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.

country sounds really poor care. Poor chap.
dot please heed the words of other posters. Both dh’s parents ended up in separate care homes and the family did not attempt to arrange visits back to their house.- too upsetting for all.one stroke, one dementia.
Keep stalling and using covid as an excuse.

Funnily enough mum has been on about going home this afternoon. She thinks she's bags better now, I think she's bored more than anything else. She used to fill her days with pointless work, moving things from A to B, stacking them up, moving them back again and she doesn't have that to do now.

Hope everyone is doing ok.

I'm battling the blue badge form, it should be straightforward as she has two chronic conditions and this is the second renewal. Even better, I found the copy of the one we submitted last time round. I still don't want to do it though, it's that listing of all the things she can't do and seeing how much she's deteriorated over three years. I wasn't going to bother doing it as she's no longer driving but the number of hospital appointments is stacking up now. There is a patient drop off zone but no seating anywhere near it. There's no way she can cross the access road and walk into the entrance on her own but nowhere she can sit and wait for me to return from the outer reaches of the galaxy car park

One of the advantages of residential care that I was not aware of is that the doctor visits at least once a week. All the hoops I've jumped through over the last year to get her to "see" a doctor and suddenly it's as simple as "I got him to look at her while he was here".

Good luck with the form knot. It must be hard to reflect on what has changed. But they are so useful
A question- anyone on here been through breast cancer?

Sympathies, Knot. I had to do the blue badge form for my DF earlier this year. It seemed crazy to have to answer all those questions when really all they needed to know was that he had been disabled and a wheelchair user/blue badge holder for nearly 20 years. And very depressing to have to answer them all and list all his conditions and medications.

We were worried at one stage that because we didn't have any clear paperwork to prove his main disability (arose for complex reasons and such a long time ago) that it would be refused, but luckily it was approved almost instantly.

I'll have to do it all again for my mother in a few months...

Oh no, thesandwich - are you having to deal with a possible cancer diagnosis on top of everything else?

exepat thanks….. a possibility……..

@thesandwich

exepat thanks….. a possibility……..

Fingers crossed for you if you are still in the investigation and confirmation stage. I hope they aren't keeping you hanging around too long for tests etc given everything else happening.

knot I remember those days of hospital visiting, needling two people, one to help dad, one to drive the car and find somewhere to park it.

Dint I'm more or less settled on the idea of a folding wheelchair because even when I've performed the miracle of hospital parking she can't walk through the endless corridors and I'm relying on the second miracle of a hospital wheelchair. I know that I would make life so much easier for her and for me if I just filled the forms in and bought a wheelchair but it's yet another recognition of decline that I'm struggling to face.

sandwich diagnosis and treatment is changing all the time, you want recent experiences. I don't have any to share, I hope that whatever point you are at things move speedily because the reality is usually not as bad as your imagination tells you at 4am.

Finger crossed for you Sandwich

Thank you exepat nota and knot support much appreciated.
knot I can understand the almost grieving about what has been lost.
Do look carefully at the weight of chairs and also if they fold up.
We got an emergency heavy beast from a charity shop which was fine until I hurt my back. Please think of it as a route to more access- I know when dm was walking less and less the logistics of getting about became all consuming. With a chair it was far easier to move about as you say especially in hospitals etc.

That's it, I've completed the blue badge form and will read through it tomorrow. I found the photos I took of the relevant documents when I started this just before The Fall and I'm telling myself that a third renewal should be straightforward when the person has chronic conditions.

I'm sure mum would fit in a teenager's wheelchair because she is so tiny now. Something narrow would save the NHS money on repainting the doorframes I fail to negotiate.

Oh Sandwich, I am sorry to see you are having such a tough time. I really hope that everything proceeds quickly and news is not as bad as it could be.

Mum is still in rehab but we have had a meeting with Social Services and the social worker has been to see her a couple of times since. He rang me yesterday and we had a long chat. They really want her to agree to go into a care home of her own accord so they don't have to go down the route of a best interests meeting etc.

He asked how I had got on with persuading her and I laughed hollowly! I have a 30 minute visit once a week. The first 20 minutes is her crying and asking me to take her home and berating me for letting her be in this position, 5 minutes of searching for her washing and if I am lucky we have a pleasant 5 minute chat about the family.

He has sent or will be sending me the forms to complete about her finances. We all agree that she should move as soon as possible so that she has some stability. We are "selling" the idea of a home as the next step rather than the end of the line but it isn't going to be easy.

When my dad was fretting about getting back home, I talked to him about what needed to happen for it to be possible, eg to start walking and get up to a certain level of fitness. It gave him hope and purpose which tided him over until he’d lost the desire

I've told mum that we are waiting for her to be able to get herself in and out of bed by herself. Unfortunately she can't do it. She needs the assistance of two people to get to the toilet and she can not get herself into bed.

Thank you hairbrush.
Sounds like the right approach with your dm”until you are better/ able to xyz……..”
It’s so hard though.

Posing a question: are only women expected to 'pop'? As in, pop over, pop to the shops, pop to the chemist, etc.

I had last week off, let DB and DM's care agency know. Predictably DM ran out of milk part way through the week as DB never fucking listens to me about her shopping on the occasion he does it. If I was around, I would be asked to pop to the shops to get her some. DB had no such message, despite me signposting all messages to go to him for the week.

He and DM have decided she no longer needs Meals on Wheels as she pronounced it 'boring'. So that is one of the things that I outsourced now gone.

@notaflyingmonkey

Posing a question: are only women expected to 'pop'? As in, pop over, pop to the shops, pop to the chemist, etc.

I had last week off, let DB and DM's care agency know. Predictably DM ran out of milk part way through the week as DB never fucking listens to me about her shopping on the occasion he does it. If I was around, I would be asked to pop to the shops to get her some. DB had no such message, despite me signposting all messages to go to him for the week.

He and DM have decided she no longer needs Meals on Wheels as she pronounced it 'boring'. So that is one of the things that I outsourced now gone.

I think I would be saying to her if getting rid of meal on wheels doesn't work out, that she had better talk to my brother on that as he cancelled it. See my brother, on repeat

Oh nota that’s really crap. Just what you don’t need. I think elderlies believe men incapable of popping and much too important…….
As for cancelling mow……… what does DB propose instead? Give him back the monkey.

Definitely hand the problem to your brother to solve Nota.
I've been talking to my DB a lot this morning. Visited mum and dad yesterday and cried all the way home. Dad could barely string 5 words together, was falling asleep mid sentence and was surprised to see me every time he woke up. There was also a problem that needs an electrician and mum was insisting she would call one they have used before. I called DB to let him know and that I would phone to check she had done it. He called in later to check on them and there was a nurse there to.assess dad as the nurse changing his bandage this morning raised concerns. Apparently he had got through nearly a whole bottle or Oramorph over the weekend - no wonder he was out of it Sunday. Also the nurse found his dossette boxes have been emptied into 1 dish ( he is on about a dozen tablets) and mum has cancelled the re-ablement carers again. Though she insists there never were any carers for her to send away.
I really don't know where we go from here.

Sorry to hear that Country. Hopefully the nurse can see what is going on and arrange some sort of intervention?

Countrygirl I'm really sorry to hear that. Do you think that your mum is capable of acting in your dad's best interests or is her version of reality too out of step? It sounds as if he needs more support than she is capable of giving now. I don't know if there's a pattern that warrants a call to the adult social care team as a safeguarding issue for your father - he is at risk from what you've said about the Oramorph and the emptying of the dosett boxes. (If you want one I do have a lockable rotation pill box that I never got round to introducing)

Nota I think I've had a rant here about "popping", about how the word miminises the work that's involved. "Can you pop over and close the bedroom window?" I can do that but let's recognise that by the time I've finished with 15 miles in the car, the bins, the fridge and the post it will be nearly an hour of my time to "pop over". Being out of milk isn't urgent enough to trouble a man with, no-one could possibly expect him to go to the shop for something so trivial. What is he replacing MoW with? Has he researched a better option or is he popping round at mealtimes to rustle something up?

My achievement this week (so far, it's only Monday) was having tea and biscuits while visiting mum. She said that she was really happy, that the visit to the big shopping centre that morning had tired her out (imaginary but she'd enjoyed the memory) and she remembered the dog that visited the day before (true because I'd seen photos).

I'm drinking less (it was my reward for getting through another day), sleeping better and I have time in the day to do the things that I used to do that made me happy. I still regret that mum lost the life that she had before The Fall but I didn't cause it and there's nothing I could do about it. All I want is for he to be happy and safe and it's looking as if "happy" is a possibility.

Mum just has a different perception of reality now. It's the classic " we are coping fine". Except they are reliant on DB and are regularly calling an ambulance to get dad up during the night.
DB has had a conversation with their GP. Temporary care is being put in place and he has a new issue of their medication and will be going round to make dure they take it. Mum had completely forgotten she was supposed to be taking any. The reablement care is being restarted and I'm talking to social services today but that is just yo get him washed and dressed in the morning. Longer term they will need to pay for care which I can't see them agreeing to when mum keeps sacking the free care.