Cockroach cafe Summer 2025

[BestIsWest]

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.

Mum is under a very specialist consultant and it’s orthopaedics so she won’t be moved thankfully. The one she’s in is one I’ve been on as a patient as it was great. Im having a quiet day resting now ds is at school.

I know I've told this one before but it bears repeating. Dad was a frequent flyer to the elder care ward in the last couple of years of his life. His notes said reassurance only to wife due to Alzheimer's all information/discussions with DB1 or me. He'd been in 3 weeks and was waiting for a discharge to assess bed after a bout of UTI delirium. I got a call from mum sobbing that she'd called the care home dad was supposed to be in but he wasn't there. Her conclusion was that he'd died and they were hiding it. It took a couple of hours of constant calling before someone on the ward answered the phone and when they did the response was that they'd told mum he was being discharged tomorrow and it was a simple message so why was it a problem. I repeat ... this was a specialist elder care ward and still there was no comprehension of Alzheimer's.

Our local hospital is awful, not even rated as 'safe'. Unfortunately it is the only one in the area. Perhaps other areas have better hospitals.

In my ideal world, care of elderly patients would be centred on the patient rather than on the specialty (which is what our local hospital does). Care being given holistically. Recognising that repeated changes of location/ward management etc add to confusion and distress.

Currently our hospital trust delivers its services in different towns. Cardiac & stroke in one town, diabetes care in another. Rehab/preparation for discharge in a different town. This means hospital transport between sites, in DM's case flat on her back on a trolley. DM had no idea where she was or why.

Things have moved in with DM. They've had a push to get some of yhe patuenrs out yesterday.

After using the "unsafe discharge" phrase it was agreed that she could have a package of care.

Only "D"M isn't happy with waiting and said she doesn't want the carers.

The ward also think this will be disastrous and have got a Doctor to do a capacity check and she'a bloody passed.

Just had her on the phone demanding i do a 20 mile round trip to take her home, only she's not had her meds yet so I've said i won't take her hoke until she gas them.

She's definitely not happy with me but i really don't feel inclined to go and sit with her when she's been neglectful and abusive all of my life. She still knows how to upset me though.

Am expecting the flying monkeys to turn up any minute.

Sorry about the typos. The edit feature isn’t working for me this evening.

@BunnyRuddington its hard, We had to wait over a month for a care package and DM was a bloody nightmare during that time, accusing us of all sorts. Can you make sure the hospital know you won’t be accepting responsibility for her? I admit that I would have refused to collect DM from hospital without a care package in place. Although they managed to get her on an ambulance and informed me she was on her way home as I was on my way to a funeral.

Taken DM for a blood test today. By the time I picked her up, made sure she was dressed in something clean, got her into the car, found a parking spot, got her from the car into a wheelchair, wheeled her all the way over bumpy ground uphill to the phlebotomy clinic and then did it all in reverse I was exhausted. I said to DH it should be an Olympic event

@BunnyRuddington if you look closely your car has a flat tyre, oh and a flat battery, and anything else that can be flat on a car.

@BestIsWest feet up time 🍷

Yes surely all the local petrol stations are out of fuel.

@SockFluffInTheBath so sorry. Here's to our lovely ILs. I wept every day for six months after my FiL died.

@countrygirl99 being the age I am, I have lots of friends with elderly parents. One of them has a mother who has also lost the ability to use the phone - they set her up with an Alexa so they can "drop in" if she's not answering the phone. She is not, however, prone to tidying random items into cupboards, luckily.

@Choconuttolata hope it went well. 💐

@MotherOfCatBoy I presume sod's law applies, if you try to sneak stuff out that is behind other things and out of sight at the back of a cupboard, she'd catch you and raise hell :/
One day someone will invent "Discarnex" or similar which treats hoarding and will deserve every gong they get! PS. TalkTalk are dire (DataLeakDataLeak they should be called). Sky aren't brilliant but we managed to ring up and cancel in ten minutes today 💪

@Dormit the good thing about not taking her walker in is that it can't disappear off with someone else. A friend's NHS wheelchair did (luckily the care manager had a client who somehow had 2 NHS wheelchairs...).

@GnomeDePlume it varies a lot. One hospital Mum was in, neither her nor her partner (who is pretty level headed) were happy, so I went in with a notebook and asked to "talk things through" with the doctors so I could "understand better".
Luckily she was out of there soon after but we had strict instructions that expiring in a ditch was preferred to going back there!

The place she was in at the end of her life weas okay though, by and large, and when she moved ward, it was more because so many different bits of her were going downhill.

Currently our hospital trust delivers its services in different towns. 😫😫😫😳

@BunnyRuddington discharge ALWAYS seems to be (AT BEST) flaky though, wherever you go. I bet I'm not the only one here who took an elderly relative's house keys home from the ward for fear they would be flytipped back at an unprepared and unsuitable house at some random time!

@BestIsWest the uphill-machine at the gym proved very helpful when getting my elderly relative uphill in her wheelchair!

Moderate success today - Sky cancelled, TV licence told she doesn't need one (she doesn't). iPad set up to get ebooks and audio books from her library. Out of date food binned. Hedge trimmer applied with vigour so now we can get up and down the garden path without being One With Nature whether we like it or not.

Still can't persuade her that it would be good to get out and make friends her own age :| ...but... she's thinking about having more daytime care so maybe they could cook her a proper meal? It would be more social interaction anyhow, so a positive thing.

TV licensing should be ashamed of themselves though, the questions DELIBERATELY swap from "Do you watch...?" to "Do you confirm that you don't watch...?" half way through the "I don't need a license" form. There can be no possible legitimate reason for this!! - it's clearly to confuse people, to get them to select the wrong answer so that they go, "oh the form says I do need one," and pay, when they don't.
I may take up witchcraft and curse them.

FIL has had three falls in three days. DH is going to have to miss something important with DC this weekend to go to see him. FIL lives with other son but BIL1 needs support too. FIL has refused to see physiotherapist and has probably done no physio since he moved back home after three months living with us after a previous fall and us insisting that he saw a physio privately and practiced each day. FIL refuses to move nearer us and BIL2 so we can support better and refuses adaptations to the house and refuses carers. He is intransigent but fully competent mentally but expects DH and BIL2 to pick up the pieces after he makes stupid decisions. We agreed that the stress of having him live with us could not be repeated but I can see it is going to happen again, we already had him back for a week at the start of the summer. I'm hacked off that DC is going to be second to FIL again and utterly hacked off that FIL is doing stupid things, one of the falls was doing something unnecessary outside and has caused bad falls in the past. And of course he was not wearing his fall alarm so was only spotted outside on the ground because very kind neighbour spotted him as BIL was out and went to rescue him.
Rant over, just needed to vent. There are no answers because we have had so many discussions with FIL already.

@Mumbles12 easy to say from the outside but what happens if DH doesn’t go this weekend? It’s hard when they pull rank on the DC, you feel you have no choice but to let someone down.

I know it’s easy to say this Mumbles but… why is your dh going?

I woukd be inclined to say the same. It’s really hard because you want to make sure your family are ok but your “D”FIL seems to be being rewarded for making poor decisions. Very hard though sometimes not to drop everything and go.

Maybe it's time for FIL to understand FAFO.

Had to look up that particular acronym but it does seem quite apt!

That’s a favourite in our house 😁

eta along with ‘play stupid games, win stupid prizes’.

Will DH genuinely be able to achieve anything positive? Even if it's seizing the opportunity to read his SF the riot act to his face?

Thank you all for the comments, it's supported me in feeling that I'm not unreasonable to be cross. I'd agree with you all but BIL who lives with FIL has mental health issues so DH is going to support him. The last thing we can cope with is BIL having another crisis. I have asked DH to tell FIL that he has missed something important for DC. I don't think FIL will actually care though. I think that he is too selfish now.

Finally at the airport for our much needed holiday after weeks of stress sorting out PILs house so the sale can go through in a couple of weeks. The house clearance people had to come back in a different van to take away all the banned weedkiller that FIL was keeping at the back of the garage and his collection of builders rubble. The legal process has been a nightmare because of things PIL didn't do properly years ago.

BIL has decided he can't possibly look after MIL at all so hes arranged for her to go into a care home near him while we're away. We've had weeks and weeks of finding her sitting in the dark worrying that she'll go into the care home and won't come out again. She agreed to the plan but BIL obviously steam rollered her into it.

Anyway we're left everything in BILs "capable" hands.

Oh goodness @Morenicecardigans i hope they are lovely to her and she feels ok while she is there. Have a wonderful holiday.

@Morenicecardigans have a lovely break. Not much you can do from ‘away’ so no point even thinking about it while you’re gone.

Have a fabulous holiday Morenice. I’ve found recently that my extended family ate very good at telling me what I should be doing for the older ones i care for but not actually willing to do any of it themselves.

@Morenicecardigans have a lovely break and solidarity with the sorting of a house and garage with things in the dark corners that are now banned and ‘builders rubble’.

If BIL has chosen a care home for when you’re away, he obviously thinks a team of people are needed - so let him manage that team and the consequences of his choice while you recharge knowing that MIL is safe. Hopefully she will like it more than she expected and enjoy some company.

I hope she will too. My DA has gone from being very unhappy at home to thoroughly enjoying being in her Care Home. It’s owned by the Avery chain.

Same for my DM. It’s a huge relief. Just very expensive. But worth every penny.