Cockroach Cafe - newly refurbished for the summer

[MereDintofPandiculation]

Welcome into our newly refurbished cafe. We've got rid of the Bad Daughters' bench - it was getting too small - and refitted the main room as a Bad Daughters' room, with comfy sofas, coffee, chocolates and drinks of your choice. (There is a good daughters' room - go down that corridor there and you'll find it tucked behind the stairs. It's not yet been fully furnished - we haven't had a visit from a Good Daughter in I don't know how long).

Anyway, come in when you want to share good news, or to rant, or to ask a small question that doesn't warrant its own thread. Or just to hang out with others who understand what you're going through.

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.

Did we know that you can get shrink name labels for the arms of spectacles? Now that we've negotiated the surprise! CT scan and the very lovely doctor breaking the news of the mass that I knew all about because it was discovered four years ago I'm going to try to get mum new glasses. She's in the same pair every time I see her but they aren't hers. There's no point getting new ones if she can't hang onto them but if I can label them then they will return to her from where ever she leaves them.

Countrygirl social services see this all day every day, situations where the carer starts needing care themselves. How you manage to make the changes needed without some crisis forcing their hand I do not know, I didn't manage it with mum and SIL didn't manage it with MIL. To accept help was to acknowledge that they weren't coping and that wasn't happening. Mum's reenablement care didn't supervise medication because that was the agreement they had with social services but if mum had been paying for them herself then they would have done.

Dad is on his way to hospital again. Possibly a stroke.
DB took mum's dementia pills to her last night and left her with 7 days supply. By this morning she had taken 3 days worth.

Hand hold for you Country hope your DF is ok.

DM is the same with her meds, even with the Dosette box as she has no clue what day it is or time of day.

Carer called me last night to say DM had rain coming in through her ceiling (we had biblical style rain yesterday). Carer put a couple of pans under, I went over with DH and cleared out a load of silt from the gutters which we think had caused it. Put a load of newspaper down as well as a big bowl. Went back this morning to check and she had put everything away, with no memory of the leak. So fingers crossed it's ok now the rain has stopped.

You can get lockable pill trays that open at the right time of day and have a flashing light on them to show it's time to take them. The light goes off when the box is turned over to tip the tablets out. You can get a stand for it that helps tip it over. This is one, there are others:

www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00PY2P9FU/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_image?psc=1&tag=mumsnetforu03-21&ie=UTF8

I waited past the time when mum could cope with the change, if I'd done it 12 months earlier I might have had a chance.

I hope your dad is ok countrygirl, it's a terrifying time especially if you can't get in to see him.

No news from the hospital yet but I spoke to mum this afternoon. She thinks she phoned the ambulance because dad fell and they have just taken him in for a precautionary checkup. Actually DB phoned because dad was obviously seriously ill and mum hadn't noticed 😔. At least it means she isn't panicking and going even more to pieces yet.

Hand hold from me country. He’s in the best place. Hope you get some news soon. At least if your dm are calm it must help. 🌺🌺
not hope the roof is ok. Last thing you need.
knot would a piece of electrical tape with initials work? Sharpie? Or a chain around her neck?

Still no news from the hospital - too busy to tell us what is happening apparently. And now my cooker has broken down so DH has been dispatched to get pizza

Gosh @countrygirl99 how awful not to be kept in touch. I hope you have news now.

@notaflyingmonkey hope the leak is sorted now.

Things seem to be moving forward with my mum. I had a call from the social worker last week and a meeting at the hospital yesterday. He seemed to think that mum was occasionally a little confused but generally ok and she seemed to be accepting of the situation.

He hadn't experienced any of her flights of fancy until she joined us in the meeting, happier than she has been for ages, and telling us all about the party that had been held in her honour the night before - although "the girls" had not been able to find her so she could not join in!

She has agreed that she will try residential care. We discussed various homes and the one that is nearest to me which I have heard great things about and which has an amazing inspection report she dismissed out of hand "because everyone there is old!" The other home I would like her to move to only has a few permanent beds and vacancies are very rare but I am hopeful, especially as it is local to us and we have no transport.

It is so hard though to choose a home. I have been looking online at inspection reports and what I read does not match up with what I have heard from relatives and friends who have worked there. Also we have no money to add to the fees so that also limits our options.

Hope you are ok @countrygirl99.

It's interesting hairbrush how well the parents can come across at times, which can make them quite convincing. DM seems to be able to pull it out of the bag on occasion when required, but only in short bursts.

Do you really need to involve her in choosing the home on an academic level - surely it's about finding a place she is comfortable in?

Sorry I haven't updated things have been a bit manic to say the least. Dad is still in hospital, improved but has fluid build around his heart that needs reducing/removal. DB is liaising with the GP and I have been talking to social services. It's clear that mum isn't capable of looking after dad but she is in complete denial and dad has been telling porkies to cover up. We have decided it's time for some tough love and are now just telling them like it is. Mum can't remember what is wrong with dad for 5 minutes and hadn't even noticed he was delirious on Tuesday when DB called the ambulance. She thinks she called because he fell and can't understand why he isn't coming home now because they only took him in to check for fractures. And FIL is showing signs of burn out that we usually herald a crisis there in a few weeks.

Hairbrush I'd leave it a couple of days and then go around again with the home that she dismissed out of hand. Hopefully she'll have forgotten what she said. As a recovering perfectionist myself, try not to get bogged down in choosing the "perfect" home. Neither mum nor MIL had a choice because they were emergency admissions and the primary consideration was whether there was a vacancy and the secondary one was location. They are still not back to normal in terms of access, activities and visits out so what they usually offer may not be happening anyway.

Thanks @Knotaknitter that's a good point that she might not remember. Most of the homes locally are off the beaten track. We live in a fairly rural county and we don't have transport. I really hope that she will be in one of the two homes I can walk to, or at least on a bus route.

Hairbrush in that case, one of the two you can walk to is probably the right one.

country hope everything goes as well as possible.
hairbrush good advice from knot all homes will be full of old people.
Trust your instincts and local info and speak to the staff. They make the difference. And accessibility sounds key.
Good luck.

hairbrush easy access is very important, especially in an emergency.
DB took mum to the hospital this afternoon. He has to wait outside and mum came out and told him dad had had some sort of emergency - a funny turn but didn't seem bothered so I got a call to try and find out what was happening while he drove her home. It was someone else on the same bay. Still, hopefully it will have made a point we can refer to when we argue about care provision.

Hi all,
Nn changer here. I was mrs08.
Sounds very difficult @countrygirl99, I'm sorry.
It's been a bit fraught here...
Mum was admitted to hospital last week for 4 days.
I'm not sure if I'm being unreasonable making a complaint with the Dr's surgery but I've never seen her so ill.
I did an e consult form on the Monday morning as she had the symptoms of a UTI - she gets them occasionally and always make her really ill. She's been hospitalised with them before.
She has several health problems such as a bladder prolapse, copd, pvd, unstable angina etc which mean even "simple" infections can make her very ill.
They phoned back and the Dr gave her 3 x days of Nitrofurantoin.
Didn't even ask for a urine sample.
By 11pm that night she was really systemically ill - I called 111 who sent an ambulance.
She ended up on IV fluids, IV antibiotics, IV pain relief and Supplemental oxygen.
Her sats and bp were low which the Dr would have realised if she'd been seen.
She was in terrible pain and was quite out of it.
She wet herself 😒
It was horrible not being able to visit 😞
She wasn't making much sense for 24 hours til the meds kicked in.
She was sent home with further antibiotics.
She seems to be improving but it was quite scary.
Surely at her age and with all her health issues she should have been examined??(that's what I asked for on the e consult form)
BTW thanks for the suggestion of the red laundry bags for soiled clothes...came in very handy!
It's been a long week this week...ds1 got his a level results (3 x As ☺) and I've been suffering from my hormonal insomnia which is always fun.

@Artdecolover I feel your pain. Dad's GP told DB he was shocked at dad's deterioration! DB pointed out that dad hadn't been able to get a face to.face appointments for months and if he had the issues would have been obvious. And he might not be back in hospital for the 3rd time in less than 7 weeks.

Oh, @countrygirl99 that's awful 😕
I'm just so pissed off
She's had no copd nurse sppt for 2 years
No dietician appt for 2 years
She needed to be seen
Nothing will come of it I'm sure but mum just feels that now she old they don't care
Hard to argue, really

Mums old neighbour is havjng similar issues and is very ill but the Dr's only saw him today after about 6 weeks of throwing antibiotics at him.

No doubt he will end up in hospital too.

AND...
Isn't it odd how prior to covid you had to be on your last legs to get antibiotics but now...they are happy to prescribed multiple courses without even seeing you!???

91 year old neighbour of my son was complaining to me about not being able to see her GP, being worried about the state of her legs, and how she couldn't describe it over the phone and wanted someone to be able to see it.

But ... even before Covid, I could get antibiotics for cystitis without being seen (I couldn't have got to the GP when cystitis was bad). SO it's not just a Covid thing.

I don't think it's that they don't care, it's more that they expect everything to go wrong in old age, so they dismiss everything as "it's your age" and don't really believe in the possibility of being able to make it better. Not surprising, really - the person they're treating could be 60 years older than them.

Mums feels like they don't care
I'm sure some of them do but at our surgery it's all locums now
The gp partners seem to do half a day a week 🤔

Dad has actually managed to physically see a GP twice this year. Both times he has been trying for ages then a district nurse will call the GP because they are concerned about dad. Only then will a GP see him. Both times he has ended up being admitted.

I have to stop myself from sobbing every time one of the staff airily drops out "we were a bit concerned so we had the doctor out to look at your mum" or "he was here anyway so..". I haven't forgotten how hard it was to get through on the forever-engaged surgery line, never mind the process to actually try to get someone to look at mum. It will be a long time before I forget that couple of weeks before Christmas, the frustration, the anxiety, being directed to 111 when I managed to talk to the surgery. Add on to that the anger when some politician trotted out that "the NHS is open for business" when it quite clearly wasn't. Right now I'm certain that mum is getting better care in the home than I could provide, if for no other reason than their immediate and effortless access to a GP.

This afternoon I drove to mum's to take her to see dad. Normally it's about an hour to mum's then half hour back towards home to the hospital but there was a cycle event do it took longer than usual. We got to the hospital to find visiting is cancelled until further notice😠. Half way back to.her house mum tells me she has dad's phone she took home to charge so I have it to take to the hospital tomorrow. Sitting having beer in the garden and head z strange noise - dad's phone, mum calling. Tell her I have the phone, remind her I'm taking it to the hospital tomorrow. 2 minutes later phone rings, same conversation. 2 minutes later it rings again, I turned it off. I've phoned the ward and explained so they are going to call mum do she can speak to dad.