The Cockroach cafe -new look for spring 2021

[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, with a refurbishment to celebrate the coming of Spring, 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? Previous long term resident of "Elderly Parents" 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.

(((Hugs))) @Jenthefredo being torn between the two is shite as is the fear for the future.

Mum's having trouble with her leg...excema and swelling due to poor kidney function and now it's weeping apparently. She has a UTI at the moment as well and is due her second Pfizer on Saturday...God help me!

Thank you x
I bought her a small air conditioner unit for the flat which I sorted out earlier which is helping keep the flat cool - her copd seems to be weather related (too hot, too cold)
Just hoping I don't get a phone call tonight. I feel so ill. (Migraine)
I suppose I just thought that at nearly 50 life would be a bit easier

Your poor dad minty
I'm so glad he's finally getting some proper medical care and you are getting a break. I can't believe he was left for so long so ill.
Does your mums leg need a district nurse visit for dressing?
My next fight is with the Dr surgery to get mum a rescue pack of medicines for when this happens again.
Sigh.

I think mum will need to call the surgery in the morning...she's diabetic as well so it's not great.

The thing with dad is that we were given a prognosis of 1-3 months a year ago - when they thought he had cancer, and due to Covid and homes being in lockdown we opted to keep him at home.

It appears that he is 'just' suffering with frailty which means that Marie Curie and Macmillan won't get involved (we couldn't get a diagnosis anyway as he was too frail), and whatever the GP has told the hospice back in August and November, they have rejected the referral on the grounds he 'doesn't need specialist palliative care'.

So he's bedridden, doubly incontinent, partially sighted, has little motor function in his hands so needs help to eat and drink, severe speech issues, intermittent severe pain, confusion and non responsiveness...

But all the time we can ram enough oramorph and diazepam into him to keep him pain free and oblivious were just expected to get on with it.

My friend's dad was put on a morphine driver yesterday which will inevitably hasten his demise, and honestly my first feeling was envy...I so wish someone would end my dad's suffering.

I will answer everyone tomorrow

But just to say Minty, I haven't been on for the beginning of your dad's health issues but was puzzled myself because it all sounds like the condition many of my mother's side had, they lived in very frail states for ages, with the problems you describe.

But what's the cancer? Are they even sure?

I am about to have another couple of drinks before bed, I hope this will help ensure I don't make old bones!

PS just to be clear,
I didn't drink before lockdown

Please don't blame mum who has been a good girl today! 😂

Grim poo-related content to follow, so skip this post if you want.

DM's carer messaged me yesterday to say her episodes of diarrhoea that doesn't make it to the toilet are increasing, and that she - the carer - has had to clean four lots of it in a week. DM just leaves it and puts her soiled clothes etc in a pile in the bathroom. Getting her to wear the incontinence pants is hit and miss. This has been going on for a year or so, and I've spoken to the GP about it who suggested a meds change, but that when she phoned DM to ask her about it, DM of course denied such a thing.

I am in awe of the carer, but I really have no idea what I should be doing about it all.

My life isn't quite turning out as I'd hoped at nearly 50
I think a lot of us have that feeling Jenthefredo

Totally with you on the feeling torn - this week I am pulled between DD2 who is in the middle of a series of year 11 assessments for which she is under-prepared and stressed, DH whose mental health is variable and is currently on a downward trajectory and Dad who is at the end of his six week nursing home placement and needs some decisions made, all of which fall to me.

It's clear he needs to stay in a residential home, but is now articulate enough to say that he doesn't want to. The home he's in turns out to be the most expensive in the area (because it was recommended by friends and I didn't have enough notice to do much research).

I'm happy that they are meeting his needs - he looks better looked after, better fed and fitter than he has at any time over the last year living at home. But when I visited last week he was very restless and has started claiming that they are "beating him up on a regular basis". I'm almost completely sure that this is all in his head, because he doesn't understand or accept that he's needing a lot of physical support to keep him safe. The home's take on things is that he's not as steady on his feet as he thinks he is, and needs a lot of support, and sometimes persuasion to get back into bed and not stagger into other residents' rooms in the middle of the night. And also that he's fighting them off when they are trying to help .

I'm just so bloody tired and on the verge of tears all the time. And my boss has started jumping up and down about deadlines that aren't being met (by the whole team, not just me) which is frankly because there aren't enough hours in the day even if I didn't have all this stuff going on in my head.

Sorry for the rant. I've got it easier than many of you, but this morning it all feels a bit much.

nota I didn't realise that carers would clean fecal incontinence. Do they do carpets, flooring, chairs etc too? If so that might be the edge needed to get carers into the house for someone I know. It goes without saying that the person concerned is too polite to be able to say the word "incontinence" to the gp so is also ignoring the problem. It's starting to become an issue because she she is running out of family who will clean floors.

I know that has totally missed the point of your question. What should you do? DM has to talk to the doctor which means she has to accept that there is a problem. They deal with it all of the time, it's so common that there is an incontinence service. Is there someone she will be able to talk it through with first, practise her words with? It's not a topic much discussed and it's hard when you don't even know what words to use.

daal I'm sorry to hear of your troubles. Its all so exhausting isnt it?
My ds1 is in y13 and has his final exams/assessments/tests whatever the bloody hell they are calling them this week when he goes back after Easter so its revision time here 😬
He handed his coursework in for history and geography last week so that was a load off and just heard he got an A* for history 😁
Dh usually travels a lot for work and is feeling a bit hemmed in I think and I'd quite like a break from him too!
Dentists today 😬

Oh, and I've got a weird rash...

I had not realised that there is an incontinence service either, until being contacted by a special incontinence nurse after person I was caring for had been in hospital. I had been buying disposable pants for years but she immediately got them supplied to us on NHS, some special cream too.

Chicken That sounds really difficult for you, everyone needing support at the same time. I compared it this week to the plate spinning acts that used to be popular, I'm good enough to keep a certain number spinning but add more and some will start to wobble.

Over the last three months I've switched to not believing a word mum says unless there's proof. I know she is not a reliable witness, her memories are clear but she can't tell whether it happened yesterday or fifty years ago. At the start it was hard because she was so adamant but then when she switched tack into things that could not ever in a million years be happening it made me reevaluate the things she'd said previously that I'd raised an eyebrow at.

Does your dad have capacity? He can say that he wants to be at home without having the understanding of what that really means.

The carer will clean the toilet, but not the floors, carpets, etc. Frankly, I can't keep on top of it so I have bought DM some carpet cleaner and suggested she tries. She insists it is butter from where she has dropped toast.

She is too proud/stubborn/demented to accept that it is her fecal matter, but also insistent that she stays in her own home etc. I cannot/will not go over every day to clean her shit off the carpets, because I am just not a very nice person/good daughter. So I think that leaves us with the carers wanting to escalate matters - but I don't know what to.

nota
I wouldn't clean my mums shit up either on a regularly basis so I'll join you on the bad daughter bench if I may??
I will do what I can for as long as I can...after that it'll ge a home or my sister can take over hahaha hahaha (hysterical laughter..)

I'll budge over to make a space for you on the bench fredo

I know other people here love their parent(s) but DM has never been particularly nice or supportive to me throughout my life, criticised me constantly, so I'm afraid that I do what I do for her I do out of obligation, but I'm not going to go along with her when she claims the pile of shit on her bedroom floor is butter.

Budge up on the bench... another one here. Cleaning up shit on aregular basis will not happen here.
I think it was need who said we do it because of who we are when the parent hasn't treated us well in the past.
🌺🌺to all.

Been there on the clearing up shit. I remind myself of washing his bedsheets when I'm wavering about whether he needs more care than I'm capable of giving (clue - he does!)

Knotaknitter you have hit the nail on the head. Dad's capacity is described as "fluctuating" but it's more often off then on. He has no realistic idea what it would be like to be at home with the level of support that he now needs. And his flat isn't suitable for providing that level of care.

"I'm not going to go along with her when she claims the pile of shit on her bedroom floor is butter" that sounds like a perfectly reasonable place to draw the line!

Nota can you ask the care agency what happens when the client has no family local enough to clean up? Presumably there is a specialist cleaner out there that we don't know about. I did a search for "biohazard cleaning" and found somewhere locally but no way would they pay for something that they can guilt someone into doing for free.

I've done it once, on carpet through the living room, hall, stairs and landing then a poonami all through the bathroom. I've done laundry during a couple of weeks in hospital with food poisoning, even with it double bagged in the boot the smell had me gagging by the time I got home. It's too difficult for them to ask for a referral to the incontinence service but not too difficult to summon me (I wasn't asked but told) to clear up. I am now on the no-poop bench, I told The Family that it was too much to ask and that they needed to make alternative arrangements because I wouldn't be doing it again. The next time I was asked I said no, it was hard but I had just to remember the smell to strengthen my spine.

Morning all

Mere I'm glad your father is well.

Chicken when I hear of cases like this, I think they've gone too far the other way and are under medicating patients

Jen I didn't think life would be like this either...I can admit here I was astonished to have parents at 40. I was a lateish baby and there were constant dramas with their heart health, which I now think was the modern medical trend of Much Ado, and even by then, had been called by hospitals a few times to be told they were at death's door.

nota I'd think the next step was 24 hour care or care home? Sorry.

Knot I had never heard of self locking cars until I joined MN and tbh, I don't get it. But most tech is lost on me.

Acorn to answer your question.. dad had some bowel issues during the latter half of 2019. When he became bedridden last March the GP declared he was too frail to have invasive tests so it was just an educated hypothesis that it was 'probably some kind of gastrointestinal cancer and if that's the case we're looking at 1-3 months'.

It subsequently transpired that the GP had offered dad full testing the previous November but he had declined .

So that was the initial assumption, but cancer charities only get involved if there's a formal diagnosis.

As it's turned out we can only assume it's not cancer, but frailty, although of course he could develop cancer and we would have no way of knowing because if he was too frail for tests then, he certainly is now.

Sorry everyone seems to having such a rough time atm. There's so many scenarios on here 9 can relate to I can't even remember them all, but plates spinning is definitely one, and like you Acorn I didn't anticipate my Olds being around much beyond my 40th if that.

Mum's leg is worse this morning so insisted she call the GP...I have to take her in later as it could be a blood clot.

She also has to go for pre-op next week and angiography/stent the following week...naturally on Wednesdays...

FMAL.

nota Well, she clearly needs to wear incontinence pants and if she would do so reliably there's no need on incontinence grounds for her to go into a care home. So first step GP second step Social services on the grounds she is not able to keep herself clean.

Meanwhile she (which in practical terms means you) have a duty of care to the cleaner. So what can you do to minimise risk to her? One of those stands with a plastic bag for DM to drop soiled clothes into? Supply of disposable plastic gloves for cleaner.

It would be ideal if cleaner could then empty clothes into washing machine and put bag into waste. In such a situation I don't think you can worry about niceties about what DM has left in her pockets.

Minty oh dear
I'm sorry, I'm probably extra moany because I have had bad experiences with GPs assuming cancer.

I don't blame your dad for refusing testing. He could have prolonged a poor quality of life with treatment.

Why is Wednesday an issue btw?

nota there is a product you can buy that makes the cleaning easier allegedly. Like cat litter for humans I think.

for all those in the middle of it, and a big for dint seeing her dad, it's amazing how slow yet how fast the last year has gone.