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.

Hello - I’ve peeked into this cafe many times but now feel that I should pull up a chair and settle in.

Mum is 92. She’s lived with us for 19 years, helping look after our boys in the early years but now she is the one to need our care. She is still very lucid in her waking hours but they are few and diminishing each day.

She was in hospital two weeks ago with what turned out to be a heart attack and ongoing aortic stenosis/heart failure. As as result she is very breathless and utterly miserable. The GP has referred her to the palliative care team so we will see what they can offer. At the moment my husband and I are providing all her care - we had carers coming in but the timings never worked so we cancelled them. Luckily we both WFH and have understanding employers but I don’t know how far that will stretch.

Mum is clear that she wants to ‘fade away’ and while it’s upsetting I understand her choice. We just don’t know quite how things will unfold in the coming weeks and that uncertainty is difficult to handle. Yet in many ways we are fortunate that she is lucid and that her living environment here is already adapted to deal with some of her needs.

Anyway, I look forward to hearing from others in the cafe and learning from the knowledgeable folk in here.

We just don’t know quite how things will unfold in the coming weeks and that uncertainty is difficult to handle It is. Try not to have expectations or do too much forward planning. I’ve gone from being called in to say my goodbyes last January, and agin in February, to wondering how late to leave it to plan his 100th birthday in a few weeks time.

It's so hard, absolutely. But breathlessness is one of the key miserable symptoms that the palliative care team are there to try and help with. I really hope she gets some relief x

Mum has called British Gas out again. 2nd time this week, third time since early October and I've stopped her on another occasion. The problem is she thinks the boiler isn't working when it switches off because the thermostat temperature has been reached then fiddles with the controls. I have no idea what to do now.
We thought of putting a box over the controls but she had such a tantrum at the suggestion that I think she would take a heavy implement to it to get to the controls and cause more damage.
I thought of WiFi based controls so we could check/sort remotely but a friend in that business said from his experience someone like my mum is likely to wreck one of those beyond reinstatement unless we put a plastic box over so back to the same problem for more £.
I'm now refusing to go up when she says her heating isn't working because I walk into a house heated to tropical temperatures (the thermostat will be at at 26 or 28) and by the time I've driven there and back and stopped for a cup of tea it's the best part of 3 hours gone.

I’ve posted on here intermittently. My Mum died a few weeks ago. I am an only child and am having to deal with the huge financial mess she has left behind. While she kept every piece of paper that came into the house, she dealt with it by just shoving it all into a cupboard. I’m up to five bank accounts discovered so far, with varying amounts of money in, from £2000 to over £100,000. That’s not counting the ISAs, bonds, shares and premium bonds.

Please, for the love of God, ask your parents to put all their money in one or two accounts. And better still, spend it while they are alive. I knew my Mum had a very small pension, and thought she didn’t have much money, as she said she couldn’t afford to pay for a cleaner, taxis etc. I wish she had just spent it on lovely holidays and making her life a bit easier.

Still having a nightmare with my Mum.
Me and DB have taken all her money.
Nobody ever visits or asks where she wants to live.
She’s going to get a job at the local bakery.
She want to go to another care home as the food is dreadful.
She got a taxi to her home and managed perfect well.

On a positive note - she’s been granted attendance allowance.

Oh @MrsSchadenfreude, I'm sorry . Thanks for the tip. My DF died last year, he was obsessive about filing things and the admin was still awful. My DM is the complete opposite so goodness knows what pickles I'll be dealing with one day 😬
Try gin!

🌺🌺@MrsSchadenfreude so sorry you’ve got to go through all this.

Please, for the love of God, ask your parents to put all their money in one or two accounts. If you’re talking building society or bank accounts, then anything over £85,000 in one institution isn’t protected. So, unless you have the knowledge to invest or have a financial adviser, putting it all in one account may not be a great idea. But at least make a list of institutions you have money with.

Trouble about spending it is that you can always foresee a future where you have even more need of the money.

@MereDintofPandiculation yes I know. But she has, say £120,000 in one,£95,000 in another, £500 in one, £2400 in another, £11000 in yet another. I’ve also just found another two (so we’re up to seven now) but I’m not doing anything with those until Monday.

@Countrygirl is there any value in putting up a wall thermometer that you can monitor remotely, separately from the thermostat? Then at least you would know what the temperature is?

Tbh I would let British Gas take the strain on this occasion. She's a customer and no doubt paying them a lot of money, it's up to them how they manage multiple callouts from vulnerable customers.

@PermanentTemporary that's a good suggestion about a thermometer, I'll investigate that. I'm just a bit wary of British Gas as the engineer who came out Monday was quite happy to make an appointment for a quote for a new boiler despite the current one functioning perfectly well and not old. We wouldn't have known if DB had happened to phone her while she still remembered, it didn't get a mention when I phoned a couple of hours later.

Would it be worth asking British Gas to put her on their vulnerable customer list?

Oh I didn't know BG had a vulnerable customers list (despite using the word myself above), that's interesting.

@thesandwich she was meant to be flagged as a vulnerable customer but somehow this had got deleted. So DB spent ages on the phone cancelling the appointment for the quote and getting them to check and correct their records for the POA he holds etc.
It now turns out she hadn't called them yesterday even though she was insistent she was waiting in for them. We think she must have got muddled with the appointment earlier in the week. This is the woman who is furious that DB has kept all the important paperwork (he caught her shredding unpaid bills, vital records etc) because "what would she do if she needed to make an insurance claim" which really doesn't bear thinking about.
I tell my children that they won't have to worry about our old age because our parents will have driven us to an early grave.

@MrsSchadenfreude

I found a similar convoluted, multiple account mess when I took on PoA, then amplified by sorting out proceeds of a house sale when she went into care.

The process of rationalising then ensuring nothing breached the 85k was beyond stressful as every institution demanded different bits of paper and evidence as I D was an issue. It's how I found this thread. I will need to address it again now interest rates are increasing.

Mine is still alive but has dementia, and is burning through the money at an alarming rate in her very nice care home, so I would try to look on the bright side that there is at least some money left. I suspect the lifetime cap will be delayed again in next week's budget.

And yes, as you say, if you have oversight of an elderly's finances before they lose capacity, then the advice to rationalise as much as you possibly can is spot on, bearing in mind the 85k limit.

The fewer entities you have to deal with, either as PoA or in probate, the better.

then the advice to rationalise as much as you possibly can is spot on, bearing in mind the 85k limit And keep an up to date list of what institutions you have avvounts with. Easy to get a building society to list all the accounts in someone’s name, the difficult bit is to know you should be asking them

And give your will to be kept by a solicitor - well done Mum - but then make sure you tell someone or write down which solicitor it's with...

If you are still on here Minty , how is your mum ?
I often wonder how her / your situation is going .
All ok hopefully ?

Hi @Frostine...I was debating whether to post an update when I saw your post!

There hasn't been any more news on the investigation. SS called me and asked me to go through it all again on Friday. I suspect that since it's their words against mine it's not going to go much further but at least he's out of our lives (AFAIK...have got a notion a couple of times that they might still be in touch).

Mum and I going along okayish. We see each other and speak on the phone but maybe 2/3 times a week for an hour or so...nothing like before. If she starts talking about him/castigating me I walk out or hang up. It's not too bad on the whole.

Her house went on the market last week and she's already had four viewings...hoping to move to a warden assisted flat about 5 miles away. She's had her second cataract done and I'm just about to go and pick her up.

So all told, not a total horror story in the end (so far anyway!), and had actually reset our relationship in a positive way at least from my POV.

A positive reset is the best possible outcome really isn't it. Not sure what is permissible to say about a situation that is under investigation but it doesn't sound as though your relationship with your mother has been damaged beyond repair so that's good.

That is exactly how I feel about my relationship with mum. It's very different of course but I am her daughter again and she is my mum instead of being her carer/arms and legs.

@MintyCedricHereWeGoAgain

I'm glad it sounds reasonably positive . Good news on the home front for your mum .

I hope it all works out ok and that gives you more time with your dd .

No one has DM’s address apart from the Government. I got a letter forwarded to me from the care home from DWP to DM saying that her £300 Winter fuel payment would be in her bank account soon.

For some reason It never occurred to me she would get funds. I’m going to give the £300 to the care home as their heating bills must be sky rocketing. She’s not got much ££ spare but she would absolutely want to be warm. (She hardly eats their food.) Do you think others will absolutely be doing the same? I do hope they do.( Assuming they have any funds beyond the fees.)

I’m keeping it to help pay the fees which I expect to increase massively this year. I don’t want him running out of money before he dies. The probability is that the LA would keep him in the same home but there are no certainties.

Actually Dint that's what DSis says. She says we have to keep it in case DM's frail finances come to an end and we have to move her.