🪳 🪳 🪳 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.

Having just explained for the second day running that m is telling people what she thinks they want to hear not the reality I think I'll just pour tonic straight into the gin bottle tonight. Supposed to be monitoring my blood pressure but daren't take it at the moment.

I had that exact problem with my Aunt @countrygirl99 and because social care don't want to deal with it they just go along until the inevitable crisis happens that proves the point you were making all along.

Bringing ice to go in the gin. I’m doing my weekly DM visit. The carer put her falls pendant on this morning, at lunchtime she noticed it had disappeared. Mum has only been in bed and wobbled to the loo. Both the carer and I have searched everywhere and stripped the bed and neither of us found it. Next step when I get back from the shops is to call the lifeline company and see if they can tell if it’s still connected to the box. If so it’s somewhere in the bedroom!!

Currently taking a break sitting in the car in Asda car park. It’s the smell - mum keeps talking off full Tena pants and leaving them in random places, so you can imagine.

I get fed up of saying no mum isn't doing activity x every week because it stopped running over a year ago and she hasn't done activity y since she moved to where she lives 19 years ago. So no, that doesn't prove how well she is doing with the current care regime.

@funnelfan shall I open a 2nd gin bottle? Or I have a nice single malt in for Christmas if you prefer.

Gin is fine. I bought elderflower tonic at the shops so I’m set.

DH HAS come up trumps. It's my turn to cook dinner and I'd planned a new recipe I hadn't tried before. He took one look at me, told me I look too knackered to cook and suggested getting a chinese. So duck pancakes and all my favourites it is.

I need to get in a supply of easy-cook food for the holiday, as FIL has been moved again, even further away this time, we're on notice to make unplanned dashes almost four hours north, and of course the shops will be closed. Fuck knows when I'll get to a food shop, though. DH seems to think the emergency shop we did at the beginning of the week will see us through Christmas, alongside the large supply of cheese and biscuits that forms his contribution to the menu.
Meanwhile, when we're not taking marathon day trips to hospitals , he's distracting himself by taking the car off on various DIY and man-work trips, leaving me without any means of getting supplies in. I suppose my fixation with the food shopping is another form of distraction. But there are still four adults who need feeding, and only one car.
I lie awake at night thinking about everything FIL is going through. DH wakes up early and does the same. We're in no fit state for all of this.

Hope last nights takeaway was good countrygirl.

I’m currently sat with mum in A&E as she had a fall and the breakfast carer found her and called an ambulance. Blood all over the place but she doesn’t appear seriously injured. I am now concerned that she isn’t safe enough overnight.

Am relatively impressed that the ambulance “only” took 2.5 hours for a conscious patient and a&E is calm considering last night was mad Friday. Just the waiting around - mums dozing so I’m doom scrolling.

@funnelfan the takeaway was the perfect pick me up last night. Then I crashed out on the sofa while I was meant to be watching the show jumping.
I've decided that when the social worker calls back on Monday I'm going to say that, bearing in mind previous SS advice and the opinion of mum's GP I'm not going to do anything to facilitate a move to the extracare facility. To be honest I doubt whether much of mum's furniture would survive a move/fit a small flat and I'm not prepared to source new furniture, be there for delivery etc when the GP is of the opinion that a move will accelerate her decline and she likely need to move to a care home in fairly short order. Also we plan to downsize in the spring and I just don't have the bandwidth for both. If either of my brothers decide they will do it that's up to them but so far they haven't disagreed with my assessment that it's probably not a good idea. Possibly fearing they will have to sort it instead of leaving it to me. It's a shame mum didn't want to go a few years ago when it was suggested due to dad's mobility issues, it would have been a good move then. She had friends who had moved there and were encouraging them to move and dad would have gone but mum was very anti until she was left on her own which was always highly likely due to the age gap.

@funnelfan wishing you strength for the A&E time today and hoping you get the opportunity to put your own oxygen mask on - keep hydrated and fed yourself. I also hope they properly assess your mum but I know all the services are stretched this time of year.

For us it was the hospital multi-disciplinary team who could see the reality because they assessed over several days but this didn’t happen during the Christmas crisis, the winter crisis or the Easter crises because services were stretched and no beds meant it was sticking plaster and family.

thanks @FiniteSagacity . Luckily (!) like many here I am a veteran of hanging around hospitals so grabbed my water bottle and my power bank for phone. I also have a weekend bag permanently semi packed with toiletries and clean underwear etc so that didn’t take much organising.

i will only stay overnight if mum is kept in for ease of hospital visiting - if they deem mum well enough to go home I’m making it clear she will be on her own overnight. I’m not falling in the trap of staying with her to make sure she’s ok then never being able to leave.

Trouble is, I’m sure they’ll say medically she is fine to discharge, so it’s down to how safe she is. It took a hospital admission two years ago almost to the day to get her properly diagnosed and sorted with a care package - the multi disciplinary teams worked well but it all took a long time due to the holidays. However, that was at a different hospital, the ambulance brought her today to the “other” big hospital in the city, which is actually in a different nhs trust, so we’ll just have to see.

Of course, she’s perked up considerably with everything going on, compared to her virtually comatose self at home. Currently trying to persuade her not to take off her hospital id wrist band…

Less inclined to do experiments ............ You hope , he kept it secret from his mother , so perhaps !

We are back home again after the pre-Christmas visit to MIL at her assisted-living place which included her 90th birthday party. The party was well-organised by the staff and was enjoyed by all. Was also an opportunity to see most of the other residents. Some are younger than DH and I (you are eligible for assisted living at 55+) and all the residents seem well looked after. DMIL is now the oldest resident there!
Cannot help making comparisons with my own DM who is struggling to manage in her own home, but refuses any support.

They always seem to be able to ‘perform’ in a hospital, the adrenaline I suppose.

I most fear for you as it’s a weekend and this caused so many headaches with getting carer and nursing visits back ‘on’ and the hospital social worker needing to be reminded of that.

They always manage to perform in front of doctors and social workers when it's a short observation like the GP or A&E. I suppose they only have to make the supreme effort for a few minutes at a time.

I’m back at mums house about to tackle the bloody (literally) bedroom.

Thankfully the hospital doctors agree that she appears too frail to be safe at home with the 4x a day care visits, so she’s being found a bed for the night and being assessed by the frailty team tomorrow. They’re going through their full fall protocol to check for anything underlying causing the increase in wobbliness. I’m fingers crossed this is the “crisis” I’ve been waiting for to force through a move to residential care.

🫰

@funnelfan ah scrubbing blood out of the carpet. Don't know about you but I found that one of the least stressful things, at least you know you're achieving something.

@countrygirl99 "let the crisis happen" was advice from here that's been very useful to me this year. But it's kind of a set of scales with that on one side, and doing the few things you think will be effective, on the other. Ofc that "few" may be 0 in your DM's case :/

Well, you'll all envy me - my elderly relative is safe in hospital and I'm ill in bed and so far at least three Xmas meetups have been cancelled or postponed. Apart from the grimness of being so ill, things are greatly simplified. I would be upset at the cancellations but tbh I feel too crap to care about anything but how many hours it is until I can have more paracetamol.

@ArabellaFishwife these days it seems the supermarkets only shut for Xmas day itself. And last year we were delighted to find about 20-30% of the restaurants in the big town a 20 min drive away were open Xmas Day too. We got ourselves a takeaway!

@MysterOfwomanY I put my foot down at the announcement of another manly sorting out trip to FIL's house, and instead went off to panic-buy elaborate cake and overpriced party food. Parked right outside M&S even. Unheard of.
There won't be any parties, obviously, but it's warm food you can get onto your plate in a few minutes. A few Doritos and it's almost festive.
Early start tomorrow to visit a rapidly deteriorating FIL. Another lovely day to be on the road. Feels as if we're battling through flooded roads and around fallen trees for hours every weekend. Because we are. If MIL were alive, she'd have a conniption thinking about her DS driving through that.

@ArabellaFishwife the storms just add to the joy don't they.

@funnelfan I hope you got a good sleep.and no one makes any dafy discharge decisions today.

@MysterOfwomanY once you feel better wait a while before you let anyone know

DB2 visited mum yesterday and found another crisis to deal with. Fortunately a relatively simple one in the grand scheme of things but there is one daily at the moment. But the doc thinks she is fine so still waiting for the big one.

i slept but not as much as I needed, although I found an old bottle of sherry at the back of a cupboard. Made the mental assessment of “what if the hospital call me in” and took the risk of a small glass before bed.

I am currently in the hospital cafe, they do a nice cooked breakfast! Mum had a funny turn while on the commode so the doctor sent me for a coffee, which I interpreted as “bugger off and let us do our job”. It’s looking more and more likely that no imminent discharge and if/when it comes it won’t be to her house. Thank God.

Fingers crossed for you Funnelfan. Breakfast sounds good

That must be a bit of a relief @funnelfan I hope that they don't try and back track and that she is ok.

DF is still in hospital too, improving, but luckily he will have a full assessment from physio, OT, respiratory team and dietician before they even think about letting him go. His heart was also struggling with going to the toilet made worse by his breathing, dehydration and lack of nutrition. They are prescribing some medications that should help. The upside is that he has been so scared by going into hospital that he is suddenly being more amenable to all the things he has been refusing for the last year because he doesn't want to end up back there 🤦. Hopefully he won't regress back to his old habits once he gets home.

@countrygirl99 wise words. In fact I still have my phone on Do Not Disturb. So I got a solid 8h sleep for the first time in days (albeit from 330am to 1130!).

@funnelfan ah the relief when the tone of the chat shows that at last they see what you've been seeing for days now. Enjoy your breakfast!