Utterly miserable

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At the end of August, my mother broke her hip and wrist. One week in hospital and then 5 weeks rehab facility. Dad late stages Parkinsons, postural drop, which has only just been medicated properly.

When my mother came home in October, she was rude, demanding, ungrateful,hurtful. I moved heaven and earth to source carers and help. It became clear she needed night carers as she doesn't want to go to the loo on her own at night. I sourced that too and she has had soemone every single night night November 1st. Her mood has become worse with her regulalry telling she she hates everything and doesn't care about anything. I thought she had developed dementia and read up on it, trying everything I could think of to try and reduce her anxiety. By mid-November, she could not be left alone at all. I live 60 miles away and was coming up 6 days out of 7. Dad was in hospital during November, only coming out in December. When he came out, I persuaded them to have a live in carer. She has been wonderfu with my dad but my mother hates her and has been unforgivably awful. Another morning carer left last week after my mother's rude behaviour. She has also been rude to and about my daughter 13. She has always hated my husband but is more on her good behaviour with him.

The week before Christmas I wanted to die. I was exhausted and defeated. I have not been able to work since mid November and the mileage on my car is incredible. I know people say to look after yourdelf but how could I? I thought we were going to lose my dad in November and I still don't have POA although applied 7 weeks ago - I hope it will arrive soon.

I have always felt that I have let my mother down and am not good enough. I have always tried to please her. I have always tried to lessen any burden and have sought so hard to source care. I do everything - shopping, admin, arranging, baking/ I also try to help lift my mother's spirits. She is so angry though and I know she wants me to wait on her hand and foot all the time and never see m y husband and daughter (13).

Oh my goodness. What an amazing daughter you are. I've had a hard time with my own mum over the years (now in a home) and so much of what you have written could be my experience too. With the difference that mum lived in our granny annex. With the extra travel that you have to do on top you are going above and beyond.

Could you and your dad talk to the GP?

What would happen if you didn't go and see them? Would their physical needs be met? Your mum sounds just like my mum. (My dad died 9 years ago) and I have every sympathy for you.

Agree with hairbrush.
You sound amazing.
Just don’t go this week.
They will muddle through the next few days while you catch your breath.
What would you like to happen?
You need to get off your DM’s roller coaster and today is as good a day as any

What a terrible situation. Mine is no where near as bad however I can identify with feeling desperate, unappreciated and torn between your family, work and your parents. I too have a hollow laugh at advice to ‘make time for yourself’. I don’t know what else to say; it’s obvious to me you have given and given. No one can give more than they have. Is it possible to get some input from social services and get some respite for yourself? I’m so sorry you have reached this point and I’m worried for you feeling like you can’t go on. It will not make you feel less low and won’t make your mums behaviour change but I do know that pain, losing control of your life choices and facing decline is not met with grace and dignity by most. It brings out the worst in people not the best . I have found these boards very helpful when I’ve been very down. I hope you can draw some strength and comfort from them too.

Thank you. I have spoken to the doctor several times. He suggested that I go and see my own doctor as I sounded very stressed (I was - after my mother screamed at the engineer installing the stair lift in their house). The next time he spoke to her he said how charming she sounded. The critical care doctor was better and firmer with her but she was very unpleasant. Here is something she does which I know I shoudl ignore: she lies about all that I do for her - arranging the carers, shopping, cooking, personal care, etc etc. She does it in front of me, "IncludesFreeOnlineEdition popped up but she'll be leaving soon" (she knows it's going to be another 5 hours!) She also suggests that my daughter do all the cooking at home lies about when my husband gets home from work (never before 7). I wish I was a more resiliant person but I have spent my whole life trying in vain to please my mother and I can't seem to stop.

Thank you for replying everyone.

Say no to her...... Took me nearly 60 years of running around trying to please her, first time I said i can't do this, it's making me ill, she cut me off. Think she thought I would apologise and say I was in the wrong, I wasn't and I didn't! The peace has been bliss🤗
Try visiting the stately homes threads💐

Sounds like borderline personality disorder or something (I am no expert but I have known a couple of people like this). One of them was my stepmother's mum. She was always really horrible to my stepmum, much like you describe. She also persecuted the neighbors, accusing them repeatedly of harassing her (they were not, all her accusations were proved false). Eventually she was put on medication (I don't know what it was) and became a completely different person.

My mum changed after a stay in hospital following a life threatening perforated ulcer and sepsis. She lied to me and told me that she was mobile and unfortunately I trusted her and brought her home when she should have stayed in hospital/had her home assessed by OT and that started the hardest two years of my life.

I don't think my mum is/has been as rude as yours but she has minimised the help I gave. Even though she could not turn on the tv or go to the loo without me!

Can you talk to your own GP? Tell him/her that you are at breaking point. One thing that helped me here on the Cockroach thread was being told that if the relationship with my mother was with a partner it would be classed as abusive and that helped me see that I am allowed to have rights and needs of my own, my purpose in life is not to be my mother's arms and legs for the next 5/10/15 years.

Op what would happen if you werent around to help them? Would she be referred to SS?

Do you think her abusive treatment of you is part of her illness? If so and would want to kee caring for her, I think you have to detach somehow and decide to let jt go over your head knowing that it's not really her.

If she is being deliberately spiteful then I'd tell her in no uncertain terms you're going to walk away.

I'd also be correcting her gently but firmly every time she lies to you or about you- refuse to engage in an argument but it'll make you feel better.

Hi Op. I experienced an identical situation to yours which lasted 7 years. It has broken me mentally and physically and I am not sure I will ever be the same again. With hindsight, I would advise that you be much firmer with your mum (and yes, I know that is far easier said than done) She needs you far more than ever and therefore she cannot be making you feel so guilty and bad about having your own family and life to deal with.
Reduce your visits to 4 days per week, let the carers know you can be contacted if absolutely necessary when you are not there and also let your mum know that if you become ill due to her behaviour, you won't be able to visit full stop (sometimes the reality can frighten them out of such behaviours to some extent) .
Please please try to put in some boundaries, I so wish that I had.

I know it sounds awful but why don’t you message her/phone her and tell her you have Covid so need to isolate, that will then give you time to decompress and put a plan into action! I would highly recommend referring her and your dad to social workers or else failing that can your dad go into care or respite care and you can leave your mum alone for a while

I wish I was a more resiliant person but I have spent my whole life trying in vain to please my mother and I can't seem to stop.

It would be very hard to grow up to be a resilient person with a mother like this, so don't beat yourself up here. you've got a lifetime of her training to overcome, that takes time and probably professional help.

Have you ever had therapy or spoken to a counsellor OP? It might help you to step back and detach from trying to please your (unpleaseable!) mum. You can't change her, or her opinion of you, or how she sees the world - but you can decide what you are going to put up with. As the pp says, even at this stage you can learn to set boundaries - your boundaries - and enforce them. It's not your job to make her happy. Do you except your daughter drive herself like this to make you happy all the time? Of course you don't. Well, extend that to yourself OP.

Where is your dad in all this? Is he getting the care that he needs to live safely at home, if she keeps driving the carers away?

OP, I understand. I can't give you any advice, really, because I feel stuck in the same place. I know people say go low contact/no contact but I think our brains were wired in childhood to do everything we can to make our mothers happy. I've just come back from 6 hours visiting my mother. She sat there with a face like a slapped arse and every 10 minutes or so let out one of those deep sighs that people use to express dissatisfaction. If I ask her what's wrong, the face looks even more slapped and the sighs get deeper. Tonight I have planned a bingo/fish & chips evening for her, and an online streaming of Sleeping Beauty ballet with drinks & nibbles. Has it made her happy? No, I obviously must try harder.

It would be very hard for me to go LC/NC - I feel like I'm driven to try & make her happy, rather like an athlete might be driven to break a world record. Also, going NC or LC would mean not seeing the members of my family that she lives with, and I'd miss them so much.

I had a form of pancreatic cancer 2 years ago & it's always in my mind that it might come back. The surgery I had took away my small bowel, my pancreas, my gall bladder. The result is I'm almost constantly tired, have constant pain, have to watch my diet & can't eat some foods I used to love, I have a tight scar across my middle that stops me taking deep breaths, have no feeling across my middle where nerves were cut, have no feeling in one leg which means I Iimp. Tonight I've listened to her complaining about a mouth ulcer and how no-one cares because I never got round to my sisters early enough to take her to the chemist to get mouth ulcer stuff. I hear about every paracetamol she takes. I take antidepressants, anti-anxiety tablets, anti-psychotics, tablets for anti-nausea, opiate based strong pain killers & I need a handful of artifical digestive enzymes whenever I eat, I sometimes want to scream out about all the pain I have, but all that would happen would be her crying so I'd feel guilty for upsetting her.

Sorry OP, I've hijacked your thread and rabbited on for longer than I intended. If you do find a solution & a way to deal with this can you come back & let us all know.

The thing to do if nothing you do makes a particular person happy is to stop trying. If she lies you can't stop her but you can stop being around to hear it. If she's abusive to you when you try to help her, stop trying to help. Maybe once she realizes her whipping girl is gone, she'll reevaluate her behaviour. And if she doesn't, there are resources out there to provide what she won't accept with gratitude (or at least silence) from you.

As far as seeing her doctor or other treating sourcessources remember that their main job is to meet the needs of her care with the least usage of resources. They don't care what it costs that person emotionally. That's why her doctor told you to see your doctor. Not to get her help, but to get you medicated so you could carry on.

She's always been a "difficult" person but now her behaviour suggests dementia. Apologies if I've missed it buy isn't now the time to go somewhere where she will be looked after full time (a care home or nursing home).

In the last year of my best friend's mother's life she became hateful. Telling my bf she was only after her money and wanted to get rid of her and that sort of rubbish. It was dementia, the type that Robin Williams had.

I think you need to rest.

That's it. Take a fortnight off. Ring your dad to let him know you've become too ill to travel. Then you don't go up there, you don't ring them. If they contact you, tell them you can't help. You can suggest they ring their GP if necessary.

My mother has been in a care home that works since early December but the period between about May and December nearly broke me. I needed a rest so badly.

I think until you step back nothing will change.

Tell her you have COVID, can't visit for 10 days and switch your phone off. They can call your DH if its really urgent (if he's better at pushing back than you). She and her carers will have to cope then!

Cand do check the Stately Homes Thread

Thank you to everyone who has replied. My daughter actually had Covid a month or so ago. However, the night carers chose that particular time to say they were threatening to walk out as they had concerns (I think they thought I was going to replace them with a night carer. This would actually be easier). I know I need to let her words go over my head but it does seem impossible to me. This week is make or break and I feel she will have to go into a home for respite care (not the one she wants - they are full).

If she has to go to a home for respite so be it. Your life is equally as important as your mum's.

You need to take a step back. This is not sustainable.

Stop feeling guilty and put yourself and your own family (kids/husband) first.

Your mother sounds like a really unpleasant woman who enjoys making everyone else miserable. You have done all you can.

Now tell her and the rest of your family that this is affecting your health to a point where you no longer able to provide support. Have a chat with social service and make it clear you can no longer provide or manage the care of your parent and tell them they need to take over and to look at options.

It sounds like she needs to be in home. The carers will simply continue to walk out due to her behaviour and you will eventually drive yourself crazy....

She sounds like a selfish and manipulative woman who has conditioned you throughout your life to feel guilt and ignore your needs to put hers first. You need to stand up to her or she will continue to poison your life until her last day.

Thank you. It has been almost 7 months since I last looked at this thread. Everything is still appalling. On the fifth live-in carer. Understandably they don'r last long. There is no dementia diagnosis for my mother. She aced her memory test with the practitioner and she refuses to engage with a head scan or anything which might be related to her mental health.

I have realised that she has always been difficult, but she is like the famous poem, "Do not go gentle into that good night". She is RAGING RAGING against the dying of the light. I have read that old age can be especially hard for people with certain personality traits. I also think she is terrified of dying. Unfortunately it is hard to feel any sympathy for her due to her venomous behaviour, which also extends to my daugher. It's so deliberate.

I wanted my dad to be able to pass away at home. I thought I could at least do that for him. But because of my mother's behaviour, I experience daily/nightly/morningly/afternoonly/eveningly worry about their care. There are a huge number of people involved in it - night sitters, carers who come to do breaks, live-in carer. And I am NOT a manager. Or at least not an effective one.

I fear that really the decision to keep them in their home ws the wrong one and who will possibly take them now?

I'm so sorry things haven't improved. Frankly, I think you're doing wonderfully well at managing a very, very difficult situation.

The decision to keep them at home may very well have been the wrong one, but what could you have done? After all, you couldn't have bodily thrown them in the car and taken them to a suitable facility and frogmarched them to their new digs, could you? Unfortunately being nasty and stubborn doesn't equal incompetence. If someone is (or appears to be) 'competent' then they legally have the right to stay where they are, despite the emotional/physical 'costs' to their family.

I'm not in the UK so I don't know exactly how things work there. If you were to completely withdraw from providing any assistance to your parents, at some point would some agency step in and 'force' them to move to a suitable place? Does the UK have conservatorship/guardianship laws?

We were lucky enough that when our Mum became unable to care for herself and began to have delusions it was very obvious to all that she was suffering from dementia. And years before she had put her affairs in order and signed POA and trustee documents so we were able to move her to a memory care facility with just a little 'subterfuge' on our part that she was going to a 'hotel'. She was so happy there until her dementia advanced to the point where she was just a shell of herself. But if she hadn't put her affairs in order, there were legal proceedings (conservatorship) we could have undertaken to allow us to legally move her and to take over her finances to assure her care.

It seems as if you're stuck between a rock and a hard place. You want them to be safe and comfortable, yet you want to wash your hands of the whole situation. And I don't blame you. Have you considered counseling for yourself? Just your own 'space' to be able to vent honestly and say just what you want to say without fear of censure.

Just sending supportive thoughts.

Thank you. AcrossthePond55 - I don't want to wash my hands of them. I would like to think they would be as happy as possible. My parents have very different personalities and needs. My dad is nearing EOL (Parksinsons) but finds great comfort from being in his own home and with his small routines, like a short walk with whichever carer he can persuade to go up the road with him. He likes his food still and is gracious all the time, despite the appalling nature of his illness. I love him utterly and his love for me has always been unconditional. Which is the most perfect gift, really. My mother, on the other hand, understands exaclty how her behaviour affects me. She has always been one to withdraw love. I certainly need some counselling - this will be a treat for myself when they have passed away, to be honest!

I don't think you have to wash your hands of them and id agree with Across that counselling now would really help you decide on a pathway forward that might feel less damaging to your state of mind.

I don't think it sounds like the decision for them to be at home was 'the wrong one' at all - after all, there they are - and even if it were, I don't believe it was ever a black and white all or nothing decision forever. I do however absolutely relate to the desperate feelings when you are in a situation that is not working. Because you are filling all the gaps, to a level that is unsustainable.

I would challenge the idea in particular that not going to see them 5 days out of 7 or whatever (omg!) is 'washing your hands of them'.

I feel for you very much.