My mother is refusing another service worker

[XmasStag]

I had an issue a few weeks ago with my mother where there was a leak at home and she was ignoring it. I booked a plumber and I was going to pay but she ordered me to cancel him. It was so odd. It wasn't an issue of money and being worried about paying, I was going to pay. I think it was anxiety that a man is coming into the house. It is so odd. She's behaving as if service people are going to come in and rape her. She was never attacked like this before in her life nor were any of her sisters. It's just so weird.

Anyways there's no heating and I want to make fires in the open fire but she's paranoia about the chimney and in all fairness it's been a few years since it was cleaned so it will need to be cleaned. I searched online for a chimney sweeper. I had a chimney sweeper a few years ago but she has a general distrust on everyone and she never took to him. So I went to find someone else and she's ordering me to cancel him. It is so weird and she's being nasty.

I was trying to do a nice and good thing for use both so that we can heat up the home a bit and try and have a cosy Christmas.

She is saying because of the chimney sweepers location it's too far to bring him out to where we are but when I contacted him I told him of our location and he was happy to give me a quote and a date. His website states he services the county throughout too. But she's saying it's not fair to bring him out and she will find someone else closer. I caught her out on a few lies already this year and she hasn't a notion of finding anyone else closer and I already searched online and there is no local chimney sweeper.

Do I cancel him or ignore her and continue on with his booking?

My mum early symptoms weren't memory loss. She started have trouble following instructions so got confused with stuff like online shopping that she'd been doing perfectly happily for years. Then she got obsessed with how much things cost so she would switch off the immersion heater for hot water even though it was timed to be on 10-3 as they have solar panels. No amount of telling her that the Community Nurse who came to change dad's dressings needed hot water for hand washing worked. Memory loss was probably the 3rd sign and when we worked out what was going on. She still obsesses about needing to save pennies when she has a good pension and spends £500-£600 a month less than comes in. Bin liners have been her latest cost obsession leaving me with bin juice soaked dog ends to deal with🤢
It's hard enough to deal with when you have a diagnosis but before that there can be a considerable period of "FGS why?" because stuff just doesn't make sense.

I think tomorrow is the day to force the issue and see how that goes. If you are there she might feel reassured. It is very tough. She must be very anxious to be doing that. I hope she feels relieved once the work is done and she gets to use the fire.

My mother asked me again and quite angrily did I cancel the chimney sweep. I told her that I sent him a message yesterday but he didn't reply and I will phone him later.

I asked her why she doesn't want to get the chimney cleaned? She said there's enough going on right now.

This doesn't make sense to me.

I am managing this and he said he will be with me Tuesday morning and I am free tomorrow morning. He really isn't impacting on anything.

This doesn't make any sense. She's been talking about a chimney clean for a few months. I wanted to make fires back in September but she asked me not to tile we get the chimney cleaned.

We are due to have a visitor for Christmas too and I was trying to do something nice and good for us and for the home and try and make the place warm and cosy.

And she does this.

It's stomach churning.

You need to remember that although none of her reactions make sense to you whatever she is feeling feels very very real to her. She is obviously scared of something so there's no point trying to rationalise her reactions with logic, it just makes you unreasonably angry with her and that's not fair.
Her home is her safe space, she doesn't want anyone in it.
You will have to find a way to manoeuvre around this, whether the "friend" coming to help in the future will work I don't know but I would just accept she's going to be difficult and get the necessary stuff done.

I appreciate its difficult, you may also need to speak to her GP or get in touch with Age UK, they will have lots of experience with this situation.

It's her safe place

He's not going to be walking into her room or the kitchen. He will be cleaning the chimney. I hope he will inspect the chimney too and see if it's safe to use because it's an old house.

None of it makes sense.

I doubt it is in any way rational @XmasStag she is responding directly from her anxiety.

I get how frustrating this is, but for the sake of your own mental health you need to find a different way of handling this long term. It sounds like your mums has concerns/fears that are real to her, and no amount of logic from you is going to address those fears.

As previous posters have said, you need to come to her level and really try and listen to what she’s trying to say. House maintenance is non-negotiable, so you need a way forward. But I’d say deception, fake friends and pretending you’ve texted etc aren’t really sustainable solutions. I’d just not tell her anything about any arrangements until the trades-person is virtually at your door and then she won’t have time to get anxious.

This was my first thought. Particularly if this is unusual behaviour.

I would suddenly realise as the doorbell goes that you forgot to send the email. And having dragged him out all this way, you can’t possibly turn him away.

My father used to have paranoid delusions. I was all set to fix up a care alarm when I had a distressed phone call from him that I was not to let anyone fix anything to his phone system else they’d discover it was illegal and he’d spend Christmas in prison. You can’t logic them out of it - if you try to explain there isn’t a problem, it’s just that you haven’t fully understood it. So you have to find a way round that deals with their fears. Put things in place to guard against non-existent dangers.

I won't be able to do this long term either. As in to take over the maintainence of the property and pump my own money into this because I know what her wishes are and she wants to will the place to one of my brothers who all live abroad. It doesn't make sense to put my own money into someone else's asset.

For now I do t have anywhere else to go and to rent.

Tell her has a few jobs in the area and has grouped them intentionally. He's going to be in the area whether you cancel or not so he might as well come.

To be honest, she was always somewhat neglect of the home and she always relied on her ex husband. She always went to him whenever there was a problem. Just so she can get repairs done for free and then curse him out of it being his back. Anyways that's not an option anymore because he's getting older and he's an alcoholic and it's not fair asking him.

So getting service or repair people in would be relatively new by me within the past 5 or 6 years.

I remember back in 2019, she ignored a leak long enough in the bathroom and she didn't want to get any plumber from the pages she wanted a recommendation. I got a plumber and I talked to her and she gave me the go ahead to book him. When he was done and gone, she was overly critical of all of his work.

Looking back and I never realised at the time that it was old age nonsense and likely has something to do with what I am observing and supecting today.

The paranoia would be new-ish behaviour. She's like a scared cat when my boyfriend comes over. I think maybe she hears his car and thinks it's her ex husband home maybe and then she gets anxious because of her history with him. He was abusive when they were married. Maybe that is an older memory that is being resurfaced and relived or something. I don't know.

i know with dementia, the new memorys is the first to go and but old stuff can still remain.

There was an issue a few weeks ago where my mother wanted my father to repair something and she was talking as if he was the man all them years ago and got as a fiddle but he quite simply wouldn't have the dexority to do what she was asking him to do and I had to manage that by continuing with the plumber and cancelling my father. It was only the death of a neighbour who took the heat of the morning when the plumber came.

My boyfriend never behaved in the way my father did and he never ever came to me drunk.

Do you pay rent to her currently op?

That's what I hope to tell her anyways. But it will be after work. I'm fucking dreading it. I really feel sick in my stomach from the stress of it all. It shouldn't be this hard. So she will likely ask me after work if I made contact with him and I will tell her I rang him and he said he's going to be in the village anyways because he has other work to do here anyways. All it will do is just anger her and leave her anxious going to bed.

She's not a landlord

Could you find any female service people?

No, I am not able to find any female plumber or chimney cleaned and to be honest I don't think the sex of the worker would help in any way. She has a poor tone about me her daughter and although the words were never said to me, really she is sexist prefering men over women. She just believes that there's no place for a woman aside from caring for a man and men should be worshipped and cared for. A female service worker would be worse in her eyes because she would view them as useless and good for nothing.

OP, reading your posts, your frustration comes through clearly. But what I also see is that you are trying to explain/encourage her through normal logic.

When you are mentally ill, whatever is causing it, (there is definitely something going on for her to be so paranoid), then logic no longer makes sense.

can I suggest that you stop trying to make her understand or explain to her, and instead find ways of making it happen in a way that she will accept. Like the PP who said in future just have your 'friend' dave turn up and help you out with the chimney.
It is really hard to make that shift, to accept that a loved one no longer has mental capacity, that you need to switch to treating them according to their mental capacity.

It does sound like the beginnings of dementia, you can't approach this rationally and try and reason with her, no she's not being reasonable and you won't be able to change the situation by telling her that. Remember that she's operating from a place of fear and as hard as that is for you, she's not doing it to you, or on pupose.

Look into dementia and get some local support if you can, you can only do what you're able to do for her, be prepared for things to get worse before potentially resolving to a more stable situation.

You could also say since he's booked several appointments out this way he's still going to want paying if you cancel because he's priced it on having a few jobs to do. (Assuming she's not going to talk to him and complain about not being able to cancel)

Oh thanks fantastic. I never thought of that. She would absolutely buy that.

He said 9am. She's going to be in bed and there's no way she will be talking to him.

Thank you so much and to everyone here for helping me.

I think chimney sweepers now days have newer type of tools and equipment and they have what looks like a vacuum cleaner to stick up the chimney.

I think my mother is looking for some sort of an older style cleaner to go on the roof but that's going to be very unlikely to be honest. She didn't say that to me. The last chimney clean was in 2018 and she didn't like him or the equipment even though he was a lovely man by the way.

Also when I had a plumber a few weeks ago he was about 45 minutes doing a job for me and my mother refused to leave the room and she stayed just to hear the transaction between me and him and it was 200 pounds and she hated that and all she did was critise his work, his time and his charge not to him but to me.

Text the sweep and give him the heads up no great detail just say you think she’s early on set dementia
and you’ll be there at all times to deal

@rwalker has a good idea. DH often gets warnings where the customer is elderly and one of their children are organising the sweep.

He said he will be with me for 9am and to be honest they won't cross paths because she will likely be in bed or only just getting up. Her room first thing in the morning is the kitchen. She won't be in the sitting room. I can meet him outside and bring him into the sitting room so they won't cross paths or they shouldn't.

It's so much more harder and complicated when really it should be so hard.