🪳 🪳 🪳 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.

@anagram32 what an awful stressful situation for you.

where do this entitled, manipulative generation of parents come from. I can’t imagine wanting to make my children’s lives so stress laden and care orientated.

sending 💐

Hello I’ve stumbled upon this thread and it sounds like a place I fit in!

I live in Australia and have a DM89 who now lives in a care home and two useless brothers, one of whom is DMs favourite child. He stops in for half an hour to have a cup of tea and scroll on his phone and she raves about how wonderful he is to take time away from his busy job. Meanwhile I am left to do everything else!

She’s currently in hospital to have some skin cancers removed and they’ve just called me to say she’s not brought her medication with her. She’s as sharp as a tack, no dementia. She packed the medication in the bag herself and I showed her where I put it right by her bed last night before I left the hospital. But this morning when they asked her about the medication she denied all knowledge and said oh you’ll have to ask my daughter, where’s my daughter, I don’t know about medication she handles everything. No I don’t handle her medication, the care home does and she’s got a bloody great Webster pack right next to her head so I’m not sure why she (and the nurse) couldn’t find it. It’s a ploy to get me in there at the crack of dawn instead of 10am when I said I would come. And I’m not falling for it even if the nurse thinks I’m a selfish cow.

Yep, sounds like you’re a perfect fit @Remaker. Welcome to the thread none of us want to be on but is a safe haven for rants.

Welcome @Remaker I think some nurses know what you’re dealing with and even if they don’t, there is certainly no judgment here. I hope you’ve been able to hold some of your boundaries.

I cannot understand what happens to people when they get old. MIL would be quite happy to ruin DH's life and the only thing that would satisfy her was if he sat on the sofa next to her all day acting as a surrogate husband.

We have had so many boundary setting conversations with her that it's getting tiresome. Sometimes if she gets too demanding I'll visit her instead of DH and ruin her day.

I've had a really depressing Christmas card from a friend. She's only seen her DH and teenagers for a few days once a month this year because she's staying with her 90+ yo mother! Who has carers but refuses to go into a home.

She is working age, but hasn't been able to work for years because of this mother, has missed out on her children growing up and will barely have built up any pension for her own retirement.

This is nuts. I don't understand why people feel they have to sacrifice their lives like this. And its not just their lives its their husbands and childrens as well. What are the motivations behind it? I don't get it at all. I know we love our parents but this is extreme.

Looking at it from outside, it looks totally insane. Her children must barely know her. So sad.

I think the situation must have crept up on her. When I was living near her years ago now she was going to her mums a few times a week but living in her own home with her DH. At that point she was struggling to combine the trips to the mum with primary school drop off and pick up. That's more than ten years ago now.

I remember someone posting this on the elderly forum - no clue who it was and apologies for paraphrasing but it really stuck with me

“The other mantra I found helpful was something a priest once said to me: that everyone in these situations has ‘equal rights’ . Your DM deserves care and consideration, but not more than your children, your husband , even yourself. Of course, you may choose to sacrifice your own share, but you don’t really have the right to sacrifice the needs of the other people in your life."

I know that it took my sister saying 'NO you will ruin your life and mum wouldn't want that' to me to stop me moving towards living with my mum after her stroke. (I don't of course know if it would actually have happened). It takes a lot of protective factors to stop this sort of thing, and one of those for me is that I knew she was right - my mum would have told me to go home to my husband/son right away. We may bristle sometimes at the cultural norm to women that 'your partner and children should be your priority' but it does sometimes at least prevent you being forced into making your parents your priority. God forbid we should prioritise ourselves...

@I8toys that is the brutal reality isn’t it - I might actually quote this to DF - he’s not even the only elderly parent that needs us and his grandchildren need their parents too.

I've got another blooming cough, but hopefully I'll fight it off.
It does mean I'm at home on the sofa now instead of still driving back from Redacted General.
Because I just picked up clean clothes from her house, whacked on a facemask, dropped the clothes off and picked up the dirty ones, had a quick chat from a distance and vamoosed before (I hope) sharing whatever this is. Still took four hours.

Both parents in hospitals now: one in A&E, one in community hospital preparing to go home (but I suspect not if care isn't in place, which they have refused to set up despite constant reminders and information being given to them). As a family we are all burned out and today's emergency trip was the last straw, I lost it in the doctors room and on the drive to A&E. I love them both dearly but I'm so done.

@Remaker that sounds like a very inexperienced nurse. What person living in a nursing home has their daughter doing their medication FGS?? Tbh I can't imagine a nursing home that would even allow that, what would their liability be if we got the meds wrong?

@PermanentTemporary yes I don’t like to criticise nurses as they work very hard but this one was not great. The Webster pack was in the top drawer of the bedside table but she didn’t think to look there before calling me. She also breezily said it’s lucky mum is switched on because she was getting her up for a shower and mum reminded her that her dressings needed to stay dry?! She has bandages across her face, one arm thickly bandaged and a big wound covering on her leg. What nurse would look at her and think yep she needs a shower!

Then when we got back to the care home the nurse had written Palexia as the prescribed pain relief but the pharmacy had dispensed endone as that’s what the doctor had prescribed. Care home obviously can’t give her endone with no paperwork so I had to call the hospital to get the discharge form reissued. Oh and she was ready to let Mum walk out the door with a cannula still in her hand until I pointed it out. I was embarrassed at the hospital as mum was very loudly talking about how hopeless the nurses were (she’s deaf and shouts) but she wasn’t wrong!

Oh dear. There are people in every profession who shouldn't be there...

Commiserations for all with parents in hospital. It is exhausting. DF was admitted yesterday afternoon, he finally got a recliner chair in A&E at 7am and a bed this afternoon. I was there all night last night and have only had 2 hours sleep since Sunday night. DH is with him currently and a doctor finally came around half an hour ago and explained what the plan is.

The lack of communication is always part of the problem I find, you can't plan your own life without knowing what is happening.

FIL has been in hospital for a fortnight now. They seem to be finding new things wrong with him all the time. There isn't much right with him, tbh, but they continue doggedly to ensure he stays alive. Actually he's been in different hospitals for two months now, with a very expensive break in a nursing home which of course he has to continue to pay for.
Christ, that sounds horrible. It really is, for him, poor bugger. It's not great for the family either, with SIL anxiously being at his bedside and doing her actual paid job fuck alone knows when, and DH doing five hour round trips twice weekly on top of his job, constantly on the alert for the This Is It call, and spending his downtime sorting FIL's admin and clearing his house so that his money doesn't run out to pay for the unoccupied room in the nursing home.

@ArabellaFishwife
Even when they're safe (sometimes anyway!) in hospital, and you're cutting everything down to the strictly necessary, 4-6h two to three times a week is the equivalent of a part-time job. Or training for a marathon. And more expensive, when you tot up the fuel costs and the money you spend grabbing "meals" from the hospital café...

Wishing strength to @ArabellaFishwife (and her DH and SIL) and @MysterOfwomanY as I have much solidarity with the uncertainty, long journeys, sleep deprivation and haemorrhaging of money involved in hospitals admissions.

It’s also a good reminder that while DF is in a nursing home, the bills will still need to be paid if he goes into hospital. I am having to be medium chill with him at the moment but really want to shout ‘listen to the nurses and cooperate with them looking after you, or you will end up back in hospital and we won’t have time to visit you there!’

DF is protesting being ‘imprisoned’ and unable to live his fantasy life where he will magically be physically able to landscape his garden and do diy (but let’s be clear he only ever pottered and bought the materials when he did have his health).

I wish I knew the words to say that made him feel he had permission to be at leisure and allow himself to be looked after and less of a worry.

DH is ill at the moment (not surprising) so I took MIL round to the care home to see FIL. It is sooo stressful. MIL spends the whole time asking FIL questions he can't answer. No he doesn't know what he had for lunch because he has dementia that's why he's in a care home.

She wouldn't watch the Christmas film with him because she didn't like it and then insisted he helped her out of her chair which meant he forgot where he was sitting.

Bringing up three kids was easier than this!

One if those days today. Now having a medical G & T

Cheers @countrygirl99!

Sending 🍋 to go with your G&T @countrygirl99

The lack of acceptance or even some engagement with reality is exhausting @FiniteSagacity and @Morenicecardigans

DF has agreed to engage with the smoking cessation service in an effort to help his breathing so he doesn't end up in hospital again. Having been trying to convince him my whole adult life to give up smoking and reduce his drinking I don't hold out much hope for when he is finally home. I suspect he will revert to type and continue to neglect his health again whilst refusing all suggestions because they make him feel old.

I'm now thoroughly into the "let the crisis happen" zone. Fortunately mum's GP is thinking along the same lines. Sadly he social worker I spoke to yesterday ( how come they change so frequently? 3 in 5 weeks) was useless and gullible and swallowed all mum's rubbish whole, didn't even spot the massive red flag in their conversation, I had to point out what she had noticed was a major issue. I also pointed out that someone was meant to call me before any meeting so I could be there as they never get the truth from mum. I had to repeat stuff I have told umpteen social workers over the last 2 years. Mum doesn't need help washing, getting dressed, eating etc but she is failing to follow medical advice - partially she forgets, partially she just doesn't want to. She fails to let anyone know she has hurt herself in a fall or to deal with them correctly herself which has led to infected wounds. She gets obsessions that lead to behaviour that can put her at risk. She either doesn't answer the phone or just puts it down so trying to support her from a distance is impossible and even the GP can't get hold of her when they need tp speak to her.Im currently getting regular calls from.the surgery thst mean a 2 hour round trip to put something on her calendar. Currently needs multiple dressing changes a week, I can't be there. Mum insists she can get herself there which physically she can. She's blacklisted by local community volunteer drivers after not being there every time they call, pretty sure that was deliberate to avoid the falls prevention class. She gets scammed/ enters multiple contracts for the same thing. She has no insight into her hearing loss let alone her dementia and thinks she manages just fine and is fully independent, she doesn't and isn't.
Social worker has suggested to her that she goes to an extra care facility that every other social worker has said wouldn't be suitable due to her dementia and GP agrees we would likely end up moving her again to a care home fairly quickly. After dad died mum was obsessed with moving to this facility having refused previously when dad had mobility problems and vefore her dementia was diagnosed. Needs social services approval and the consensus has always been that her dementia is too far gone. It took 18 months to get her to stop asking, I kept telling her there's a long waiting list until she forgot about it, and now it's been raised again I'll have to start again.

And breathe!