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.

Massive part of the market not being catered for in so many ways, like I said in my previous post ( may have been on my original post ) subsidised frozen food that they have no idea how to heat is just a disastrous waste and terrible for their health.

We have arranged carers to come twice week for MIL to shower her and make her breakfast. We've drawn on the experience of previous failed care arrangements and were very specific about what she needs. The care assessor actually showered MIL to see how long it took and how much help she needed.

I've been doing the showers for the past 5 months and MIL cannot manage it on her own even with a seat in the shower. That's one task I'm very pleased to have outsourced.

I do think there is a point where technology evolves to a point where you can no longer keep up because it is so different to what you grew up with when your brain was young and more plastic (remembering Douglas Adam’s quote about technology invented after you are middle aged is basically Magic). Perhaps it’s just because everything has changed so fast in the last 20 or 30 years - if this were the 18th century your 80s wouldn’t be that different from your youth, but now everything is unrecognisable. I think there is a duty to keep up, but how far do you go? I really think medics and companies and so on should recognise that they are dealing with a population who are essentially very comfortable in 1985…

Yes it makes it a nightmare because the NHS and many other companies/services have been pushing online technology and apps since the pandemic and yet the patients using their service the most cannot access it.

I really think medics and companies and so on should recognise that they are dealing with a population who are essentially very comfortable in 1985…

1985 is too modern! I think that my DM was actually happiest in 1965 or 1975!

My goodness, how old is your mother? I was 10 in 1965 and am pretty up to date with technology, my 90 year old neighbour does online banking, shopping etc. My 73 year old sister in law, on the other hand, doesn’t do email, text, online banking, online shopping, or have a smart tv. She’s an intelligent woman who was had a senior professional job.
Keeping up to date with technology is a choice I think.

I'm really conscious that I'm not anything like as tech savvy as I used to be IYSWIM. I catch myself thinking wistfully 'this would have been easy in Wordperfect' which I was earning a decent living with in 1987... It's partly due to being lazy and letting various cohabitees (dh, ds, dp) set up tech systems for me. Ice been trying to switch from android to iPhone this week and I actually couldn't do it. It's all a bit nerve-racking in the context of this board...

Some of it is attitude though, or what they did at work, if they worked. Mine retired over 25 years ago from an extremely part-time job , having never needed to use a computer at work. At that point we knew a few people who had their own computer at home, but it was very much viewed as an expensive luxury for people with a lot of disposable income and not for the likes of us.
Never needed to use one from necessity, no inclination to learn something new for the sake of it. Services like banks were available on the local small high street so just popped in there with any banking queries.

Then gradually more things have gone online, local services have closed and you get someone elderly who has never learnt now totally bewildered because all the methods they’d used all their life no longer work.

This isn’t for want of trying to get them to use technology. Believe me, I’ve tried for decades. They have a very very elderly laptop but think it’s an appalling waste that you might need to replace it, and doesn’t understand that it needs security updates. And will only do very very limited things on it and gets totally lost each time there is an update and the screen looks different.

My mum had a computer at home and did use it for emails, searched for info and did online shopping. Looking back the first symptom of dementia was complaining that "they are making everything too difficult now" and gradually she stopped using it. Now she thinks her tablet is broken when it needs charging.

My DGM tried to keep up and attended free computer courses at her local library in the early 2000's. I am behind in the social media sphere as it is not really my thing, but I might engage some younger family members for a crash course just in case I need it for work in the future.

My DF could do online shopping, banking etc but with his vision loss and memory related issues it is now becoming beyond him as it booking blood tests and GP appointments even by telephone. He cannot remember when people phone him to book appointments or write them correctly in his diary.

The world has changed to a frightening degree and I do see it must be hard to adapt. But that doesn’t excuse directing the frustration with the modern world at their children, nor how very ungrateful for the help they are. I’m sure the people who talk about their lovely elderlies are not subjected to vitriol and their elderlies express appreciation.

MIL is terrible at engaging with any technology she actually took early retirement from teaching as she was going to have to use a computer to write school reports. She had a basic mobile phone and a tablet but she stopped using them about a year ago. If something doesn't work how she wants it to it's because it's broken and that's the end of it.

DM is mid 80s and hasn't worked full-time since I was born in the mid 1960s.
Worked at shorthand and typing so would have thought word-processing etc would have been OK. Despite endless help from neighbours, having full written instructions on how to turn it on, log into email etc has now refused to engage entirely. Being able to do her own online shopping for groceries would be extremely useful because she lives in an area where supermarkets are all a drive away. But prefers to ask neighbours for lifts to the shops or ask her daughter (me) to order something online on her behalf.

I know someone who ran the project installing computers into schools for an entire county and now can't check her balance online. Cognitive decline is awful.

TBH my mum struggles with writing stuff and on an old fashioned kitchen calendar and remembering to check it. She crosses off the day each evening but if she's put something in the next month and forgotten to turn back she'll cross off say 1st May instead of 12th April which causes total confusion and then again a second time when it actually is 1 May. The carers check the calendar is on the right month so that situation has improved a bit since they've started a 2nd visit in the evening but it's not foolproof.

@PermanentTemporary My DF was a computer programmer and development expert, programming operating systems for big businesses, banking etc.. His difficulties now are definitely a combination of cognitive decline and visual impairment. He retired from working full time less than a decade ago, it is scary how quickly the decline can happen.

@Choconuttolata it is scary how quickly the decline can happen - less than 10 years from retirement to needing constant support here. Fiercely independent, to just about managing with increasing frailty, to fluctuating capacity (but still no diagnosis).

And does anyone else find their elderly can still do things when they want to/really try?

Like the turning it on for Doctors, randomly there have been text messages after days of not even looking at the phone.

MIL can definitely do more. She likes to have absolutely everything done for her (thanks to FIL for leaving us looking after his little princess) but there's a few things I've said an absolute no to and so she does them.

@Finitesagacity my mum can sound really convincing that she is coping just fine when faced by people in authority. I try and stand slightly behind and nod and shake my head as appropriate.

I heard on a podcast the other day, a neuroscientist saying that social interaction is a known booster of cognitive performance - we all know that in the context of dementia prevention but the way he said it I think he meant even in the moment - so it might account for the sudden switching on of all faculties when examined by a professional…

(it was about the brain and music; fascinating; music lights up language, rhythm, movement and social cooperation).

The brain is indeed fascinating. I caught a bit of an R4 programme about memory and apparently imagining the future uses the same neural pathways as memory so people with memory issues also have difficulty envisaging the future. It explains a lot about mum.

Just dropping in again to rant. Following the thread with interest - sympathy for all those going through tough times with their elderlies. 💐

One month on from DFs death so early days. Spoke to DM today, she’s been ill for several days now but only today felt it appropriate to mention anything, and she knows usual family support group is unavailable this weekend. I’ve been 1.5 hours away all day with an event for DD. Just got back but I can’t just jump into a car and go to her. Will go first thing tomorrow. Is this going to be the norm from now on, I’m default first contact as eldest child, even though I’m probably the busiest? I feel guilty about not going this evening but also guilty about feeling exasperated by her and her inability to get help. Also guilty towards DD who really needs some support at this time. Jeez. Need 🍷

The guilt is real @RomanMum but your DD should always be priority. That said it’s hard to say no.

Been trying to not moan all the time, but it’s hard at the moment. FIL still in hospital. Agency threatening to report us for neglect if the carers turn up/leave and one of us is not with MIL, SW coming out to reassess this week for 24hr care. BIL swans in and out when it suits him, needs a weekend off, bless him. Wider family expecting us to field MIL 24/7 and also visit FIL every day since we’re closest, aren’t we always. Still a 45 minute drive to the hospital. MIL is refusing to eat anything but peas and throws everything else at the wall. Sat in the garden last night when MIL was in bed and DH said ‘when did life become this?’.

Report you for neglect? Parental neglect isn't a thing! It might be time to step back completely.

I'd tell them to report away. I'd probably offer to dial the number for them.