been fraudulently used abroad etc".

Cue panic. The last fraud call we got, they had actually cloned the bank's number so she doesn't want to call.

I'm sure it's nothing but would Call Minder prevent these calls?

As far as I can see, it prevents international calls - we can't do that because of relatives abroad

Withheld numbers - these calls mostly come from numbers that aren't with held.

Any ideas? She has been inundated with nonsense calls the last week.

Acorn we have BT Call Protect (actually so we don't get drunk phone calls in the early hours of the morning!)

It automatically screens out "spam" calls - no idea how it knows though! - you can set it specifically to bar withheld numbers or overseas calls, but most importantly for me you can set it to Do Not Disturb during certain hours but with certain VIP numbers still being allowed to get through. Mum's is set to me, the doctor, the Lifeline, her brother, and the ambulance service and everybody else is barred from getting through after 9pm. Anything else goes through to a specific mailbox and you can pick up the calls later.

I think mum has had something like 2000 spam calls diverted since we set it up.

Thanks Cattermole

We can't bar international or withheld though - well, we could but mum would have to return the call every time.

The scam calls always seem to come from a number anyway, not withheld.

What does it actually do, divert the call to the answer machine?

Can we have it so it filters out the calls it thinks are spam, but lets through international and withheld?

I know there's a list you can manage but mum doesn't want that. It would be a very large list.

It would be much better if she could relax but I was there once when a call came every hour from a cloned bank number, I think it was on the news! I don't know if the BT system could identify that?

It's actually quite sophisticated (BT in sophisticated technology shock!) - it has a list (?!!) of numbers it considers nuisance calls, and they get put through to a junk voicemail box.

• 1572, I think, so it can still be monitored if you're so minded.

You can bar withheld or overseas numbers although I know that wouldn't work for you, but the other thing it lets you block is unrecognised numbers ie made-up ones. Which might also be an option for you - anything that doesnt go through their computer as a real phone number gets sent to the 1572 bin. That might involve calls routed through Skype though, not sure.

It's certainly taken about 70% of mother's nuisance calls out. Some still get through but if it's one a week she's having a hard week of it.

Minty you are not alone with the random and unwanted insights into your father's libido. I have been granted far too much insight on that topic since mum died. Including his fond memories of the conversations he had to have with the other husbands, during what I used to remember as rather dull and tedious visits to mum's old school friends.

Thank you Cattermole

I'll see what mum thinks but even explaining this to her will be hard.

She won't disconnect the answer machine so if she ends up hearing a recorded version of "your card has been used" she will still panic.

Minty you are not alone with the random and unwanted insights into your father's libido.

I was in the car with my mother a couple of weeks ago when she suddenly pronounced out of the blue that "down there hasn't seen any action for years, not that I enjoyed it when it did". I was so shocked I nearly crashed the car!

@AcornAutumn you will be releived to know the 1572 mailbox is entirely remote, it's like 1471 so all the nuisance calls just mount up in the ether hopefully annyoying the hell out of the spammers.
If it goes into the junk box you don't even know it's there unless you go looking for it.

If she's good with the 1471 service, it's very similar to that. To be honest, my mum doesn't even engage with it. It just runs in the background filtering out the bottom feeders and periodically I log into her BT account with her and check how many scammers we've caught!

[quote Cattermole]@AcornAutumn you will be releived to know the 1572 mailbox is entirely remote, it's like 1471 so all the nuisance calls just mount up in the ether hopefully annyoying the hell out of the spammers.
If it goes into the junk box you don't even know it's there unless you go looking for it.

If she's good with the 1471 service, it's very similar to that. To be honest, my mum doesn't even engage with it. It just runs in the background filtering out the bottom feeders and periodically I log into her BT account with her and check how many scammers we've caught![/quote]
Sadly she won't disconnect her answering machine....she says having to check 1572 would stress her out. And she would check it in case she'd missed "an important call".

I thought of Call Guardian where the person has to announce themselves - but the automated message saying "your card has been used" will still come through won't it?

I'll speak to her later and see if she's calmed down. Google tells me there's a real rash of these going on at the mo.

I do feel really sorry for elderly people having to cope with this. I also heard there's been a whopping increase in internet banking fraud because so many elderly people were forced into it in lockdown.

Hi everyone.
Nn changer.
Soooo...my sister has asked mum to help her commit benefit fraud.
Cosmic.
She's on UC but will be getting circa £20k soon.
She has asked our mum to put the money in her account and not inform DWP of her new circs.
I'm beyond furious.
Mum "just wants to help"
Ffs.
Advice?
If it goes totally up and mum gets into trouble it'll be me that had to sort it out.
Ffs.

Bee "If it goes totally up and mum gets into trouble it'll be me that had to sort it out."

Not your circus.

And what could you do in any case? If they are accused of fraud, they will have to defend themselves.

If you run your mum's banking, stop now. Your sister must do it. You must not be implicated in fraud in any way. Yes, I have my best stern face on now.

acorn thanks for your response.
I'm mums POA (which isn't activated yet)
We had a whole thing a few weeks ago where she wanted help to sort something payments issues out for her with eon and Sky but wouldn't let me look at her bank statements.
Sorted that out and now this!
I thought my sister had been spending a lot of time with mum lately...sigh.
She's seeing my sister today (going to open mum a new bank account?) so no doubt I'll be getting a message later if mum says anything.
Yes, I'm going to have to step back from looking after her finances if she does this.
I'm also thinking to step cavk from being Finances LPOA?
I don't want any part of this.

I'm utterly furious with my sister about this but need to be careful what I say....if I start I may never stop!

I'm so tired

As mum doesn't open the battery case when she takes them out (that turns them off) Yes, a really heath robinson design isn't it? Asking to lose a battery overnight. I keep mine in a little box of cloves on my deck - I have to place it really carefully because I don't want to be rumaging in a heap of clothes to find the battery in the morning.

cloves not clothes. Sometimes my brain thinks it's a spellchecker.

Bee none of this is your responsibility. Tell both of them (a text will do) that you don't want to know about it or hear about it and that if anything goes wrong you won't be sorting it out. After that it's a firm "I'm not going to be involved in fraud" if it surfaces in conversation. Let them do whatever they are going to do while you put your fingers in your ears and go "lalalala".

Our local facebook page is reporting a spate of spam calls where the number has been set to mimic the first 5 digits of the person being called. Complete nonsense in the context of mobiles, but for those on a landline the number looks like a local call and persuades people to answer who otherwise would not have done.