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.

@notaflyingmonkey Yes - some find them easier if they have limited mobility. DM was finding the pants style tricky.

Good morning Dumakey! I'm new to this thread too.

Welcome to the Cafe newbies - it's the sort of club that nobody wants to be a member of, so we try and make it easier for each other, and maybe for ourselves in the process as well.

There's no judgement here.

@BambooWhoosh

Hi - apologies for the grim topic, but is there anywhere I can buy incontinence slips (disposable pants with tapes) on the high street? Amazon will deliver in a couple of days but was looking for something sooner.

I've been looking online, but I'm quite new to this.

Thanks.

What’s the significance of this, how are they different from pants?

If it’s an easy removal thing, you know the pants are designed to rip down the sides. But then you have the problem of getting the new pair on without removing trousers, so I think I’ve answered my own question

Thank you Minty and Bamboo 😁

I'm not sure where to start.
I have just the one 'old' and that is my mum. I feel that she has been ill/poorly my entire adult life.

I am 45 and have been supporting her in many ways from the age of 19. She has depression and Lupus and also had a Dimentia diagnosis January 2020.

She only ever leaves her flat for Doctor or hospital appointments. Up until January this year I did everything for her. Prescriptions and sort out her meds into blister packs, weekly shop, washing, liase with doctor, hospital, adult social care and dementia team, attend all appointments, the list goes on.

I work part time, have two children, step children (grown up with children of their own). One of my step children has just been diagnosed with Cancer, treatable thank god, but he is still in a bad way. I have a lot on my plate, as all of you have too.

It has reached the point where mentally I just feel that I cant deal with it anymore. I am not suicidal just extremely stressed.

I was in a good place beginning of the year as I had arranged carers for my mum, she lives alone. They were coming in twice a day. They were checking she had taken her meds, helping her wash as she cant bath herself, preparing small meals etc. My mum cancelled them after three days.

I had had enough. I contacted my brother, who lives locally, and told him I was stepping back from all duties apart from sorting her meds. He has taken care of everything since January this year. He hadn't helped before because he works 'full time'. He also lives alone and has no other dependents.

I visited my mum yesterday to take out her meds and some naughty treats, she doesnt eat properly 'only what she fancies' 🤔

My mum said to me yesterday " I am your mum, I brought you up, you should want to take care of me!".

I moved out of home at 18. I have had no support from her since then apart from a small amount of money she gave me after she had inherited from a distant relative.

No support or interest shown to my children.
Do I have a right to feel angry?

Sorry about the rant 😔

Hello dumaky welcome to the club no one wants to join… yes you have every right to be angry. Have you looked at the stately homes thread?
Or considered counselling?
You have done so much. But rant away here. We get get it!

We had some good news yesterday. The GP had referred MIL to the local complex care and dementia unit, but she had refused to co operate with them.

Anyway, they had decided that someone would cold call her yesterday and it worked! So they have been able to do an initial assessment, so that is quite a big hurdle that has been overcome.

MIL refused to allow them to discuss her case with us (blissfully unaware that this is quite a big red dementia flag in itself) but they are communicating with us as much as they can and have encouraged us to keep sending them information.

First baby step on the journey but still a long way to go.

@Dumakey I honestly believe that no one has the right to expect anyone to provide long term physical care, especially all that you have been doing. It has been a bone of contention between me and my mum for a long while, made harder by the fact she has never accepted that she needs "care" in any way. She just needs "a little bit of help from time to time". That "little bit of help" involved has taken over every aspect of my life and that of my family for the past 9 years. Three months ago she went into hospital and it quickly became clear that her needs were too much for her to continue living at home and we are now waiting for her to move into a residential placement. I switch between angry at all I have missed with my family, guilt that I am no longer caring for her and relief that I am now free to live with my husband like a normal person. I think any emotion you feel when caring is valid. Anger is definitely the one I felt most whilst caring.

@TonTonMacoute so glad you have been able to move forward, albeit baby steps.

**IthinkIsawahairbrushbackthere

Thank you for your reply. It's weird isnt it, how our olds honestly believe we are just doing a few bits and pieces and have no idea how much the things we do end up taking over our lives.

I think even the weight of expectation is hard to cope with, aside from the physical responsibilities.

Of course we all want to know our parents are well looked after and as comfortable/happy as possible. What none of them seem to understand is that it's unreasonable to expect one person to take on the entire responsibility for that.

I do believe that it's partly because they have fond memories of a time when women stayed at home, looked after their kids, then switched to looking after the elderlies. They just don't get that life has changed now for the vast majority of families.

Having children later, separation/divorce, working full time or at least having to have both partners with jobs of some kind all impacts on mental and physical availability.

It's hard not to feel angry and resentful when the olds don't understand this.

Dumakey I have left the caring gig as mum and MIL have recently moved to residental care after various crises. I now do things like normal people do, go out for a meal, have a day out, stop in bed in the morning. I've got over the guilt now but the relief hasn't left me.

Someone here nailed it for me, we give our family the illusion of independence. If it's a carer making a meal then it's obviously care but not when it's your daughter doing it.

What makes me mad is when people judge you for having an old in a care home. Why don't you look after them yourselves? they say,

They have clearly never had to do it themselves, no one who has ever cared for an old, whether alone or as part of a family effort, would ever say anything so stupid.

It does have its funny side though. MIL has just sent me a message saying

Nasty despit

Followed by a 🎉

I think the weight of expectation is probably the biggest/ hardest thing and it seems so much harder as the daughter. Does anyone really expect the sons to step in and help or are they all too busy working/ being important to ask. Most women these days also work but it's still acceptable for the women to be expected to take it all on 😡

Something that has brought me to tears no end of times is when my mother would say "I could never do what M (her sister) did" - she cared for my grandmother when she was dying, moved her mother in law, her father and her aunt into her home with her family over the years when they needed care. Mum would say over and over again how wonderful M was and she herself could never take on a caring role. However she has never, ever acknowledged that she expected me to do it for her. .

When I hear people say what a privilege it was to care for an elderly parent I wonder where I went wrong. I had a great relationship with my parents, they were always kind and generous with time and resources but when my dad died my mum expected me to fill his role as her carer and companion - even though at the time I had 4 kids at home.

Every time I visit her she tells me how ashamed she is that she has to go into a home. No one in our family ever went into a home. I promised her I would never stuff her in a home etc etc. Sadly she is the only one in the family to be disabled and to have dementia. I have reached the end of my capabilities and can no longer meet the needs she doesn't know she has.

A common theme on here is sons are ornamental/ ceremonial/ and FAR too important to “pop” to the chemists/ gp/ put the bins out etc etc…….
But it can be worse if they meddle / are not on the same page as some vets of these pages can testify……..
as you say, we do all the ” little things” that make elderlies lives function without them really noticing sometimes….. providing the scaffolding to enable them to live at home.

🌺🌺 hairbrush you supported her and still gave her the illusion of independence for so long. I hope you can insulate yourself from her words.
You deserve time for your life and family.

DM has a hospital appointment on Monday afternoon, my boss has made it clear I need to start taking these things as leave rather than just leaving early/finishing late. So I booked the afternoon off, sorted work for the morning, and the bloody hospital moved the appointment to the morning. I spent about an hour on the phone trying to explain that I couldn't actually accommodate that change, to lots of puzzled receptionists.

I don't expect anyone will remember this but my golden DB decided that DM no longer needed Meals on Wheels a few weeks ago. So I left it to him to plug the gap. He has now decided she is ready to start them again... Funny that.

My mother never cared for an elderly relative - they died while still relatively able, or other family members did it. It's often the case that even one generation back, people died of other conditions before they reached the level of frailty that so many of our elderly folk have done.

@PermanentTemporary

My mother never cared for an elderly relative - they died while still relatively able, or other family members did it. It's often the case that even one generation back, people died of other conditions before they reached the level of frailty that so many of our elderly folk have done.

We get constant comments from FIL that "we looked after our parents in their old age". Both hs parents died relatively young. His mum after a very dort illness, his dad in an accident. MILs dad died shortly after retiring and her mum was happily independent in a sheltered flat she moved to.after he died. What "care " there was consisted of sending their teenage son, my DH, round to mow the lawn before she moved.

Mum wasn't called on to do care for the elderly, her parents died young and dad had sisters. This may be why she'd never thought about it. Having been through the mill myself I am determined that I won't put my son in the same situation but it's ok saying that now. Maybe I too will plod on, unable to acknowledge that I need help.

Nota my concern at the moment is the return of MIL's hospital appointments. She has routine appointments for five different conditions. Pre covid she had something else under investigation and it meant a visit to one hospital or the other about once a month. The switch to telephone appointments eliminated the transport issues but didn't do much in terms of scans and testing. At some point there's going to be a massive catch up and I fear that everything will hit together.

@Dumakey

I think the weight of expectation is probably the biggest/ hardest thing and it seems so much harder as the daughter. Does anyone really expect the sons to step in and help or are they all too busy working/ being important to ask. Most women these days also work but it's still acceptable for the women to be expected to take it all on 😡

Some of us caring for olds are past retiring age ourselves. Hard to find socially acceptable excuses when you’re not in paid work.

Odd too when someone else’s “old” is the same age as your DH.

Difficult to admit to yourself that you’re needing a lot of help because it’s all downhill from here. It’s important for self esteem to feel you’re still independent. So I can understand people minimising the help they are receiving. I’m sure it’s only made worse by the low regard our society has for the aged.

I’m lucky in that I can emotionally detach, and regard him as a problem to be solved. (I’m even luckier that he’s such a nice person) It’s very difficult with a parent because there was a time when our very survival depended on their approval, we were completely dependent on them. Hard to shake that off.

I’m also lucky not to have a brother

hairbrush what sandwich said. There will come a time when the awfulness fades and you will look back with pride.

nota meals on wheels

tonton what did that message even mean?

I do think as women we are conditioned to try and put other people's needs before our own, and of course none of us would want to make an old feel bad about asking us to do something quickly. But the analogy I use is the boiling a frog one - before you know it you have spent more and more time each week doing stuff for them, that really doesn't have to be done by you.

My tip to anyone going into this is to outsource whatever you can as early as you can, to help normalise the experience of help coming from outside sources. Gardening, cleaning, etc doesn't have to be daughter work, and can be paid for from Attendance Allowance.

Just so low and we don't even have it badly, mostly because of sibling stuff. My brother and sister are having an email row about Mum's future with me tagged in. My sister has also taken on too much with Mum and it's now my brother's and my fault she's done that. Mum now planning her third move in 4 years, back to my area which she moved away from 2 months ago after 3 years of complaining and misery. I will admit I was enjoying the break... but if she's back here to a sensible place at least my sister might be a bit calmer.

Dint we get quite a few random messages, sometimes just odd letters and/or numbers which mean nothing. We use Facebook messenger to communicate sometimes when we can't face phoning or visiting and she had managed to change the background theme, we think she was trying to say nasty display or something. No idea otherwise.

We got up this morning to 22 messages demanding DH ring her now! The first one was at 6.43. Poor old DH is over there now