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.

@BunnyRuddington my mum was never awful to us and looked after us well. But in a completely detached way if you know what I mean and everything was about her and no real empathy and difficulty maintaining friends etc.

Sadly after Thursday’s trip to take DF for his check up at the hospital resulted in him getting lost while I parked the car as he attempted to go to an appointment that he had in January with the wrong letter, then tripping up and ending up in A&E for 2 hours - thankfully minor cuts only, I feel well qualified to join this club that nobody wants to be a member of.
Like @GnomeDePlume we are a middle class family where no one really ever discussed emotions and we rubbed along by keeping it superficial. Now - by dint of being an only DC to very aged DPs - I have been thrust into an ever increasing caring role which I am starting to absolutely hate.
I live an hour or so away and I feel dread before every weekly visit. DM has carers 4 x daily and I persuaded them to get a weekly cleaner, but nobody sorts out the stuff like the hoard of flies that seem to have appeared in the kitchen or the blocked toilet that took me half an hour to get working again last time ( according to DM it just needs to be flushed hard and she refuses to acknowledge that it took effort to resolve the situation).
The thought of even a couple of years of this chills me to the bone. Sometimes I wish I could have something that caused me to have to go to hospital and be unable to drive just to escape it. DH is going to cut down his days at work to spread the love, but he is very good at promising things and then not following through, plus they are my bloody parents.
Anyway hello everyone .

Welcome Rookie, pour yourself a gin. Blimey, was your DH going to reduce his hours anyway? It seems a bit drastic to do this (with consequent effects on your finances/pension/his career). Can your parents afford to buy in more help?

I too have the feelings of dread and I am going 5 days a week. It's too much. I don't want to do it anymore, but I can't just abandon them. I spoke to the care company who are currently going in for two hour visits a week on Thursday about increasing the number of visits. They said they would get back to me, but haven't yet. Don't know how long to leave it before chasing.

Been off here for a while being dutiful (unappreciated) but completely agree with others that I cannot fathom some of my father’s behaviour when I look at my beloved children. I also keep going for my siblings and do what I am willing to do - but we’ve had a bunch of appointments and I’ve definitely felt like I’m sacrificing my life again recently. We do finally have a diagnosis of Parkinson’s and Lewy Body Dementia though, after years of reluctance from the NHS to label and day to day getting pretty desperate and numerous falls and hospital visits.

Thank you @Isitsticky.

DH is desperate to reduce his hours anyway, we can afford it and because of the lack of emotional issues, he finds visits to my DPs less painful- plus he walks rookiedog up the hill when they get too much. More of an issue is that my contract is ended, I am 56 and want to work but can’t apply for full time roles as it’s too much for me with the hour long drive to theirs each way and menopause is kicking in, and the part time roles are poorly paid and unfulfilling. Again financially we can afford it, so I know we are more fortunate than many.

DPs could afford any care they wanted. I have POA on their accounts and it makes me slightly furious how much they are worth and how little they are prepared to spend - age old story I know. Part of the problem is we are in Scotland so DM is incredibly fortunate to receive 4 free carers a day due to a fall that has left her semi bed bound and catheterised. Unfortunately as we aren’t paying for them I can’t ask the carers to do more than doing what is needed for DM, and DF refuses to accept his cognitive decline and they both refuse to have any more people in the house.

I know I just have to wait until DF gets to the stage where he forgets to switch off the pan or oven or is a danger to DM or himself, which is fun.

@rookiemere welcome, the danger of leaving them so you can find parking at a hospital is very familiar. So stressful. Even with a Blue Badge now I usually need a second pair of hands along with me - not always possible.

Thanks @FiniteSagacity. Even DF has agreed that we need to get a taxi for future appointments- obviously he won’t remember this when the next appointment arises .
The car park was horrendous, I do wonder how many people missed vital appointments as a result of not being able to park.

Ah the dreaded hospital car parking situation. Currently once a day visiting and mostly DH is driving me, parking elsewhere and going for a coffee. The other day I drove myself what a nightmare, no spaces and then when leaving the payment machine was playing up so queuing in the rain to pay. Then queuing for 20 mins to the barrier. I thought I’d left in time to beat the traffic but after the queues above it made a 15 minute journey into 50. Altogether an hour with Ddad took 3 hours

I ran around yesterday with DM at hospital, for the first time she was in a hospital wheelchair. She can walk, but due to bunions and slow heart failure she is extremely slow and can’t manage any gradient. Wheeling her back to the car park was not fun.

Thanks all for your understanding. I found myself wishing yesterday she was some random old lady acquaintance- I think I could manage better if I didn’t know her, I would be great then, like all the nurses. But I do know her and there’s too much history for me to have a connection. I have sympathy for her in the moment, like preparing for her operation, but no sympathy at all for her self absorption and failure to consider other people.

I get the dread too, every week.

@rookieare you sure DH cutting down his hours is the best solution. I know it’s hard but you don’t want to he making decisions now to benefit your DPs which would affect DH’s pension and thus the quality of your own retirement.

Oh and I once lost DA completely. Left her in the foyer on a wheelchair avd went to park. Asked her not to move. She very “helpfully” asked a Porter to wheel her to the Ward my DU was on only they got lost. I cannot tell you the panic I felt knowing that I’d taken her to such a big Hospital then lost her. She turned up eventually.

@BunnyRuddingtonhonestly it’s fine. DH is a day rate contractor who will still earn well when he goes down to 3 days a week, plus his pension investments are doing well. Also he wants to cut back and he sees how stressed the constant visits make me, so this is a good reason for him.As I say I do appreciate how fortunate we are to have these choices.

I do find it galling when DF boasts about how much inheritance he will leave, firstly it’s still absolutely not guaranteed if they do need to go into care and secondly I could actually earn my own good salary again by working full time if I wasn’t having to factor their care into the equation. Selfishly I hope they might to agree to go into a care home so that I could have decent job opportunities again, but we aren’t quite at that stage yet and by the time it comes -if indeed it does- I suspect I will be too knackered to go for it.

I am an only DC and I cannot in all conscience let them have less than one visit a week because of our distance. Even then I find myself doubting myself and thinking I should be doing more. But I simply can’t either mentally or physically.

Anyway it’s reassuring to know that I am not the only one who has managed to lose an elderly relative.

And I think the rather kafkaesque conversation DF and I were having in A&E helped to distract the poor DM in with her DS who had hurt his head by being pushed over in class.

Every two minutes DF would check his watch “ We will go if they haven’t seen me by 3” “Remember Dad your watch is an hour slow so it’s actually coming up to 4” on repeat for most of the time we were there, until I just agreed that yes we would leave at 3, whereupon he looked at me like I was stupid and said “My watch is an hour slow you know.” Plus when I rang DM to let her know what had happened, her only question was if the car was ok.

@rookiemere dread is perfectly normal.

I have a much easier time of it than a lot of people here, but I was definitely ready to see the upside when a virus floored the both of us last Christmas! My relative was in hospital (she's stopped hokey-cokeying in and out now, happily) and we were groaning in bed. So that was that. Very peaceful!

@FiniteSagacity I hope the diagnosis gets you better support.

@rookiemere welcome 😣

@MotherOfCatBoy you’re not alone. My mother is a selfish cow and I went NC when she started making noises about care and writing all sorts of drivel on the poa (which I didn’t sign).

Morning all. I’ll try to catch up on
the thread but in the meantime hugs to all. My mum
has been in hospital awaiting surgery for nearly 2 weeks and the exhaustion has hit me like a ton of bricks. She’s having surgery this next week. I’ve been up and made sure her house is ok and done a few things but nothing that’s affected me and have done it on my own terms. My body is telling me I'm very stressed because I ended up in A&E with chest pain the other day. I’m reassured my heart is fine but need to find ways to destress. My youngest goes on his year 6 residential the same day my mum has surgery and I’m hoping that I can have a good rest while he’s gone.
Needless to say my sister has done nothing bar some of mum’s washing from the hospital. The staff have been shockingly awful on the ward. She’s not been getting her medication and in the end I spoke to the doctor twice and got it all sorted.

@SockFluffInTheBath sorry to hear that. No surprise that you miss your lovely MIL so much.

@rookiemere It seems to make sense that you both make a bit more time. If he’s a contractor he can easily dip back in again if he wants to, right? You can’t do everything, making space somewhere is sensible.

@Dormit alarming to hear you have been I. Hospital too! Do look after yourself and make time for you to be healthy. Put yourself first. You can’t pour from an empty cup, and all that. Also heart problems are much less easily diagnosed in women, make sure you are ok and taking steps to look after yourself.

@Dormit please take a back seat and rest.
It's worrying that you've been in with heart problems.

So I'm on holiday. The weather is not fantastic. Supposed to be nice tomorrow but iffy for the rest of the week (South Devon).

It feels weird because if you remember my dad had this ridiculous situation a week ago of cancelling an ambulance twice because it took too long/he felt fine etc etc. Except he didn't feel fine - was in the most pain he'd been in. Finally they called an ambulance for the third time last Monday morning(a week ago). I went down to A&E to meet him with adult dd for company. The ambulance people took him in and, at the at home assessment, were worried about his breathing. Which no one had noticed was a problem; no obvious shortness of breath, wheezing or anything.

At A&E I was directed to re suss and told he was having a scan. Re suss - hmm I thought. I spoke to a lovely young doctor who gave me loads of time and information and told me dad was on lots of oxygen and they were looking into why he had this problem. She said dad was in good spirits flirting with the nurses and female doctors etc 😬

Dad came back from the scan pleased and surprised to see us, hooked up to all the monitoring biz and with a mask on. He wasn't distressed but fatigued. And said his legs hurt.

The good thing about being in re suss was there was no difficulty seeing a doctor as soon as you want. Anyway, there are no breaks but his sats were down to 87 but they put him on intravenous diuretics and almost immediately his sats were up to nearly 95. The scans showed he had fluid on the lungs caused by a deterioration in his heart failure plus a bad infection. But it was treatable.

The next day another doctor phoned me was more downbeat and said dad has atrial fibrillation and his heart is very weak. She asked about whether he wanted artificial resuscitation and I said I'd need to ring mum to check. I asked point blank if he would be able to ever come out of hospital and the doctor said not if he needs oxygen, the next few 24 to 48 hours were crucial as they would see how we responded to less oxygen.

I then had to ring mum which wasn't a fun conversation, saying about the heart failure and the resuscitation etc. It now seems both my dad and my mum had forgotten that dad had had a heart attack in 2020 resulting in a stay in hospital. So mum was shocked about the heart failure.

Anyway, the next day I took mum to see dad and he was on a ward with nasal oxygen thingy. He was still in ok spirits but not eating. This seems to be down to anxiety but not about himself but convincing himself we're all (the rest of his family) going to be killed in a car crash or plane crash.

Fortunately mum is now able to speak to him on the phone occasionally and telling him to eat. We've informed the ward staff about him not eating but I'm not sure how much continuity there is etc. When mum and I were there the other day none of his food menu forms had been filled in. So we did that for him.

Anyway, mum's seen him a few times by various methods and each time had to try to get him to eat. My sister took mum to see him today and apparently he was confused at first; didn't recognise them and thought he was in Paris. Sad to disillusion him in a way.

Anyway, I feel odd being on holiday with this all going on. Also ds is flying to Asia to see a friend but also solo travelling on top of that and will go while I'm away. Which is great that he's doing it and hopefully it will be a fab adventure for him. But I'll be worrying about him too.

Sorry to blab on. I was too emotionally knackered to come on here before. And now I've let it all out and droned on and on 😑😃

Now I've regurgitated all that I can catch up on previous posts!

Hope you're doing ok with your stress @Dormit ! It's too easy to forget oneself in these occasions.

Oh yes, part of the reason I wanted to post my long post about dad above is that he nearly didn't go in about his fall and the breathing issue was an incidental finding. None of us had noticed anything. Just quite scary that he could be that Ill with no symptoms of that issue.

It’s amazing how much our elderlies can mask their symptoms, whether deliberately or not. Hope you manage to have a good holiday @tobee despite the weather. It’s been more like November here today (oop north).

That is a lot to cope with @tobee. I hope you get a chance to recharge your batteries whilst you are away.

Sorting admin ready for my mum’s move - why is it so flipping difficult?!!! We can’t stay with the same broadband provider so my niece called yesterday with my mum, I was very clear about what they needed and Sky aggressively upsold them - didn’t manage it on one product so switched to another. They said they were very confused. Then Social Services will not make any referral to the new LA meaning I have to do everything again. Prove severe mental illness via a new GP, get a new care needs assessment etc. why the f isn’t it easier than this? There is absolutely zero consideration for the carer in this system.