Show me a picture that sums up caring for elderly parents…

[Stath]

‘Mum, where’s that step with the handle that you need to use to help get in bed?’

DM currently weak as a kitten due to having a UTI and absolutely crippled with arthritis. Needs something to hold onto to mobilise and move into bed.
She’s virtually housebound unless we take her out in the car and would be absolutely buggered if she was left on her own.

Still believes she is ‘independent’ and needs no outside help.

Said mobility aid was found sporting a sock and used as a magazine rack in the kitchen.

My dm says ‘what’s that old lady doing?’ ‘Erm, mum she’s younger than you!’
Mum has her hair dyed dark brown to hide her greys. Tbh, at 82 she doesn’t look her age, but walks with a zimmer.
She’s bloody ageing me though. Helping her get up as she’s stuck really doesn’t help my arthritic knee. She’ll outlive me at this rate.
The photo would be all the pills she takes and the repeat prescriptions. The list is endless.

No picture but when my MIL first became less mobile (osteoporosis, Parkinson’s) she was given a walking frame with a tray to help her get around the house and not have to eat at the table (couldn’t sit up straight enough). When we arrived to visit, the frame was against a wall in the hall, flowering cactus plant sitting on the tray and handbag / walking stick hanging off the handles! At least it was being used for something 🙄 ie plant stand and storage hooks.

For me the photo would be of her bathroom cabinet full to the brim with incontinence pad packets - the carers delivered a few packets every week and she flatly refused to use them. And every week I'd have to strip the bed and all her chair covers and wash them because she had wet on them. I do miss her sometimes but I don't miss the work she created from her own obstinacy .

my mum hates her hair showing grey, I do her roots every few months to keep on top of it

I can sympathise. I've already charged my adult son with the job of "doing my roots" until the day I die.

No photo but it would be the random scattering of dropped pills, hearing aid batteries and food debris around the favourite arm chair

My picture would be the book on coping with dementia that the chap from the memory clinic gave DMIL last week...

"It must be awful to have Dementia, thank goodness I don't! Might be interesting to read if I get bored though " said mum...

The new microwave we've just bought my mum, who had forgotten that she has carers who cook all her meals for her, and who had attempted to 'cook an egg' in the old one. The burning smell was still strong the next morning. I have no idea how much longer we will be able to keep her at home, she's 91 and has had Alzheimer's for about 4 years now...

I don't exactly have to 'care' for my DM (89) because she is very feisty and independent... but it's comments like 'that's for when I am older' when I invite her to join me at my WI meetings or insisting on buying a new lawnmower (she could easily ask one of her adult DC or afford to pay for a gardener) that amuse me .

Snap!
I’ve eventually persuaded DM to use the dosette box that gets delivered by our lovely local pharmacy. She was adamant that sitting counting out her various pills with wobbly arthritic fingers and then feeling poorly (because the time it took to remove said pills from fiddly packets was so long that she was having meds withdrawals) so recounting was the best plan.

When doing a hoover (me and DH- aka favourite son in law both do her jobs) we were finding loads of tablets as well as the other crap that gets missed.

DM realised (with a bit of suggestion from us) that her beloved cat might start mainlining Ramipril and snorting her statins so she’s decided to use the dosette box fistpump.

Pills, paperwork and mountains of newspapers. Will take a picture when down there next. Oh yes to the walking cane gathering dust . All too sad

mintycedric

For me the pic would be of mum's hearing aids...inevitably in a little basket on the bedside table, while I shout myself hoarse trying to communicate with her.

Yes!! This is my mum too. Never wears them, they're just gathering dust on the mantelpiece. Ironically, I took her for a hearing check up recently and she took for whatever reason, a dislike to the lovely audiologist, saying out loud . 'l don't like her'.

Think she forgot who was the deaf one in the room ....

Mum used her upstairs Zimmer frame to hang her clothes on, same with the bannister rail. Some of them get very silly as they get older, it's like reasoning with toddlers sometimes. Both of mine are now gone, I miss them...

This picture sums up how funny, clever and brill DM is.

We we’re playing a guessing game with the kids and she plonked some toilet roll on her head, assumed a pose and asked ‘can you tell who I am?’ 😂

It’s also very outing but fuck it!

We solved the ‘I don’t want to look like an old person with a stick’ issue by giving my very darling late grandad the walking poles that people use to climb mountains.

he was happy because that made him feel sporty, not elderly (at 90+).

My dad refuses to sit in the communal areas of his care home as its “full of old people”. He’s 87 and one of the oldest there…

So many bells ringing - and all so sad. It's really got to me the last few weeks. Mine would be my mum's dosset boxes of pills (which my partner and I sort for her every week or two as she has Dementia and has to take over 20 tablets each day!), her two trollys... one up one down (with stair lift in the middle) - which she actually loves now and are now like her mobile 'life station'... yes, what's with all the piles of papers? - she won't let us throw anything away... 3 Cotton Trader's Catalogues etc...
And her purple wheelchair... housebound without it now. My Mum has been my rock my whole life and gradually bit by bit and piece by piece she is leaving me... and as another poster said - being in the middle of it at the moment, I can't even think back to that time and remember it properly!

My dad never turned his on because the batteries were too expansive and he didn’t want to waste them.

He had 6 years worth of batteries for them when he was 85.

Stath, that really made me laugh - your mum sounds great.

This is the cutest thing ever!

I’ll give you 2 pictures and a youtube clip-look after my dad full time-and nursed my disabled mum at home (in a Sheltered housing complex) until she died. I love them (and the other old people whom I will always help if needed!) but there are many days I feel like I am in an episode of Father Ted!

@Stath Your mum is brilliant