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.

@PermanentTemporary actual conversation here with DF too! Surreal (like a split personality!) but I am grateful to have had a more positive visit (with wider family as my human shields) as I’m nearest and NH called me last week about practicalities for his care and local authority have also been in contact about various admin issues.

I do think DF was rising to the occasion for visit (like with medical appointments) and he seems more positive about life in general. So far no follow up call/text rant - I admit I was kind of expecting what @BestIsWest got - I’m sorry you had the shine taken off what was a nice day 💐

Welcome to @Mumbles12 🍸

Hoping @MysterOfwomanY and @MadamePeriwinkle get to have wonderful breaks away to recharge 🤞

@SockFluffInTheBath really hoping things are going okay with live in carer for MIL and FIL’s bank holiday in hospital 🤞 (last Easter we were on the crisis rollercoaster so really feel for you right now, especially as you also have exams looming!).

@PermanentTemporary I’m so sorry for your loss. 🌺🌺

@PermanentTemporary 💐

Hope everyone has coped over bank holiday weekend 🍷

@SockFluffInTheBath how's it going with the live-in carer, I know it's only been a day or two, but so far so good?

@Thethingswedoforlove my dad was kind of the same with mum before she went into the care home, I know it's a huge thing he was going through as her carer but I noticed he seemed snappy and irritated by her a lot of the time. Mum's is also a very physical decline (although I don't know exactly what type of Alzheimer's she has, dad has never told me and he claims he doesn't know). What didn't help was that he didn't buy a single thing that could have made his, and her, life at home a lot easier - lightweight or non spill cups to drink from, easy grip cutlery, walking aids, grab rails, a chair for the shower, and then he'd get noticeably irritated when she'd spill her drink or drop her fork or struggle to get in and out of a chair or was shuffling around instead of walking properly.

@BestIsWest @Crikeyalmighty dad has POA for mum and I also have it, but I need to dig it out to double check the details. I think I'm just a back up for if he becomes incapacitated, I definitely have a fully stamped perforated document in my possession though. That's my next step.

For now Mum's appointments are booked and paid for by me, I've had a few new clothes delivered from Vinted and have spent today washing, ironing and tagging them. I've been off work so have been able to call in to her every morning, I've been clipping her hair back, I bought a nifty little device to de-fuzz her face and have finally got rid of her moustache. Eyebrows are my job for tomorrow. By the end of this week she will look like a new woman. I've gone from feeling really angry and frustrated to feeling really flat. I'm only communicating with Dad if it's about Mum and I'm being very matter of fact, I can't find an ounce of care for him personally at the moment. Maybe I'll feel differently once Mum looks a whole lot better.

@MadamePeriwinkle I don't have ADHD and struggle when visiting mum in the care home (it's roasting, TV on full blast, residents room alarms going off, staff talking at full volume because half of the residents are deaf, plus the combined smell of bleach/canteen dinners and occasional toilet accidents) so I can't imagine what it's like when you do have ADHD to contend with aswell! Having her come to you, to your own nice calm clean environment sounds like it would be a much better visit.

@FiniteSagacity thank you, things aren’t great. MIL is permanently in bugger mode, new carer is, let’s say, needy. Think she’s taken a shine to DH too, he’s oblivious, but at this point she can have him as long as she takes the rest of them too. FIL still in hospital, waiting the inevitable discharge of a weaker, less able version. He was already bed bound and double incontinent so who knows what we have to look forward to, though the new catheter should help in part. Not in a good headspace and don’t want to drone on. Wishing everyone else good times 🍷

Oh god, SockFluff. Nothing is straightforward is it. Needy is not what you need!

Blimey @SockFluffInTheBath that sounds challenging to say the least.

Keep a weather eye on the carer...

Crikey @SockFluffInTheBath.

DM nice as pie this afternoon. Sunday’s berating phone call totally forgotten.

Just had a text message ‘kindly bring <shopping list> tonight, thank you’. Umm we’re 2 bottles of wine down since 6pm, so nope. There is plenty in the house, absolutely loads, and there were 8 pints of milk this time yesterday.

Not that we’re (ordinarily) raging alcoholics. We (gasp) had the day off, disappeared, had a nice lunch, came home and cracked open the wine in the garden while the sun lasted. DH was saying we could move to the sea, Hinckley point is hiring (we’re engineers), don’t need to be here now his mum doesn’t know who he is. This last week has been just too much.

I had that with ILs once. Fair enough they had come back from a holiday early (should never have gone, was always going to be a disaster but hey ho). DH had 7.30am phone call from FIL " I'm poorly and there's no food in the house". DH is self employed and my boss was understanding (had the t-shirt himself). So I went to the supermarket and bought a stash of ready meals, bread, milk, yoghurts etc. Enough for 4 days bearing in mind MIL needs for soft food and FIL d&v. Got there and not only did they have plenty for a week but the freezer was so rammed with ready meals I could only fit 1 more in. FIL didn't even offer to pay and I'd driven an hour to get there and had to make up the work hours Saturday morning. Told DH never again.
To cap it all the flipping carers made him a bacon sandwich for his tea and DH ended up having to deal with the consequences. He gave him such a lecture for not sticking to toast or the plain biscuits I'd taken over. FIL just sulked.

Was that text from the carer, SockFluff? Maybe let her know the boundaries early doors. Glad you had a good day until then.

DH replied to say he’d see tomorrow about getting a delivery order on FIL’s Sainsbury’s account. We filled the place with fresh fruit, milk, bread etc at the weekend, and the freezer is stacked with meals, so there’s no way she needs what she’s asked for.

Well mine is on her second ward, and neither of us are any clearer as to what their plan is. I can't go down yet because I have some sort of cough/cold thing brewing.
But, they do have the good painkillers there, at least. She said she'd had low BP and oxygen levels as well so, she said, perhaps it was as well she was in ...
I would like to go down and see her myself when I'm not liable to infect people. It doesn't sound entirely UNconcerning IYSWIM.

@MysterOfwomanY does sound like something’s afoot. Hopefully they will have answers and treatment soon. Look after yourself too.

Can I do some off loading? There’s no crisis here and I feel bad compared to the great difficulties some of you are experiencing. This is more just my own emotional resentment…

On the way home from DPs yesterday I listened to a rerun podcast with Sam Baker interviewing Kate Mosse (The Burning Chambers, Labyrinth etc). It was from 2021 when she had a book out called An Extra Pair of Hands, about unpaid caring work, and how it’s a feminist crisis, because it gobbles up middle aged women and without it the whole health system would collapse.

She herself had her parents live with her in an annex until their deaths and also has her MIL live with her who is (was) 90. A big burden. But she also said her DH and children all mucked in, and as she worked from home it was easier.

But the thing that got to me the most was that she said she was wonderfully and lovingly parented, and saw what she did as giving back with love to people who had looked after her. With her MIL they chat every night over a glass of wine. It just sounded so idyllic (despite I’m sure the large amount of physical and intimate caring work)… I couldn’t help but think how privileged a position it was. Am I being bitter?

Mine were not generally good parents. I left as soon as I could because I couldn’t live under the same roof as my chaotic, vicious, argumentative mother any longer. I loved my Dad but he enabled her. I’m sure that had an impact on my subsequent relationships and career. Now that they are old they are just as difficult, and I live 20 miles away. I constantly feel guilty that I don’t « give back » to the parents who gave me life, but honestly whenever I try, they are obstructive and argumentative, and my good intentions shatter on contact with reality. I do the minimum I can where they will let me help and I no longer try to do the things they won’t actually agree to let me do. That might sound like a good deal but it breaks my heart to see the way they live just because they won’t get any help in (hoarding, not cleaning, etc), it’s almost harder to watch than it would be to do some of the work. I wish I could be the kind of carer who gets to look after an elderly living in harmony together and having cosy chats, but it’s just not bloody like that, and it just left me so - sad, and tired, and flat. At least if you are caring like that it must be fulfilling. This is the opposite. Frustrating but also guilt inducing even though I can’t change it.

Anyone else?

@MotherOfCatBoy I doubt I've had a cosy chat with my mum in my life and Im 66. My mum has only ever been interested in herself, goldenballs and his DC. Not me and mine or my youngest DB and his. My dad was also lovely but enabling and if she said jump asked how high.

I hear you @MotherOfCatBoy . All I'd say is that what Kate Mosse is doing sounds truly admirable and I'm not dissing it, but that my rule of thumb with writers is that they only tell you maximum 60% of the truth. (Katharine Whitehorn said that she'd be interviewed, would be honest about exactly how much outsourcing, support and craziness it took to sustain her life, and the main supports she spoke about would disappear from the article so that it looked like she was doing most of it herself). Also true that one lovely evening with a glass of wine in 100 days will be expanded until it looks like every night. Also clearly Kate Mosse's MIL is not a violent alcoholic who is likely to rub shit over the walls, scream at the neighbours and wander at night if given alcohol, but a highly functional personality.

I'd still say good for Kate Mosse but I absolutely agree with you that it just doesn't and can't work like that for most people. Honestly I think that's why I like history podcasts - listening to insane violence of yesteryear makes my life sound v calm.

@MotherOfCatBoy it sounds great, where do we all sign up? 🙄 be kind to yourself because no one else will be. We say to children they’re allowed to struggle with Big Feelings, but what are these if they’re not Big Feelings? Thrilled for KM that this is her reality, if it actually is. You’re allowed to feel negatively that yours is different.

Thank you all, I knew you’d get it. I don’t want to piss on her parade because she’s still caring, no matter what, and she did say she does all the most intimate things for her MIL which deserves a medal. I just got a visceral reaction that I can’t experience that kind of relationship - I think it’s another shade of the grief I’ve always felt at not having had a proper mothering relationship. I feel like I haven’t been mothered. Conversely, I do know how to mother someone and I’ve done a pretty good job with DS, but I can’t seem to give it back up the generational chain. I ve come to the conclusion my DM can’t really love or receive love.

Anyways, thank you all for understanding. There’s a lot of self therapy going on here and one day I think I’ll invest in the real thing to get some closure.

and to all.

We get it @MotherOfCatBoy Adding the KM book to my list of "what not to read".
It must be lovely to have such a relationship where you can just sit and chat with your DM or MIL. But my MIL is so deaf that you have to shout all the time and it's really hard work and definitely not relaxing. DM on the other hand is only keen to hear about the stuff that she is interested in and anything else is a waste of time and energy. Emotional support for both of them only mostly goes one way which is draining for DH and I.

@MotherOfCatBoy I'm normally cautious about stuff I read in the papers, being more than old enough to have read stuff about people I know (and it was ALWAYS a partial and muddled version of what I had seen with my own eyes).

My own Mum looked after - at various points - her dying gran, her dying mother, and when her much loved aunt (a second mother almost) started wandering at night, she had a nervous breakdown. Actually, I remember praying. And then the aunt died, along with what religious faith I had. Like, "if there IS a God then he's not worth my time."
It would have been more(!), she was asked to do more but literally couldn't, and felt guilty about not being able to help then, all her life.

She always said, don't let it be you! Put me in a home if you have to! But I was always very aware of the possibility...

I have good news about my elderly rellie - the hospital seemed to have checked her out reasonably thoroughly, prescribed her painkillers that let her get a good night's sleep, and she's going home tomorrow. She seems happy with this.

I haven't actually gone down (because mildly unwell myself). So maybe this is encouraging in that none of this required my presence?

Definitely get it @MotherOfCatBoy and so very grateful for this safe space where reality can be shared. If only all the elderlies in need were appreciative, good company and didn’t suffer from cognitive impairment.

Perhaps being a published writer also means a degree of financial security, as well as very flexible working from home. Hats off to KM for the positivity but I’m sure her life is miles from juggling care with a demanding job that keeps a roof over your family’s heads.

@MysterOfwomanY may you not be required for a while longer! I hope you feel better soon.

What a day. I was about to get in the shower to get ready for the funeral of my my dear friend’s husband this morning when the phone rang at 10. The hospital saying mum was in the ambulance going home! No notice at all. I had to throw on some clothes and get up to her house and the ambulance beat me there! No food in the house of anything and I had to pick two other friends up from 10 miles in the opposite direction at 11:45 before driving for an hour to the funeral.

My brother stepped in, thank goodness, to deal with social services. The hospital were notified yesterday morning so why on earth they didn’t tell us I have no idea. They haven’t passed on any information about medication so the carers can’t remind her to take it.