Elderly parents that need help. 4 teens, work full time. DH stressful Job

[AonRudEile]

Just like the title really.
Where do you find the time to be you ?

Who suggested abandoning their parents?

I wasn't a carer, I lived 200 miles away. I know what a LPA is and I know how it caused me massive issues when trying to get helped for an elderly relative with dementia. The social worker just washed her hands of the problems as they were my problems. When I was trying to get help for her husband I didn't have LPA and the social worker, same one, was helpful as she knew I wasn't obliged to do it so she worked with me.

I don't care if it is irresponsible I would never do it again. I was under so much stress I was in the local cardiac ward as I was so stressed.

I was replying to a post that was making out it would be great for OP to be the one with the LPA and I was telling her what a nightmare it can be. Maybe try reading what I actually said as you have decided I was linking being a carer and LPA and I wasn't. As to who makes the decisions I'm quite happy for the doctors and social workers to do it, they talk to the family anyway as I discovered with my mother and uncle. The financial LPA can be convenient as I said, the care one never again.

My experience was that the hospital and social worker were very willing to talk to me and willing to offer support, when I had LPA for care they would still talk to me but much less support, in fact no real support at all.

Financial can be useful for paying bills or sorting out stuff they need.

I was scolded by a nurse in our local hospital because I looked at my dad's medicine chart: "Do you have your father's permission to read that?"

"Yes. I'm my father's POA. There's a copy in his notes if you want so look...so - yes, I do have his permission."

My parents' original GPs were happy to discuss matters with me. Once they retired, the new GPs wouldn't discuss a thing until I obtained the POA. As a result of this, young doctors who didn't know my mother prescribed her increasingly strong painkillers whenever she had an acute episode, but then failed to reassess.

This caused her to have impaired faculties and a great deal of stress for all of us, including my dad.

Speaking from experience, have both the laminated card in the wallet with the prescription details on AND electronic prescriptions set up.

Then when the hospital staff lose the card in A&E over a bank holiday weekend they can still find out all they need to know about the dosages etc!

If they bother to look. Even speaking to the doctor in A&E and emphasising how important it was that my relative got her dementia med on time he gave her paracetamol and then denied I had spoken to him.

My all time classic comment from a nurse was when my dad was discharged to a nursing home under discharge to assess after being in for 3 weeks. Mum has alzheimer's and dad's notes said comfort messages only to wife, anything important speak to son. They phoned up to tell mum he was being moved to a nursing home in the next couple of days. Of course mum got confused and phone the nursing home that afternoon only to be told he wasn't there. Cue her phoning me in floods of tears because she didn't know where dad was and had convinced herself he must have died. I called to find out what was happening only for a nurse ( on an elder care ward) to say she didn't know why mum had got confused as it was a straightforward message. I made it very clear I was not impressed with her lack of knowledge regarding dementia given the ward she worked on.

No, you said actually that no one should have to be a carer and in the next breath accusing others of ‘abandonment’ which is ridiculous. We are talking about fully grown adults that are functioning - be it in a limited way. And if they are not they should be in residential or nursing care. It’s up to the older person the arrangements they make, they are not babies. Stop infantilising people.

It’s also up the adult children to what degree, if any, they wish or are able to involve themselves. Your hyperbole about abandonment is ludicrous. Many families will not wish to take on the mammoth burden of care for the elderly and there is nothing wrong with being open and honest, and together with the older person look for solutions that best suit them.

@WearyAuldWumman you can't look in someone's medical notes without their consent UNLESS they don't have capacity to make decisions and the. POA has been invoked. So if your dad has capacity to understand about his care and health needs, the nurse was correct.

My mum has done the paperwork and registered her LPA for care/welfare and for finances. I don't anticipate having to use it for many years, if at all.

@Severalwhippets I think we are just going to have to agree to disagree. I have never said people should be forced to be carers and I actually think you are being hyperbolic when you say I am.
As far as I am concerned, expecting elederly and frail people to arrange their own care, to use your example, is not far short of abandoning them, but whatever.

Of course adult children can arrange parental care, if their parents are incapacitated and can not do it themselves. But assuming the parents are not mentally impaired or incapable then an adult child ‘taking over’ can be patronising and insulting. They have survived on this earth for eight decades plus in most cases.

You want women to feel obliged to take this on, and I am pushing back because it’s not the 1950s/1960s anymore and most women are doing way, way too much as it is.
This is neither healthy nor sustainable dumping more women’s work on them.

Men can step up? For a change. I am here championing women’s health, and prioritising their own needs in an incessant back drop of shaming/guilting and out of date expectations - demanding even more from them and well beyond anyone’s actual human capacity - people like you in fact.

@Severalwhippets I think you are projecting your own agenda here!
I have never, ever said that it was the women's responsibility to look out for agent parents. My DH is flying to the other side of the Uk tonight to see his aging dad. His dad is his responsibility. What I have said, many times, is I think stepping up when your parents are failing is the decent thing to do, whether you are a son or a daughter. Do not make things up.

As for arranging care, I don't think I or anyone else has suggested they swoop in and take over of the parents are capable of doing things themselves, have they? I would say it's a given that childen do not need to step in until the older person is incapable.

'People like me' think that any decent son or daughter, all things being equal, would not be able to basically leave their parents to it if they are not coping. That's nothing to do with shaming, guilting or out-of-date expectations and everything to do with basic human decency.

POA was fully in place. Dad was delirious at the time.

As soon as I mentioned the POA she backed down.

Agenda? I really don’t have one, thanks.

And there you go again.. can you even hear yourself? ‘Decent’ so someone is only decent if they step in and sort out their parents?! It doesn’t matter what they have going on in their own lives, as long as they drop everything and martyr themselves at the care alter.

You sound rigid and highly manipulative. ‘Decent’ people choose to outsource care every day of the week, it’s called being practical and sensible. We don’t have to do the caring or even the organising if we don’t want to - decency is subjective. It’s a choice what we commit ourselves to. As adults.

I hope you are not a mother and laying all of this at your kids door. I pity people with parents like you. It leads to anger, resentment and family rifts in my experience.

I have also noticed they are the same parents that kick off when their children choose to live elsewhere or do something different with their own lives. It’s suffocating all of this expectation. Stop telling everyone what to do. People can make up their own minds.

Time to think about care homes, OP.