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.

Sounds about right @countrygirl99 i hope your DS recovered well.

@Sockfluffinthebath messed him up first a couple of years, didn't finish his degree and further surgery mafmde finding a decent job hard but he's fine now. Still gives him jip if he gets very cold though so a good job he never fancied skiing.

He did enjoy telling girls the scarring was from a shark attack for a while though🤣

DH popped in (see what I did there) to the hospital this afternoon. FIL is now in acute care in a side room since he ‘set them straight’ I can only imagine. DH didn’t manage to speak to anyone, said the staff were run ragged. He’s still on a drip, failed attempts to refit a catheter, tried to do a suprapubic one under local but couldn’t, and too high risk for a GA. Sign above his bed said nil by mouth but was scoffing M&Ms when DH walked in 🙄

Someone convince me I’m doing the right thing. DM is still in the local cottage hospital waiting for a care package. Been to see her tonight and she was packed, ready to go home (again), sitting on the edge of her bed. Floods of tears and very angry when I told her (for the millionth time) that I can’t take her home without the care package being in place. It’s breaking my heart honestly. She hates it in there and is desperate to be home. I understand completely but she’ll be back in there in weeks if she goes home without carers.
I don’t know how much longer I can do this.

I’d had good news too, DS passed his driving test Friday, moved into a new flat Saturday and got a new job today. It’s been an uphill struggle for him the last year for various reasons so I was feeling so pleased for him that things seem to be going right at last and now I feel awful.

@BestIsWest wishing you strength, you are doing the right thing. She needs a team and if you rescue her, she will be further away from getting the team she needs. Hold your line on discharge with care or not at all. It just gets harder if you rescue.

@BestIsWest you are doing the right thing. 🌺
so glad to hear your good news!

And yay @BestIsWest to your DS making all those strides forward!

We don't have terrible crises to deal with now that FIL is in a care home and MIL is in sheltered housing it's just a relentless round of dealing with MIL's constant demands. She just wants DH to be a replacement husband. He had to deal with sad wailing about much she had missed had him on Sunday evening because we'd gone out for the afternoon and hadn't been to see her. We'd gone to see DD and her partner and their new baby. Apparently visiting our first grandchild is not allowed.

@Morenicecardigans congratulations on your new grandchild 💐
I hope your DD is doing well and I’m sure you and your DH were very welcome visiting her.

Yes, you are doing the right thing! The walk back to the hospital car park can be the worst time in the world, but you are doing all this for the best reasons. It's so hard keeping things separate, but try not to let it take away from all the good stuff with your son.

Thank you all. I had a bit of a sleepless night but feel a bit better today and am going to go to the gardens where I volunteer which always does me good. I’m not going to visit today but am going to let my brother go instead.
Tomorrow she has an appointment for an MRI in a different hospital so I am going to meet her there. I’m already dreading it as she’ll think she’s going home.

I just wish they would get a move on with the care package.

@Morenicecardigans congratulations on your first grandchild! A wonderful thing.

Thank you for the congratulations she is a beautiful baby. DD is recovering well and has a supportive partner who is doing his share. It's helpful to focus on the nicer things that are happening.

@Morenicecardigans how lovely, congratulations!

@BestIsWest hooray for your DS, what a star. Is there a reason your mum’s discharge is so protracted, is it to do with this latest MRI?

Shortage of carers I think @SockFluffInTheBath ftom what I can gather.

OMG Hearing aids. Sister got her some at an exorbidant price. She hate them and never wears them. Lost one so sister bought another one. Last weekend as I was checking the room theyd stayed in with me for a few days I found them in the bag in the waste paper basket I'd put in the room for tissues and stuff. If I hadn't glanced in they would be at the tip by now. What a waste of money!!

I wear hearing aids and they are not always comfortable, but they mean that I can function at work.

I saw my Uncle who is in his late seventies recently at a funeral and he has been given hearing aids, but doesn't like wearing them because he prefers to stay in his own little world and it is easier to tune out without them in.

DF is the same I think he could benefit from hearing aids, but he likes to exist in his own bubble. Also hearing aids are fiddly and he would struggle to see them to put them in. It will increase the rate of his cognitive decline, but I can't see him using them at all.

Must be very frustrating and worrying when they cannot hear the phone and do not answer.

I have the opposite issue with DM’s hearing aids. She is completely deaf without them and goes into a state of total panic if she can’t hear. She fiddles with them all the time and they break or need repairing or get lost on a regular basis. I’ve moaned many a time on these threads about them.

She has NHS ones (they won’t let you buy spares but you can pay for a replacement if you lose one). She paid £2000 for private ones but never really got on with them and promptly lost one.

I’ve now got several spares having paid for replacements for lost ones which have eventually turned up in the back of a drawer or coat pocket. It’s been handy as the hospital managed to lose two!

At one point when I was still working I was taking them on a weekly basis. Thank god I had an understanding boss (He looked after his DM at home until she was 101!).

My DM is now almost deaf but WILL NOT wear her hearing aids. Won’t get round to reading the instructions, won’t practice, won’t engage. I think at the heart of it is a deep fear because she has never got on with any devices or technology at all and I think she thinks she can’t do it. Which is self fulfilling. At the same time she’s battling with the disability of not being able to hear; turning the TV up to max; shouting; and also sometimes able to selectively hear and selectively ignore - but I do think mostly her expierence is very impaired.

Whilst extremely frustrated, I have some sympathy because they are the fiddliest things ever. Has no one tested them on elderly people? How do they manage? Why aren’t there really big really simple ones???

But really big simple ones would be visible so then you get "I don't want people to know I'm deaf" (quote from DH's nan circa 1980). Because having to keep repeating stuff and needing to shout over a high volume tv doesn't give people a clue that you are deaf.

They are the fiddliest of fiddly things.

I think DM has been wearing them since her forties and got used to them when younger so doesn’t really see them as a sign of aging (I should take note, I have a pair that I don’t wear). I hear you with technology though, she never got the hang of a mobile phone although she loved her original kindle that had buttons either side to turn the page. She could never get on with the newer touch screen version.

I agree they are so tiny and then there's the little wire and they have to be charged, this is way too much for most people in their 80's , 90's. Huge need for simple plug in ear ones , that you charge overnight in a power point. My parents look at me as if I;m insane if I mention they have to be charged by a USB portal. They are definitely not making them for the market .

DM’s have tiny batteries that have to be changed often and tubes that link the behind ear part and the in ear mould part. They have to be changed often as they go hard and have to be cut to size. And if you don’t get it right they don’t fit or come apart… Oh what fun.

Conveniently my brother has never learned how to do any of it.

My DF cannot understand the new technology at all now, he can't manage to swipe a screen on a smart phone even one with larger icons for visually impaired everything is buttons. We had to send back his Doro smartphone as he couldn't use it.

He does like his Alexa though because I have shown him how to ask it for crossword clues and he uses it to turn on the television.