Cockroach cafe 🪳 Summer 2023 🪳

[MereDintofPandiculation]

Welcome! I’ve done a really good clean of the place overnight, and brought in sweet peas, and raspberries from the garden to go with the scones and clotted cream.

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 Mere that will throw mum completely though

Nodancingshoes I really sympathise. Does she have an emergency button? Is there any way you could ignore her calls safe in the knowledge she can press that for a real emergency?

She has Careline but I'm not sure I could live with the guilt of not answering...
Shes guilt tripped me into visiting tomorrow after a 10 hour day at work. I really don't want to go. She doesn't need me too, she has the carer and my sister will go in at teatime. I shouldn't have said I'd do it but too late now.
On a lighter note, she got several hundred pounds out at the bank whilst we were out today and asked for it all in £5 notes so I'm sure they were thrilled 🤣

@Nodancingshoes can you say that something has come up at work, you need to stay later so you can’t come. Or you forgot you had the dentist. Or anything!

Just say you've got urgent meeting you can't move.

She doesn't need to know it's with a cup of tea and a book!

Oh dear. Mine has just rung to ask what time I’m picking her up to go to the Age Concern group she sometimes attends. Apparently I said I’d take her.
She’s never mentioned it to me and I have plans.
I knew this would happen if I told her I’ve retired.

It’s only a 2 mile trip and she can well afford a taxi.

Any ginger nuts in the bad daughters biscuit tin?

Exactly.

I made the mistake of talking in depth about the whole thing to my boyfriend last night. The more you talk to someone who hasn't been through it, the more sad you feel.

I feel like a cartoon character with a sad cloud over me today. I just cannot believe what we are all going through. It makes me feel like there should be more awareness and I've never said that about anything!

Cross posted

So she knows you've retired?

I think you miss work and took on something else...

I don’t mind the odd thing - I ran her to lunch with friends last week and obviously doctors and hospitals etc and food shopping I’ve factored in. But if I take her today, it’ll be every week and I’ll be roped into collecting her two friends who go by bus as well.
I didn’t tell her about retirement for a few months - Beginning to regret it now. I have signed up for an art class in September.

No I haven't got angry @EmmaEmerald , I've got tearful and upset. My mum goes into child mode, sulks then gets sarcastic with me and starts saying things like 'I hope you don't get old'
They have always expected me to do what they say, never my siblings as apparently they are too busy , ie all of their life they have too busy to do anything for them

I learned that sometimes pretending to be angry gets a result.

I can't understand how some siblings are seen differently. I drew boundaries very early on but I think they blurred a bit as I worked less.

Has anyone read The Reluctant Carer: Despatches From The Edge of Life?

I was recommended it by a friend and it is so very worth a read! Very well written - compassionate but really hits the spot!

@BestIsWest I hear you! I take mum shopping one Monday, and if I'm not careful I 'take her shopping on Mondays'.

Nodded in recognition about suddenly finding yourself expected to pick up their friends too.

I have the opposite problem with mum. She is convinced she manages just fine and doesn't need us to do anything. She doesn't realise she hasn't paid a paper bill all year because she owed so much they were threatening to stop delivering and now DB pays every 4 weeks by bank transfer. She didn't realise that a mouse infestation in the kitchen was a problem. She keeps calling out British Gas because the heating hasn't come on because she's switched it off. And the latest was being overcharged thousands for some work in the garden. Annoyingly I offered to do the garden jobs myself. They would have taken a few hours and only cost about £200 for materials but she spent 4 years saying she wasn't sure she wanted it done. She's lost bank cards 3 times this year. She has forgotten all of these things .
There's the constant fear of what totally preventable crisis am I going to be dealing with next and that sinking feeling when she calls - she only phones when there is a problem. And I can't just call to check she's OK because she doesn't accept she needs a hearing aid and so there is no point phoning after about 2 as chances are she won't hear the phone over the TV then I panic and think should I drop everything and drive an hour to check she's OK. But if I phone in the morning there's a high chance she's out, she's still totally mobile only her brain is failing, and so I get the same panic. Tuesday is community minibus to the supermarket. Wednesday is Salvation Army social and lunch, Thursday is line dancing, 2 Fridays a month are WI. So I can only safely phone Monday, Saturday and Sunday mornings.

@SunshineGlamourIfOnly I heard her tell a friend I take her for coffee on Thursdays. I did once.

When I picked her up from the lunch her friend asked how I was enjoying retirement. Then later, I got a text from said friend saying what a shame it was that the community car service is only for medical appointments and can’t be used for taking them to social activities.

I’ve been volunteered haven’t I?

If you're looking for permission to be unvolunteered, here it is, @BestIsWest . Your art teacher will be expecting you, for a start. And you just know how it would go. Gratitude for a favour transforms itself rapidly into expectation, then comes the stage of absolute bafflement that you might have other plans yourself.

@BestIsWest we have a transport service for medical appointments but we also have community transport that does a shopping run and can be booked for one off trips to wherever (sometimes it's a minibus, sometimes it's a volunteer in a car). If there are three of them going then they can share a taxi surely?

Wow!

Why does said friend have your mobile?

Ignore. (Or text back "this number is for medical emergencies with mum only")

Don't let anyone pull that. Be rude if you have to be.

people tried it on with my dad for driving them around after he retired, even long distance. Sorry to say, even alleged friends tried "but I can't go to my nephew's wedding 100 miles away unless you drive me".

some people are born with a sense of entitlement.

Friend is DMs best friend and found me on FB messenger some how! She does sometimes message if she can’t get an answer from DM which I don’t mind.

I’ve no intention of taking them at all - the two friends are more mobile than DM (although the one who got in touch is getting less so) and can get there by bus anyway (free bus pass) but one of them is notoriously tight with her money and wouldn’t dream of contributing to a shared taxi. I won’t be committing to anything - but I’ve been pushing the taxi idea for a year now. If it was my friends and I really wanted to go I’d suck it up and bear the cost.

Feeling for you all as for the time being MiL is likely to stay in nursing home I can relax. But I laughed, sorry, in a slightly mad way …. The not believing they are deaf @countrygirl99 My mother has tv up on maximum and can’t hear on the phone. But that is because the phone is faulty🤔. It’s not we test it when we visit. Father admits to needing his hearing aids but can’t wear them when tv is on because it is so loud it gives him a headache.🤣 My mother will never admit to forgetting things so when we visit this weekend she will tell me the same stories she always tells me and ask me the same questions that I answered when I last saw her. My sister gets quite short tempered but I can see this is the beginning of a slow steady decline - she is loosing confidence and becoming a real worrier - father just his usual self obsessed and moans about DM behind her back which I really don’t like. 🤞 they don’t have an argument this weekend - I confess I don’t look forward to the visits like I used to. 🙁

Someone on another long thread just said this

"It's hard not to feel exasperated with the alien who now inhabits their body."

my mum isn't is even that bad and I feel like this. It's like, where did mummy go? But tbh it's been hard work for her to be herself since dad died.

I'm also getting frustrated with the "not admitting to going deaf" thing.

My sister started not admitting she was deaf when she was about 60.

My mum has progressed to ringing my sister late at night asking her to come and 'talk to' my dad because he has apparently said he's leaving her. Half an hour later, another call to say that all is fine now, but she can pop in for a cup of tea if she likes!!

The verbal abuse is increasing, she constantly refers to my dad as an f ing lying b, but he won't confirm to any professional that she is doing this so no action. She's now hit him 4 times to our knowledge. He denies it, no action taken despite being witnessed by district nurses.

Mum will then ring all of us and suggest that we take my dad away. He's got no intention of going anywhere.

Still being met with flat refusal to do either a will or POA.

The professionals (lot of community medical teams involved with my dad) and social worker etc just say they can't speak to us as my mum won't consent to them doing this.

Mum complained yesterday that the carer was telling her to take her medication, she knows what she's doing as she's been taking the same meds for 4 years... Except it's not 4 years, she's been on them for at least 20 and is regularly forgetting to take them.

We can't even get sight of the care plan. 2 care visits a day but parents state they don't know what they are there for.

The house is getting filthy dirty, parents say they do all this themselves.
Mum has now sacked 2 gardeners after declaring that they don't know what they are doing !!!

She managed to cancel a Dr appointment I made for her after a particularly bad verbal episode against my dad, GP hasn't even bothered to query why the appointment was made by e consult and then it was my mum who cancelled it, they really don't want to know.

Dad's decided he doesn't like the care alarm as he 'knows' they will take him to hospital and sit him in the corridor... As he is very wobbly and also has frequent catheter blockages it's a major problem.

So, basically they don't need help, don't want help and every one can get lost, apart from when they suddenly discover they do!

@Juneday that's so familiar. Mum has replaced her phone a few times because " so and so said they called but the phone didn't ring" and dad had to take his hearing aids out because the tv was so loud. When dad died mum through her hearing aids away because she didn't remember having a hearing test so, as far as she was concerned, they must have been dad's.

@countrygirl99 all so familiar indeed. I have tinnitus and it’s so annoying, but I tell people and also remind others. I need glasses so I wear them. But MiL, mother and father all need glasses and don’t wear them. Even when my father drives which is while other worry…,

@Lightuptheroom I can’t imagine how distressing and also SO frustrating this all is. We had one time where MiL was said to have capacity, but after neighbours complaining of her screaming out, ambulance and SW … it was established she didn’t! I am disappointed with GP practise too, I thought they would liaise and follow up - you have likely already tried writing to them. They don’t have to act on it, but it had to be logged and filed and builds a picture, certainly one that shouldn’t be ignored!

I had done this a few times, including when my mothers fractured shoulder was diagnosed as a bruise by a paramedic in the GP practise? I said a simple look at her files will show you she never costs, never makes a fuss and yet she is in agony and not sleeping. She ended up on morphine …. Although she rang me to say when she finished she had a thing called cold Turkey and she didn’t like it.

if we don’t try and get the message across many of this generation prefer to grin and bear it, which is rarely the answer.