So bloody exhausted waiting for someone to die 3

[StiffyByngsDogBartholomew]

Carrying on from our first two threads..
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/elderly_parents/4967638-so-bloody-exhausted-waiting-for-someone-to-die-2

Mobile phones have a lot to answer for too. On a day out 30 years ago there would be no way to contact you, you’d just find out when you got home and then perhaps only if you had an answer phone. I’ve had a mobile my entire adult life but the idea of having a holiday pre mobile phone sounds like heaven!

I remember years ago on Radio 4, after the news, there would be these appeals - 'could Mr and Mrs Joe Bloggs, who are thought to be on a barge in the Norfolk Broads, please make contact with their family urgently, as a relative is dangerously ill.' It seems like a different world. My mother's assisted living staff contacted us all the time, which could have been something serious like a fall or something daft like running out of teabags or needing a new lightbulb, but the lurch in the stomach is always the same.

@CaveMum oh dear, that was predictable.

Very well said.

I hope you don't mind if I join this thread. I can very much relate to the challenges and emotions expressed by PP here. My DH is 95 years old living now in a care home. He is no longer mobile, struggles eating, is now registered blind (though he has some vision) and increasingly muddled. He was never very cheerful his whole life and now likes to moan or complain about the staff and is paranoid that they are against him for some or other reason (like because he's posh and went to Oxford university). We are not posh. And the staff are professional and kind. He refers to staff as servants and described one Asian care worker in his 30s as the brown boy he nominated to be a prefect. No malice just confused. He comes up with lots of weird ideas like the mayor visited one Friday night at midnight and he was left out of meeting them - a surprise to him as he really ought to be chairman of the home.

I visit every Saturday and try to focus on cheering him up or distracting him - I tell him my news and sometimes read bits of the newspaper to him or discuss historical events/battles, maybe read a bit of a poem to him. He's not easy to distract from his miseries.

I am lucky to have sisters who also visit and take numerous calls from him - because I work full time he thankfully doesn't often call me.

His quality of life is poor and he always tells me he'd be better off dead. He says he's surprised he's not got better since living there..... Apart from going to hospital he has never left the care home since arriving 3 years ago. I care about him and apart from holidays visit him every week but it will still be a relief when he goes. It's no way to live.

My mum is now in a care home. A relative wanted her to go home with carers.
i had to be extremely blunt, that if they did that I wasn’t doing anything to assist

Yes, being blunt is usually the only way to get through to people.
Well done for sticking to your guns.

I’ve never cancelled a holiday and unless it was a matter of life and death I just wouldn’t. My late Mum had numerous crises whenever we went away which ruined the holiday by me having to keep in touch. Following a recent incident with my step father in the middle of a holiday I’ve decided to stop telling him our plans. Mobile phones are also the bane of my life and I tend to keep mine on silent during the day.

Blunt is the correct word to use. That and telling others if they can be the single point of contact for everything and be available 24/7 for any queries, visits to hospitals/care homes, medical appointments that is fine by you. You can just redirect the emails/texts/ calls if they come to you in error.

@Bouledeneige welcome. So many of your comments resonated. My parents definitely saw/see themselves as quite ‘posh’, They aren’t.

They were just big fish in a small pond - as in they stayed in a village they were well known in. There were no opportunities for us as kids in the 1980s so we had no option but to move away. Think industry being shut down in the Thatcher years….who our parents adored and voted for.

Our mother has zero understanding I had to go back to work when I had my kids 30 years ago - mortgage rate was 15%. Did she offer to do childcare. - no. It was made incredibly clear she hadn’t retired to look after my kids. As a kid of the 60/70s no one looked after us we just ‘played out’. She begrudgingly looked after one of my siblings kids….and I mean begrudgingly.

So many of us are just knackered from the mental, physical and emotional toll of these people.

Thanks for the welcome BlueLegume. My Dads idea of being posh is that because of where he went to university in 1947 he is more intellectual/better than other people.

My mum was never judgey about me working (she did pin money jobs herself when we got older) but she also never helped me with childcare whatsoever. She did my eldest sister but by the time my DC were around she said she was too old. My MIL - who was older - did however. Till she had a stroke. Bless her.

I don't resent my parents but I'm sad about the relentlessness of an increasingly frail and poor quality existence. And it does get too much sometimes.

It's so hard, Facecream24 , and as you say, there's no definitive right or wrong answers. Saying that, I definitely did make decisions that were to my own detriment before, like dropping everything to rush to a(nother) crisis.

My current situation is different now in that it's end of life care. I've rushed through a few times when they thought it was the end and it wasn't.

I've been doing this for such a long time, for different people, it has taken so much from me. My children are growing up and I don't want to miss any more parts of it.

I think doctors must get so fed up sometimes. Liquid feeding. Endless hospital admissions leading to more u.t infections, and multiple beds in wards filled by elderly people with delirium who can't be discharged. Course after course of antibiotics. Massively over-prescribing these very important drugs in order to give a very frail, very elderly person another month/year of life. As callous as it sounds, they are in most cases just keeping the machinery of the body ticking over, the spirit has long departed.

The surgery phoned today about covid and flu vaccines. I told them no, so hopefully that's one thing that won't rear it's head again.

Mother-in-law had an appointment with her consultant yesterday. The conversation got on to dying, she told them she wants to die at home. I could cry. How in the name of God are we supposed to cope with that. Unutterably selfish to ask people with zero medical training to facilitate.

@Radionowhere yep similar to our mother. I get frustrated at the ‘I want/don’t want’ merry go round. For me it sounds old fashioned and utterly pompous with no thought given to how on earth it will work.

I'd be very careful with this one! There is hospice at home in many areas, and they were a fantastic help for us BUT dying at home assumes someone from the family is there and present 24/7, because it's the usual 4x per day carer visits and sometimes an overnight carer to sit with the person. The vast majority of the time it's just you frantically trying to work out how you're going to get shopping done or ever get any sleep whilst comforting all the visitors who rock up wanting to see the person for the last time.

@Radionowhere I’d also be very cautious about facilitating this. It’s difficult situation to manage and being on my own with a dying person would really freak me out. Maybe introduce the idea of going into a hospice with staff there 24/7 as being much nicer. The other problem which would worry me is what happens when someone dies at home. From what I’ve read you can be waiting several hours for a doctor to come and certify the death and then a further wait for the undertaker to arrive.

When Mum passed the care home sorted all the confirmation of death and such like. Can you imagine trying to get hold of a Doctor out of hours? And just waiting with a recently passed person for hours?

As a PP says all sorts turn up to ‘say goodbye’. Cups of teas. People trampling through your house probably upstairs. It’s bad enough when people turn up at funerals who haven’t seen the deceased for years let alone bringing all sorts of other people. I had a neighbour turn up to a parent’s funeral and he didn’t even know her!

The death was during the night for us, so had to wait for a GP to come out, summoned via 111. He was very kind when he came but it was about a 3 hour wait. We'd already ring the undertaker, and once we'd let them know the GP had been they were with us within an hour.

The hard bit was that by then it was morning and I'd been up all night as didn't know when GP would arrive!

This x a million! All sorts of random people appear to say goodbye. Many of them cry on you and/or need tea, biscuits and sympathy. Most of them don't ask how you are or don't do anything helpful. They then vanish and you maybe see them at the funeral or never again.

⬆️ this and every post above it. 💐for everyone going through this.

In the community, if it's an expected death, the nursing services can certify death and paramedics. This is what happened when my husband died at home. This is so the GPs can concentrate on doing the other house calls that come in overnight.

I also think MacMillan nurses over hospice at home is a good idea. But actually going into a hospice would be best if you can oersuade her.