Cockroach cafe 🪳 Spring 2022 🪳

[MereDintofPandiculation]

Welcome! Those of you who have been before will notice the Bad Daughters’ Room is now called the Kumquat Room, and there are a couple of fine kumquats in the Conservatory.

Check also the Stationery cupboard with, among other things, the 🪳emoticon ready to cut and paste.

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 🪳 mes amis/amies, and may you all live to fight another day.

Ah thank you! Good tip

@MissMarplesNiece You definitely need to take a break. Can anything - the bungalow clearance for example - be outsourced? There's no point in you throwing your health away. Your two siblings seem to have more boundaries in place but that means you have to have boundaries too, not that you pick up all the slack and run yourself into the ground.

We had a couple of months of DM insisting that she could look after DF at home and getting angry with me when I said she should consider a care home place, but then not being able to cope and phoning for an ambulance every few days so he got admitted to hospital. He is very ill and frail but the hospital can only do so much and it wasn't great that he was getting shunted about so much.

Eventually the ambulance refused to take him in but said they were worried about DM's mental health. DM then said she couldn't look after him anymore. He's ended up in hospital again as there's nowhere else he can go, while he waits for a nursing home place.

DM and DF live in a small town and the only home there has a waiting list. There are some places in the bigger town 45 minutes away where my parents have friends and could have easily settled in when they were a few years younger. It just feels like all the way through things have been driven by crises and my DPs just refused to plan ahead, and now it's just a much worse situation than it really needed to be.

DM doesn't like driving much now and we're not sure how long she'll be able to, but she was keen for DF to go into a posh nursing home in a village that's even more awkward to get to than where they stay, there's not even a direct bus link so it just seemed like a terrible idea. Luckily I don't think she could get a council funded place there.

as needed to everyone, particularly @MissMarplesNiece - sorry you have to join us here, and I agree with everyone else that you need to take a step back. They would have to manage without you if you dropped dead or ended up in hospital, so they might as well work out what to do without you before that happens.

My update: all my hopes of things improving once DM moved from the totally unsuitable huge family house to a lovely sheltered flat with a great community earlier this year have proved to be total pie in the sky.

After a fall and a cancer diagnosis, she has been bounced from sheltered flat to hospital to rehabilitation unit to nursing home, while we wait to see if she can improve enough to return to the sheltered flat. Cancer (but not the aggressively terminal kind she would welcome), incontinence and a severe reduction in mobility since she went into hospital a couple of months ago (she is now basically bed-bound) make it look increasingly unlikely that she will.

She was in the flat for less than a month and we are still paying for it, as well as self-funding the posh nursing home and all the running costs of the family home until I can finish dealing with DF's probate, clear the house and sell it. Aaargh.

Sounds like everyone is having a rough yime st the moment.
FIL is playing up again. He is really struggling to cope and the doctors haven't found a pain medication regime that works for him yet - he can't take morphine and the alternatives are making him sick, he is deleting badly due to that and MIL needing help in the night. We thought he had accepted that MIL will meed to go into a home. DH has been to view homes, they have screed preferences and he wanted DH to set the ball rolling with social services understanding that there is a waiting list for his preference and it could be a few months and that a crisis would probably mean she would need tobe placed elsewhere. SS were due to be coming out this week to do a formal assessment of her needs as the next part of the process. Yesterday he told them not to come and has halted the whole process again. Not only that but we now have reasons to suspect he may be losing his temper and being violent to her, MILs sister was really frightened by his temper yesterday afternoon and phoned DH yesterday evening to tell him.

Oh good grief countrygirl and exexpat. What nightmares.

Im a bit mystified that social services have rolled over and cancelled an assessment of your MIL's needs because your FIL said so [well not that mystified but it sounds wrong].

@PermanentTemporary basically he won't let them in the house and given how aggressive he was at the meeting a couple of weeks ago I don't blame them if they don't want to go unaccompanied when he is like this. He may be an old man but he can be really nasty and DH aunt (age 75) walked out of that meeting because she thought he was going to hit her and DH had to intervene.
SIL is trying to talk sense into him and he is trying to make out he misunderstood and thought they were coming to collect her and take her to a home this week, saying DH hadn't explained things properly to him. But DH was there when the GP came round last week and his dad was explaining the plan correctly to the GP so he did understand it and is choosing to try and mislead people because he has changed his mind. He thinks if he is stubborn and aggressive enough he will get his way. What he doesn't realise is his current behaviour may well lead to MIL being taken to a place of safety. He is a controller who is losing control and lashing out. After we got married it took DH years to understand what his dad was like and then only because I talked him through stuff after a particular incident that nearly wrecked our marriage. Other family members are only just realising how controlling he is to MIL. One BIL doesn't have a lot to do with him because he sees him like I do.

That's worrying and upsetting, countrygirl!

It's alarming how the veneer of civilisation flakes away as we age. I worry occasionally about what I'll be like! My dad was so lovely when he was very ill. He didn't have much language left, but it was all 'How lovely to see you' and 'So kind!'.

I might be more 'Feck off!'.

I've had a few days away from it all. Mum was being very unreasonable so I just went quiet and left her to it. I couldn't resolve the imaginary wedding issue she has, so why listen to the ranting.

She's a bit cheerier now, thanks to the jubilee stuff I think.

I am already 'feck off', so not sure what there is left for my language. Maybe I'll go the other way and be all Mary Poppins?

My heart goes out to everyone who is at various stages of struggles with their elderlies on this thread. I know it has been a Godsend for me at times to be able to come here and vent and feel understood.

I've now emptied and cleaned DM's house, the sale is due to be going through this week. I've come to the realisation that as I am the thing causes DM to be upset when I visit her in the CH, then I should cut back on the amount I visit. It serves no purpose for either of us as we both end up upset and unsettled.

Well done, FlyingMonkey. Tough call, but sometimes the wisest one.

Just caught up with you all..I had a 'communication holiday' and have just pottered and gardened and eaten and spent much needed time with my adult DCs. (My brain was fried and constantly buzzing. I'm sure you'll all remember those moments of crisis when you spend all day/week on the phone either making or taking calls..not to mention the lost hours on hold.. I know nearly every layby on the 250 mile trip and which ones have the best signal!!)

All quiet with DM..Still in the discharge lounge awaiting a care home place. Family have a rota so she gets a visit every day.. Taking my Dad when he's up to it. She's sleeping a lot and still not eating/drinking much. I'm stealing myself to try and get an update today. Wish me luck!

Dad has finally made an appointment with the Dr today which my DB will take him too. (he was very cross and told me yesterday that he'd been on hold for an hour! Really Dad..I had no idea! ) He's in so much discomfort. He has prostate cancer and I suspect he has a blockage now but he wouldn't listen/refused all suggestions so far. We shall see..
Sending hugs and gin and solidarity to you all. x

Oh and spending time with my DH who has spent weeks alone whilst I've been with the DPs..holding the fort and listening to my rants and tears..Then supplying endless tea whilst I've been on the phone when I've got home. I'm dealing with everything that can be done on the phone (SS, hospital, care home)whilst DBs do physical things when I'm not there (Dr appt, Shop, visits to Mum etc)..I'm very lucky to have my DBs so close. I know a few of you are having to cope alone...Anyway off to make a cuppa and start the calls..

@countrygirl99 It's not your dad's place to be cancelling your mother's assessment, clearly he's not acting in your mother's best interests. I am sure that SS deal with difficult people all of the time and are capable of dealing with this. If they see him at his worst then they also see what DM is living with. I'd guess you are right about him thrashing about because he's not in control anymore, fortunately my powerlessness comes out as anxiety rather than anger but I recognise the scenario.

Mum was lovely to the end, her last coherant words were "I love you very much you know" (and the whole ward went "ahhh"). MIL is nicer now than she has been for the last thirty years but the bar there was pretty low.

I'm trundling along with garden maintenance and house clearance, it was paperwork from 1987 last week.

@Knotaknitter it's ILs, my dad died a few months ago and mum was definitely the boss in that relationship.
The day centre MIL goes to a couple of days a week phoned because they are concerned that FIL isn't coping. They call me because I'm sat at a desk so easy to get hold of in an emergency. They wanted to suggest emergency respite, I updated them in the assessment situation and they are going to talk to Social Services. Will go down a bomb and I'm sure FIL will call me all the names under the sun ( and not for the first time) but I have a hide like a rhino sometimes.

Has anyone else read a graphic novel/memoir called "Can't we talk about something more pleasant?" It's by a New York artist/writer, about dealing with her elderly parents. I was just given a copy by a friend who is emerging out of the other side (difficult mother just died in her 90s). It is very funny but also all too painfully familiar, and very honest about the mixed emotions involved in having to spend so much time caring for people who were not necessarily the world's best parents.
www.amazon.co.uk/Cant-Talk-about-Something-Pleasant/dp/1632861011/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1654556106&sr=8-1

My mum said that when I was grieving for fostered babies that had moved on to their adopters. Wouldn't let me mention it at all.

When my aunt died when I was a child (she was 14 and I was 4) she just disappeared. Every photo was taken off the wall and hidden away. Her name wasn't mentioned, it was though she had never existed and it was all done to protect my grandmother. It took me years to understand the impact it had had on me and, long after my grandmother had died, I named my daughter after my aunt just to show that she was not forgotten.

Sorry, that was a bit of digression but I understand how difficult that must have been for you @picklemewalnuts when you needed comfort and support.

@countrygirl99 I knew that really didn't I? No excuse except my mind not on the job.

I have deleted the rant about being asked to take MIL to a hospital appointment, it was reasonable that they should ask, it was reasonable that I declined.

I read that exexpat. Found it very telling and touching, and sometimes painful too. Though there were definitely differences. The complexity and mixed emotions for sure though.

Not counting any chickens but it looks like we may have some progress on the IL problem. Unless FIL gets a good night's sleep tonight and changes his mind again in the morning.🤞

Applied for Attendance Allowance for my DM in March. Got a text confirming receipt 4 days later. And about 6 weeks later a payment hit her bank account and 4 weeks later got the next payment. Still haven’t got the letter though! But the money is more important!

Ah thank you @lazymum99! I didn't help fill in the form - my sibling did - so will check if she's heard anything.

I don't care about the letter but would like the cash! (Well not me but them)

@Clymene I deliberately put my phone number on the form so that they would contact me. There would have been no point them texting DM
So check which number went on your form

Couldn’t something be done to ensure he doesn’t get a good night’s sleep? [Evil grin]

Oh no @MereDintofPandiculation we need him tired until MIL is safely in a care home. When he has had a good night he forgets the 13 out of 14 that isn't and the times he is crying down the phone about how hard it is. He convinces himself he can cope caring for someone profoundly disabled despite having stage 4 cancer, chronic kidney disease and poor mobility. When he has had a good night's sleep he fails to see the relevance of needing help to get dressed himself with regards to his ability to look after someone incapable of doing anything for herself. He is a proud, stubborn, controlling bugger and he is lashing out right now because it's all going and on top of that pain control is proving problematic.