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.

Thanks for the good wishes Dint and Sandwich, it means a lot when I know you both have more to deal with than me.

I agree with Words that being asked to do things is particularly difficult if you haven't had the support yourself, giving more than you have been given. My DM wasn't given what she needed by her DM. I have no children (never wanted them) and so the cycle ends with me. I'm in my late fifties and a natural declutterer and intend my next move (soon) to be right for my later years, but I still baulk at the notion of premature sheltered living: Golden Girls perhaps.

Dm is in a care home and asks constantly to go home.
First of all can I say there’s 0% of her going home.
She won’t accept that she needs 24 hour care. On her lucid days, she puts up a fair argument however this includes neighbours looking after her when she needs any help.

Ive told her it would be expensive to have 24/7 care and she then moved on to how bad the home is and how they all get drunk every night and fight.

Do I just change the subject when she asks to go home?
I’ve tried saying we will ask my brother when we see him.
She occasionally forgets DD has died, though it’s only been a few weeks.
Im finding it so difficult to deal with my own grief while trying not to battle with DN constantly.

DD as is Dear Dad x

Sympathy to everyone struggling. Just had a call from mum in tears because she couldn't get cash out of ghe ATM. I know she has £000s in her current account so it's either
Pressed the wrong buttons
Got the PIN wrong
Using an out of date card.
Couldn't get any sense about what the actual problem was just "it wouldn't let me have any money". Have messaged DB as he has POA and access to bank account.
No mention of the heating "problem" that was Thursday's crisis.

@Borntobeamum I have exactly the same conversation with my mum every week although she is not really lucid/articulate. I tell her that she can't come home this week. She just needs to get a bit stronger before she can come home. Mum is doubly incontinent and requires two carers and a hoist to get from the armchair to the wheelchair. When I tell her she needs to get stronger and walk a bit better (not acknowledging that she has been hoisted and wheeled to the dining room!) she tells me that she can walk, the staff know she can walk and after all "how do you think I got in here?" - all whilst sitting in the wheelchair with the straps from the hoist underneath her!

My dad died 10 years ago but mum has forgotten. Sometimes she thinks he is ill and will take her home when he is better, sometimes she says that he has been to visit and stayed overnight. When I took my dog to visit (a tiny white and brown terrier) she was worried that he had lost weight and changed colour (her dog is big and black!) and did Dad mind me bringing him? Was Dad ok without him. I just have to smile and and say everything is fine. For the pain of losing him is not as raw as it is for you so it is a little easier but I do struggle with not telling her the truth.

MIL has no idea why she is on a psychiatric unit. She asks why she can't go home when she's capable of <insert list of the things she imagines she can still do on any given day>. She repeatedly assaults other patients, visitors and staff. Are we meant to tell her that? I have no idea. In her own mind she's a model citizen, wrongly incarcerated. We just say she has to get better.

Some weeks MIL wants to go home to her mum and dad. The "home" people are wanting to go to may not be the house you are thinking of, it may be a time and place where they were happy that just doesn't exist anymore.

I can't drop her at home when I leave because I'm going straight to meet my friend in the other direction, I think the care staff tell her that the buses are on strike again, the reality is that she couldn't walk to the pavement never mind the bus stop.

That's certainly the case where MIL is concerned, @Knotaknitter . Before she was sectioned there were so many crises that were rooted in her quest to go 'home' from the house she's lived in for decades.

Do I just change the subject when she asks to go home? I dealt with it by talking through the things he needed to do to enable going home, mainly getting exercise to strengthen his legs. That occupied him till he forgot about wanting to come home. Sympathise with the drunken fights, don’t try to persuade her they’re not happening. Don’t remind her about DD, she’ll just feel the pain all over again.

The "home" people are wanting to go to may not be the house you are thinking of, it may be a time and place where they were happy that just doesn't exist anymore.

I can't drop her at home when I leave because I'm going straight to meet my friend in the other direction, I think the care staff tell her that the buses are on strike again, the reality is that she couldn't walk to the pavement never mind the bus stop. That made me laugh!

Had a bad weekend with DM. The house she’s lived in for 60 years needs lots of things doing as she and DF hadn’t really maintained it over the last 20 years. Since DF died we’ve carried out lots of repairs, installed new windows, a new boiler and fire, a new flat roof because they had ignored a leak. DH has taken the organising of all this on as well as doing all sorts of minor repairs himself. DH organised a plasterer to do the kitchen ceiling at the weekend as it was falling down.

I spent all day Saturday there with her as she didn’t want to be alone with the plasterer in the house, took her out for lunch, took her to our house for a break. We were there again on Sunday, DH spent two hours replacing an outside lamp for her. I handed over to DB in the afternoon leaving payment for the plasterer in an envelope on the mantelpiece for DB to hand to him.

Went out to do some shopping and got back to a phone call from her saying she’d opened the envelope and how much was supposed to be in it? Apparently she doesn’t trust me not to rip her off, I had never told her how much the job was costing (I had) and she is 85 don’t you know. Then put the phone down on me twice. Then when I rang back and DH attempted to speak to her she put the phone down on him. He is seriously pissed off with her and I can’t blame him and at the moment says he is not going to do any more to help.

At the moment I feel my life is being controlled by her. Life revolves around her appointments and her needs. She’s not capable of doing much herself. She can wash and dress herself and manage some basic meals and limited cleaning but is really housebound unless someone takes her out. I do 90% of her shopping and all the admin, banking, bill paying, hospital appointments etc and I resent it.

I also feel very very guilty as she was a great mum and grandparent, as was my dad. I had a lovely childhood. I hate it.

Sorry, that was long and I know many of you have it much harder.

Oh @BestIsWest i feel for you. Nothing is ever enough/ right is it? Two hours at dms yesterday, doing all the “little jobs” and no she hadn’t run out of loo roll, it was at the back of the cupboard, she’s NEVER run out in the 15 years I’ve been doing her shopping…… then a message at 7.15 from db… she wasn’t answering phone……
quick dash to v indignant m. Somehow the volume was turned down on the phone… arrrgh….. home to rescue almost cremated tea from oven……
cockroach all….

@thesandwich aaaargh indeed. I had to make an emergency dash for milk for her on Friday (What on Earth does she do with it? DB had done a Tesco run for her on Thursday). Bought her a 4 pinter. On Saturday she produced a full 2 pint container. From where??

@BestIsWest My guess is that she's brought the neighbours into play with the shopping. On a good week MIL had three people shopping for her, it's funny how the other two never did quite enough for me to have a week off.

I'll just step in and punt this up the page.

MIL's memory is here and there, she knew Knot was going on holiday and knew the destination but she couldn't fathom that Knot was me. It's like talking to mum all over again in that I feel that I am being compared unfavourably with an imaginary person. I don't know why it annoys me as much as it does. Maybe the other Knot will visit while I'm away.

I have to take mum to the GP Thursday. She is adamant that I don't need to drive up and she is perfectly capable of taking herself even though she has no clue why she is going or that her medication changed a couple of weeks ago. When I reminded her yesterday and said it's on her calendar she was looking at Thursday 13th instead of this week. I've told her the GP wants there as I've taken over filling her pivotell and they need to make sure I know what I'm doing.

My mum was very strange at our last visit. Apparently "things are getting worse and she needs to leave" so I really laid it on thick about the coming power cuts and the fierce winter and said she shouldn't think about moving before the Spring.

She was in her own little world then she started to talk about "the clock" and saying that "they've gone to see the clock". I found a video on my phone of a mechanical clock she had taken my son to see when he was 4 and she was delighted.

Then a bit later she started to talk about me by my nickname, saying "I hear Nickname calling Dad and he answers but I never see them. I wish I could see them." All while I am sitting right up close to her and stroking her arm. It's so sad.

It’s ghastly isn’t it. I envy people, not with rich parents, but sane ones. Or healthy.

Kind always seems too much to even wish for.

As a percentage, how many old people need daily care?

Whatever the numbers, they can’t be shrinking. But you still hear of old people who live independently into their 80s - indeed, I suspect most do.

My 90 year old next door neighbour is amazing, mowing lawns, decorating, climbing ladders, building computers. Wish my mum was. He and his wife are lovely lovely people.

My friend's FIL is older than my ILs, who are both in their eighties, and seems a good ten or fifteen years younger. He still runs his own business, goes on great holidays, has a good social life and lives independently. And yes, I do envy that, though to be fair my friend paid her dues looking after a demanding and increasingly dependent MIL.

My dad was doing very well until 89 when he fell and fractured his pelvis and a couple of vertebrae.

've told her the GP wants there as I've taken over filling her pivotell and they need to make sure I know what I'm doing.. Nice one!

Nearly all the elders who need care have lived independently up to a few years before needing care. I’d say my father was pretty independent up to about 90.

According to google, about 5% of the elderly will need care eventually in a care home, rising to 15% of those over 90.

According to the Kings Fund, about 548000 elderly people are receiving socially funded long term care. 47% of those who ask for help get it.

About 25%, or 16.5 million people, are over 65.

I think its the length of care giving that's depressing. What I mean is there are very elderly people who stay independent for a long time, then need care for a relatively short time. An elderly man I used to know in his mid eighties travelled by train, on his own, to Czech Republic to visit friends. He was part of a conservation group & regularly climed a ladder in a community orchard to prune trees. He told me he was looking at sheltered accommodation because he thought he was approaching the next step of his life & didn't want to make a rushed decision too late. He moved there, stayed relatively active/socially involved before he died.

Contrast my mother, now late 80s, but for last 5 years has lived a life where she doesn't even try - that sounds mean - but she won't even try to use remote to turn tv over so will sit all night watching stuff she hates then complains, she won't put bread in toaster but moans if she has to wait 10 mins for someone to make her breakfast. I find it difficult because she's in reasonably good health - every HCP we've ever seen has commented on how healthy she is for her age - and she has all her mental faculties. Looking after her is exhausting. I said to DP a couple of days ago, "I'm sure she'll go on into her 90s while I'll be dead & buried after a stress induced stroke or coronary (big sigh).

Took mum to the GP this morning, it was like herding cats!
First off it was"oh you've changed your car" that was last year and mum's had loads of lifts in it but no, never seen this one before. It's a max 5 minute drive to the GP but in that time she managed to asked 3 times whether she had an appointment. "Yes mum, 9am Dr X". When we got to the surgery she marched up to reception and told them she wanted to make an appointment with a completely different doctor who doesn't exist. Must have been a previous GP.
She'd forgotten she was now taking antidepressants, for which this was a follow up appointment, and told the Doctor dad had died a couple of weeks ago and she thinks she might be depressed. Dad died in January.
Her papers had been delivered when we got back. She looked at the front page of the Mail and was puzzled that Rishi Sunak is PM and asked what happened to Boris.
I offered to drop her off at a social activity she says she goes to every week but she said her friend is picking her up. Except I left the house after the activity is supposed to start and no sign of the friend so now I doubt she's going. I know the friend was diagnosed with a serious illness a few months ago but mum tells me it was last week every time I see her maybe she is still too ill.

I've just realised who the GP should asked for was - he retired when I was a child! Must be over 50 years ago.

I'm not sure whether or not to laugh or cry reading these posts and realising I'm not the only one going through this absolute horror.........

Dad is 82, and was diagnosed with liver cancer in August (he's been unwell since around March but GP dismissed it all as long covid). Wasn't until he collapsed and went into hospital that he was given the diagnosis. He had such an awful stay for a week that he's now refusing to ever go back in there, and is insisting on being at home - with my sister and I running round after him like headless chickens while working full time and having busy lives

Current battles: the tumble dryer on 24/7 drying a dirty t shirt. Changing every 15 minutes as it feels wet (it's not). Trying to shower himself (he can't) then ringing in panic that he's fallen (he hasn't). Passing solid blood stools and making me ring GP and look a complete twit (bit of blood from piles). He's essentially a grumpy toddler in a grown man's body. I love him and have cried so many tears in the last 3 months but dear God, I could kill him myself and save us all the agony today is there a spare seat please on the bad daughters sofa........