Cockroach Cafe 🪳Autumn 2022 🪳

[MereDintofPandiculation]

Welcome! I’ve taken advantage of the relative quietness recently to have a good “spring” clean. And also install solar panels and get in a good supply of logs for the stove.

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.

I need gin! Can't have a drink until after I've been to the horse. Thinking of running a sweep on how many times mum's going to ask DSs partner what her job is. They only arrived at 1 and we are already well into double figures. She just had a panic about were "everyone else" has gone and whether the person who brought her has left without her. No one has left and I fetched her.

We just did a WhatsApp video call to DS2 and DIL who are at her parents where they live in Finland. DH passed mum the phone and she asked DS if he has a girlfriend 😱. We had to retreat to the kitchen before we collapsed in hysterics.

Cockroach all. I am hiding in the kitchen, avoiding my Mum telling all and sundry all about the gory details of my dad’s late stage dementia, and my sister in law wondering wide eyed about why care homes here aren’t like in her country where ‘they just come and go! Why doesn’t he ever leave?’. Well, he’s doubly incontinent, delirious a lot of the time, and in a wheel chair, having had two brain bleeds. You knock yourself out love, take him to the sea side for the day, we’re all just too lazy, clearly.
I might be slightly drunk.

I think your judgement is spot on.

what does she mean by "come and go" anyway? Confused.

No idea. I had to bite my tongue before I got as far as asking. Apparently their care homes are far more welcoming places where people go and share family meals and pop in and take their relatives out for the day. Charitably, I’m not sure she’s seen him awake in about 6 months.

I'm going to guess this is a country where the majority are in private care homes?

you could book a little area for family meals in mum's respite care place, but most of the residents we saw would struggle on a day out.

selfishly, I am really hoping nothing goes wrong so I can just go home tomorrow and stay put for a week. The cooker's bust, the car sale has been delayed....couple of other things mum is really stressed about.

interestingly, she wants to go to her hospital appointment alone, either me or sis are free to take her but she says no.

I understand she wants to go alone so that's fine with me and I think it's not a useful appointment where it's worth making notes.

if I get a wish today, it's life be made easier for all of us dealing with olds!

@EmmaAgain22 I hope that for you too. I’m a bit of a lurker on here but Ive been reading your posts and what you’ve written reminds me a lot of me 6 months ago. Honestly, I broke a bit. Look after yourself. I read somewhere at the time ‘you are not required to set yourself on fire to keep someone else warm’. I think it’s pretty accurate, and I remind myself of that now daily.

Well.. dad's catheter fell out last night, according to mum this means he's definitely useless and she wants to kill him (insert inappropriate expletives)
Rang her just now , she's fed up, pissed off, her mouth is sore (she has massive dental problems but refuses to see a dentist) We messed up last week and my sister ended up with dads hearing aid batteries.. she's taking them to him tomorrow, apparently an apology doesn't cut it and 'we should try living with 'it''

Thank you...sorry you broke a bit though.

I find I can say stuff here that no one finds acceptable IRL, or the people I know doing really full on care are just fine with it and then I think I'm a weirdo.

I think the weight of expectation is a factor....mum's friends seem to think we should do more.

Lots of people think that about doing more. I try to remind myself that I don’t see them doing it.

I’m sorry @Lightuptheroom . I sometimes look at my dm and don’t recognise her, and the way she’s behaving. And then I wonder if she’s changed or if I just didn’t see it before.

Blimey @ChiefFinderOuter. I'd be quite tempted to do a head tilt there and say 'oh in your country people must have to move into care homes while they're still doing very well, what a shame'

I think unless she is caring for her own elders or running a care home, she may have a rather vague picture of what they're really like in her country.

The first time MIL wasin a care home it was for nearly 2 years after her stroke. Once she was able to sit in a wheelchair for more than short periods FIL used to take her to the pub iver the road, on outings and walks or to sit in the garden at home. For a long while she used to sleep for about 48 hours after an outing. He used to have his lunch and evening meals there too. Most days he was there for 10-12 hours and only had breakfast at home.

Managed two visits to Dad today. 1st one was horrendous - he was agitated, confused and said he'd had no food or visitors for 3 days. By tea time, he was a bit better... he hadn't eaten all day but had managed some Fortesip. One of my DD's found a FB memory of him and I sat together 5 years ago and it broke my heart seeing how emaciated he is now because of the cancer.
My sister also causing issues, panicking to Dad's confusion and panic and causing more of it .. he's even more agitated now she's back visiting again after not seeing him for 10 days due to a cold.
Bittersweet day today, I can't decide if I'm happy he made this Christmas or almost wishing that he'd found peace by now. Happy Christmas, fellow Cockroaches.

Happy Christmas Badger.

I've finished the visits for DM and MIL and they both went ok. The gruesome details of exactly how ill and frail they both are can be left to the imagination. As visits, they were all right. I am very much looking forward to two whole days NOT at work and NOT visiting elders. We all know how precious those days are.

Well DM came to lunch and I took her to my brothers’s for tea this afternoon. She drank FOUR large glasses of red while she was here. I’d have been under the table but she seemed no different at all. Considering she’s very unsteady on her feet normally, I was impressed.

I have no guilt about not visiting MIL until the New Year. She doesn't know what season it is, who I am or her own name so she's certainly not keeping track of the date or who has visited. I've had enough monologues over the decades about how Christmas is only for children and if it was up to her she wouldn't bother with a tree or the turkey. I see her just about every week through the year, I'm having Christmas off.

I've dropped mum home and I'm having a peaceful cup of tea and a mince pie. Taking mum out of her own environment is clearly not a good idea anymore. She did seem to enjoy herself but she had some big panics when she didn't know where she was, how she got there or how she would get home. She thought the person who had given her a lift here (me) had gone home without her while I was trying to have a conversation with her and when I went out to see to my horse she thought I'd gone home. A couple of times she was telling my DH about her daughter (I'm the only one).
Poor DS1 and partner had to go out for a walk in the pouring rain to give partner a break from being asked what her job is every 5 minutes.
DH hasn't seen her for a few months as we usually go in opposite directions to see our own parents or we'd have no time to anything else other than working he now understands why I come home exhausted.

half a day of peace at home before mum is on the phone with a very simple "problem" which doesn't need fixing, and which she has made 100x more difficult.

I had a day off from visiting Dad yesterday, I think I hit the wall and spent the entire day in bed crying and sleeping. My sister is now visiting again, so Dad's agitation has gone through the roof as she "has" to correct him everytime, and she's messaged me twice to go in urgently as he's agitated to find him fast asleep so her messages are back on silent again. Dad is even more confused, slightly jaundiced and his appetite has completely gone. He's literally skin and bone, and they've upped the Haloperidol as he was getting agitated again. Today he thought he was in his childhood home and he asked me to get some hazelnuts from the trees in the garden on the plus side, the nursing staff said there's nothing in his notes about a move..........

Badger big hugs.

I'd be having words with sister about that. Is it stuff where it is important he is corrected?

I had a horrible day when dad insisted none of his hearing aids were working, me and the staff couldn't get him to understand that his hearing had deteriorated that much. So I did actually end up trying to sort it out.

but in the end I had to tell him, you can't hear properly even with the aids. I can understand if she is correcting stuff to save her sanity, but I sense from what you are saying, that's not the case?

I would have a chat with his nurse again to clarify that if the nurse thinks it's necessary, they call you as well as your sister - because it's completely reasonable to filter her messages.

I'd also ask about the move. Cry on the phone if you have to. It's what I did last week.

She and I are NC because of her bossiness and need to be right. She's never really taken on board his diagnosis, and even now doesn't accept he's dying. I know that denial is a way of coping for some, but she's made his care much much harder as a result. Dad asked me to look after his medical care and his finances before he got really poorly, so I was the person who palliative care dealt with and I'm next of kin on his paperwork which is of some comfort I guess.

I'll chat to the nursing staff tomorrow and explain that her visits are likely to agitate him, and will also try the tears. I'm quite adept at bursting into them at random moments so that's one tiny blessing

Oh Badger that must be so hard. I'm sorry for everything you are going through, I wish I could say something more useful.

Hey all
any advice for this poster?

www.mumsnet.com/talk/elderly_parents/4706342-help-new-to-all-this-and-really-struggling?reply=122611564