Cockroach Café 🪳 🪳 🪳New Year 2025

[MereDintofPandiculation]

Welcome in to the Cockroach Café Bad Daughters’ Room, the rugs and cushions all fresh and clean for the new season.
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.

Welcome @GaolyCafard. I am also somewhere at the start of this fun journey, but my DF died quite unexpectedly last Oct and the small things I had been doing to help them manage independently became a whole lot bigger quickly even though DM should in theory be capable of living independently based on current health. Someone to park yourself and rant when necessary, no matter what stage you are at, is very therapeutic I have found in my time here!

Welcome @GaolyCafard 🥃all bad daughters welcome here X

@BestIsWest glad she seems settled, a lot easier that you and DB are on the same page.

Welcome @GaolyCafard we are always here to listen to rants and wails. A cousin (who had been on the same journey) asked me how I was managing to cope. I told her gin, she understood and it's the same here.

Welcome @GaolyCafard . Mine are still living independently bloody-mindedly: DF is 96 and DM is 88, she is a hoarder, the house is chaotic and completely out of control, they won’t have a cleaner or do a clear out, no carers, no meals, no nothing and I live an hour away. Fun isn’t it

Plus I walked out of there this afternoon because after half an hour of ignoring me (not unusual) DM asked me what I had done to my hair, it looks terrible (also not unusual, but I have been having a bad day). I basically told her that’s rude and she can’t speak to me like that, and when she gave me some “you’re my daughter” and “you never looked like that living under my roof,” I left. Context - she’s always been like this, I haven’t changed my nondescript shoulder length brown hair, and I’m 52 ffs. Enough already.

Is the cafe still open? I really need 🍷 but sadly on painkillers.

DF in hospital again but I'm really worried about him this time, not that I wasn't before but he's so weak and lost the spirit as well as strength. We'll see what tomorrow brings.

Sorry to hear that @RomanMum <makes space on the 🛋️ and offers 🍫 >

Thanks @Choconuttolata . Chocolate will do in a crisis. Unfortunately so many crises over the last few months I've put on 1/2 stone!

Welcome @GaolyCafard! I'm still a newbie here but have found so much support in this wonderful safe space!

@MotherOfCatBoy The "you're my daughter" always makes me want to bite back and tell her to start being nicer then as that's what normal mothers are! 🤣

@RomanMum Sending best wishes to you and your df x

Well exactly but when I was younger she treated me like her property, an extension of herself. No different now. I’ve learned from experience not to give her the argument she wants, but just remove myself from the situation.
Spent quite some time last night thinking about the feeling of not having been mothered properly. But still feeling responsible for two elderly people, at least physically anyway.

@RomanMum i hope you get good news this morning. I hear you on the crisis calories, I have piled it on since all this started.

Thanks all. He's apparently a little better this morning, but we'll see how his physical (and mental) state is today. I've never seen him so low and giving up before.

Hope your dad is feeling better @RomanMum

So this morning I waved my parents off (DP taking them back home) and burst into tears.

Then I pulled myself together and called the Alzheimer’s Society helpline, who advised me to call their local authority and request an urgent needs assessment.

I’ve done that, they’ve taken some details and will pass on to the Duty Team to call me back.

Sending 💕 and 💪 to everyone - I feel like we all need it!
I think I'm going to have to ask Mum's care home not to ring when Mum wants to speak to me - which she only does when she wants to have a go at me abiut her being there. She was horrid yesterday and then just put their phone on the desk and walked off while I was in the other end going "hello? hello?"!!!!
They left a message today to say she wanted to speak to me but I haven’t rung back as I can't face another round of her batshittery!
Strangely she never asks them to ring my brother - "he's busy working!" (I work full time! 🤣)

DM is still on the Older Persons Assesment unit in the main hospital.
She has had a head CT scan which confirms Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus.
I am a bit upset by it. The three main symptoms are a shuffling gait (magnetic feet, tiny steps), urinary incontinence and dementia - mainly short term memory loss. All of which she has. I’ve watched videos of people with the gait and it’s exactly her.
I am a bit devastated to think that it’s been 4 years since the Alzheimer’s diagnosis and she had this NPH all along that could potentially have been treated and given her a better quality of life.
The memory loss with NPH tends to be for short term and executive function rather than long term which again fits with her type of dementia. She can remember events of a few years ago perfectly and has no problems with remembering people, who we are, what we do etc. No idea what she had for lunch or how to use a mobile though.
She’ll see a neurologist at some point though I doubt they will treat it at 87.

Of course she may also have Alzheimer’s.

They are also sending her for a hip x-Ray as they are concerned about her mobility and problems putting weight on her leg.
I doubt they’ll send her to reablement yet.

Sorry to hear about your DF @RomanMum

@StripyMug sympathy.

Mine was happily texting me on Weds, following a Fri visit from me and a Sat visit from another relative.
Today, the care company rings and tells me she is refusing to eat, drink, take meds, get up "I'm just fed up, you all carry on without me".
I am very out of my depth here.
Yes, she lost her husband last year and has had crappy health ( 2 admissions, one A&E overnight, and a vexingly lingering cough).
But this time last week she was talking about waiting until the new iPhone SE comes out to get one, so....

I can't make her young, I can't bring her husband (who came with his own difficulties) back, but I do want her to eat, drink, take her meds, and make the most of however long she has left.

What do you do? I rang up (and got nowhere, I have no idea how to handle this so ...) but ironically the person with most experience of coping with this situation - her husband had very bad spells of depression - is her.
The NHS offers counselling (free but not instant) and the care firm can arrange private counselling - bereavement, they said. I suspect they'd have to unwind things many decades as she had major bereavement in her childhood which... has obviously had an effect.

God knows. I'll go down tomorrow and see, I guess. I was going to go out tonight but fair to say I'm really not in a state of mind to enjoy it right now. I'd just be standing there with all this going round my head.

I have LPA but she still has capacity.

She has these mood swings, where she overreacts to something, every so often, and fair to say I am not a fan. But people are who they are, so what to do?

I retired to travel, to do things (walking or cycling this or that trail) while I still have health, but ... well, here we all know the score. I was hoping for one week where I didn't have to firefight.

Also does anyone have experience of switching GP? I've not heard her say a good word about her surgery for years. So maybe nothing to lose by changing.

Popping my head round the door to say hello. I've been lurking and so glad to have found you (and sorry we are all facing difficult times). My DM is in her late 70s and has been in decline for a while, but it has escalated. Suddenly i'm dealing with care agencies, LPA's, district nurses and constant talk of illness. I'm a bad daughter because I just want to run away. I have young DC and just want to enjoy them. I'm at a point where I'm starting a new career path and want to focus on it. I'm doing everything from a sense of duty and trying to be a decent human. It's increasingly becoming clear my DM expects me to step up, despite the fact she's offered little support to me over the years and has refused to plan for her old age.

She lives an hour away and is hinting at moving in with us so I can care for her. I know I sound dreadful, but this is a hard no from me. I'm stretched to the limit as it is, without taking on full time carer responsibilities. It doesn't help that we don't know the prognosis of one of her conditions, so timeframes are difficult. I feel constant anxiety and judgment from her friends and neighbours, that I'm not jumping to her rescue. Anyway, having my evening sherry...

@BestIsWest the alternative diagnosis is a mixed bag. Please don’t drive yourself crazy with what ifs.

@EveningSherry hi 🍷you’re in good (bad) company here. Mine live next door, I would have dumped my FIL far away already if they lived with us. That’s a step too far for most people- most honest people who aren’t spinning how they think they would do it for everyone else’s approval anyway. The friends and neighbours can go right away, if they’re bothered they can roll their sleeves up, if they’re not that bothered they can shut up.

@EveningSherry hold on to your hard no and welcome. You are right to be mindful of what you can cope with and you have a lot on your plate.

Last week I thought I might be a good daughter for a day after a longer visit was not that bad. This week I am firmly back in bad daughter territory, where I belong.

Cheers to all 🍸

Thank you for the welcome! I know my limits and just don't want our lives completely disrupted. My DC deserve a carefree childhood, not a house full of illness, carers, nurses etc. I wish I cared less about what other people think and I hate the assumption that adult children will take on the burden of complex medical care, despite not being a particularly close family.