🪳 🪳 🪳 Cockroach Café Late Summer 2024

[MereDintofPandiculation]

Welcome in to the Cockroach Café Bad Daughters’ Room. all fresh and clean for the new season. Join me over here on the sofas amongst the rugs and cushions if you’ve come in from the rain, or over the other side in the shade if it’s 33 degrees outside. Looks like it’s either one or the other.

Good daughters, find your way to the small room behind the stairs. Sorry it’s not as equipped as here, but it doesn’t get much use.

Come in when you want to share good news, or to rant, or just to hang out with others who understand what you're going through. The way MN works, hopefully this thread won’t appear in any featured lists, and the only people wandering in will be those who understand what it’s all about.

If you have a BIG question, it might be worth giving it its own thread, so as not to swamp this one.

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. My recent enquiries suggested more people wanted to keep the well known name than wanted to change it to something more savoury, so for the moment it stays.

😂@BlueLegume. Hahaha, no he wasn't that good 😂😂😂😂

Large glass of red if possible. Actually, can you leave the bottle?

Being thoroughly worked over by the process of moving Mum. And the process of reporting back to siblings about it. Right now everyone is unhappy and nothing has actually gone wrong yet!

Sorry to hear you've been ill @MereDintofPandiculation - hoping you're starting to feel better.

Thanks, @PermanentTemporary . I’m getting there!

@sickasapug I know what you are going through! Currently clearing my nans flat - 17 full bin bags of clothes, 8 boxes of ornaments, 2 sets of my late grandads false teeth...just some of the things we are dealing with!

Just popping in to say Goodbye. Things have finally settled down here. Finally. The coroner ordered a post mortem which was very upsetting and it turned out that Nan was very poorly indeed. She had sepsis, pneumonia and stage 4 colon cancer - which I am glad she didn't know about. I'm so grateful her suffering is over now. And selfishly that this time in our lives is over - it really has been the worst 6 weeks. We laid Nan to rest at the end of last week 😞

@Nodancingshoes
You and your sister did so much for your Nan, she would be proud of you. Best wishes now you have some freedom to move on with your life.

🌺🌺@Nodancingshoes

@Nodancingshoes please accept my deepest condolences

@Nodancingshoes sad to see you go and hopefully you can now regain something of your normal life back. As you say it is probably for the best your Nan was unaware of her illnesses. Hope things improve for you you have done an amazing job in difficult circumstances.

Mum flooded her bathroom yet again yesterday and rang me to tell me about it and ask what to do. I said mum, you can’t keep doing this, you’ll have the ceiling down downstairs. She said, “I know, I’m a stupid old woman. I know everything and I know nothing.”

It’s the most lucid she’s been in months and it broke my heart.

2 sets of my late grandads false teeth Reminder to self: find my gallstones and dispose of them before the DC need to take charge of the house.

I'd like to pull up a chair and order a large G&T please!

This thread has helped me massively in the last year.

One large gin, coming up.

Looks like funnelfan could do with one too.

And a farewell toast to nodancingshoes.

@Nodancingshoes

@Nodancingshoes well done on the clearing too. Sorry your nan was so poorly 💐

Sending strength @PermanentTemporary and solidarity on dealing with the system.

DF has run out of money and has an infection. Thank goodness he is where he needs to be in nursing care. Just scrambling to sell his house - considering whether to just let one of those ‘buy it cheap to flip it’ type businesses to get the millstone off our necks. Every thing I clear out makes me despair at what a state he allowed his house to get into.

@Nodancingshoes 🌺 how loved your nan was.

😅

Hi all, I haven't been around for a while, could use some help... Backstory.. mum 82 now has diagnosis of probable dementia, dad 87 being abused by her daily both verbally and physically.. ignored by social worker who disappeared on leave... Finally sorted out 4 care visits a day. 2 weeks ago my mum hit my dad in the face with a bunch of keys, the following day she hit him with a stick and pushed him from behind, the day after that she pushed him into the TV. Social worker recorded it all and promised mum had been referred to the community mental health team (she is currently on Risperidone) and that the social worker would be doing a capacity assessment on finances and 'where she wants to live'
I contacted the social worker yesterday, nothing had been arranged as she said her diary was too full.. I escalated it to her manager. Now the capacity assessment is due to take place next week and we have been told that 2 weeks respite is provisionally booked to start on 9th September.
What happens if she refuses to cooperate? Will they somehow assess that she has capacity and that's ok for her to continue hitting my dad , or does the safeguarding aspect over ride everything else. We don't feel like we know what is actually happening and the social worker is now being supervised.
What happens if my dad says she doesn't need to be moved (she most definitely does)
What happens after the 2 week respite, can the home doing the respite make her bed permanent or can they send her back home?

@Lightuptheroom have a diary ready that you’re prepared to hand over (I typed up a timeline and forced it on SW).

Also make it very clear you’re taking notes and prepared to complain.

Hopefully someone will be along who can advise if there should actually be both a care assessment and a carers assessment.

Sounds like the situation with your Mum and Dad @Lightuptheroom falls under adult safeguarding because your Dad is elderly and your Mum is being physically violent towards him which puts him at risk of injury and falls. Definitely your poor Dad's ability to manage your Mum's behaviour and needs should form part of the assessment.

Is ok to pull up a chair? I'll bring wine and gin to share!!

DM is awaiting a dementia assessment (she had one offered to her but thought it was physio so turned it down and so have had to get GP to re refer.)

She's supposed to have B12 injections every three months since a uti/delirium/hypokalemia related month long stay in hospital at the beginning of this year.

There is only me and I'm an hours drive away. She is self funding carers twice a day to support her with her medication.

She has decided today that she doesn't want her B12 injection tomorrow because of the GP missing shingles in her eye (which she has occasional outbreaks of) during Covid which meant she ended up under a consultant at the hospital for a couple of years & because she takes an iron tablet every day.

I tried to explain that B12 is not iron but she wasn't having any of it, so I cancelled the appointment.

Part of me feels I should have pushed her more to have it, but I'm tired of constantly explaining things to her and repeating the same answers to the same questions over and over and over again. And she has capacity, refuses to believe anything she doesn't want to so I just can't be bothered to have the battle with her.

I was supposed to be driving over to her tomorrow to take her for the injection so at least I've saved myself about 3 hours and some petrol.

I know you lovely lot will understand and won't judge me!! Thank you for listening and cheers 🥂

Now, of course, she has changed her mind and wants me to re book the B12 injection for her.

In other news, the memory assessment clinic called and they are booking her in for an MRI and an appointment for a memory assessment so at least I feel that we are getting somewhere with that.

Welcome @notcopingwellwithDMdementia , how frustrating about the appointment. I hear you about the driving to take her to the appointment. One time we walked into the clinic only for them to look at us and say - but clinic is cancelled today, we called you earlier. Mum remembered she had a call but didn’t process it at all. I’d done the whole rearrange work, 100 mile drive, wrangle her to the car etc etc. I changed the contact number after that to me not her.

Mums neighbour is having building work and the voices of the builders are obviously unsettling her as she keeps asking about the man on the roof. She’s in a detached house, no one on her roof. Her mother used to say exactly the same thing 25 years so at least I was semi prepared for it.

Endurance vibes to all, particularly @Lightuptheroom and @notcopingwellwithDMdementia . Both sound impossibly difficult situations. The huge bottlenecks in referral systems are so frustrating. Best wishes to your dad Lightup. I'm trying to imagine what it would be like to be assaulted so regularly by your wife of so many years. I only moved in with dp when I was (secretly) able to imagine being his carer, but I'm not sure I could endure that. Best wishes for the respite. Maybe a warning; someone who was on my caseload got respite care and the safeguarding meeting was immediately cancelled as the risks were no longer present. If you can bear to make a big fuss to safeguarding as soon as the respite placement starts, do so.

Oh joy. StepPaBint (dementia, heart failure, cancer, for those without a dossier) has covid . MaBint wants to keep him at home if possible, because his last hospital stay sent his delerium through the roof.

But he's not able to sit up, stand up or drink, MaBint can't lift him, and every time she leaves the room he tries to get out of bed.

Anything I could send/organise that might be useful? I looked at jelly drops for the hydration side but they don't do express delivery.