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.

Make sure he's tested them and knows what they sound like. My parents (who are very with it) had CO monitors and smoke alarms installed professionally. The engineer insisted they had to listen to the alarms several times, so they recognised the difference and knew what to do. Very thankful, as due to a fault, 6 months later, CO was coming into their flat. They'd both been telling me they were feeling a bit tired, then the alarm went off. As they knew what the noise was, they knew to get out and call the gas board. The emergency gas man who safed the damaged system (not theirs, but was venting into their flat) reckoned it didn't just save their lives, but the lives of several other flats.

Nope! There's a whole other thread about that... When it was suggested, EP physically threatened the social worker

@roundaboutthehillsareshining thank you for that. Its really scary thought. Glad your parents are okay x

@EmotionalBlackmailyes definitely. I was there this morning and the carer asked generally if there was anything she could do and my mum said no I’m fine. Thankfully, I was there to make some suggestions. I spoke to the manager later on and stressed the importance of the carers being proactive. I was told that the facility is for independent living and I said if she can’t manage personal hygiene then it’s a safeguarding issue. Hopefully they will get to know her and everything will be OK 🙏🏼

@Newmum738glad you spoke to them. It’s so silly that they accept the “I’m fine” on face value, I mean if the person was fully fine and able to look after themselves, they wouldn’t be there. I wish they would work from a list of minimum things needed.

@rookiemere @Newmum738 The carers I have arranged for mum and dad do have a list to work from, but I suppose if the person being cared for insists they don't need something and are thought to have capacity, the carer is in a tricky situation. I wish they could be paid much more and be better appreciated, it's certainly not an unskilled job!
I have organised carers to go in for my DPs each weekday evening and Tuesday mornings because I have my DGC on Tuesday. I go over every other morning and twice at weekends. I also popped in briefly to say hello with DGC yesterday. Mum phoned me at 7 am this morning to tell me that she wants me to understand that she's not coping. Not that she needed something immediately, just that she wants me to understand. The only solution I can see to this is a care home. I don't suppose she'd be any happier, but at least I would know she was safe and feel less guilt and resentment. Anyway, better get over there. Can't bloody wait.

Thanks! She is completely agreeable, they just have to encourage her to do it.

An issue I now have is the Tv. I got her a smart tv a while ago and it has been nothing but trouble. It’s meant to be Alexa enabled and I thought that would be great but it has never worked. Now I’ve moved her, she can’t get the standard channels. I’m guessing she needs an aerial cable for that. Any ideas? I didn’t get the tv package because I thought the smart tv would be enough 🙈

@NDornotNDI totally agree, being a carer is a hugely skilled job, I could not do it for any amount of money never mind minimum wage.

Just finished my visit and treating myself to lunch at a cafe. Horrible visit- I cut a trip abroad short because I was told Dad needed someone to look after Mum. Turns out they cancelled the neighbour who was going to come because I said I would do it . DH said he got them both to agree to cleaner coming an additional day, now they say they don’t need it. I slightly lost it at DM and told her this was difficult for me, but she was supremely indifferent. It must be dementia- she wasn’t like that before. But I need to harden my heart to it.

@Newmum738
I've got a Smart TV and I still pay EE for a package.
The picture is much better and it's easier to operate.

So I finally got a call from the hospital saying my dad's care package is in place and will be discharged tomorrow morning.

I ring my mum to tell her the good news.

As I'm on the phone to mum I get call waiting; it's another nurse from hospital to say dad has tested positive for Covid.

So ain't that all just fucking fine and dandy!? ☹️

Oh dear @tobee my Dad is poorly at the moment with what we are sure is Covid that he caught from DH. It has knocked him for six. He has already had 5 days of rescue steroids and now started on his rescue antibiotics. I have had it too since last week and I am still unwell a week later.

@Newmum738 you either need internet or an aerial to get the Freeview channels on the smart TV.

https://www.freeview.co.uk/get-freeview/step-one

Surely the carers should be able to prompt her to put on her incontinence pads after she showers herself though even if she does her own personal care. If they have visiting carers then surely it isn't independent living anyway if they have to do everything themselves to be fully independent.

@TheBroonOneAndTheWhiteOnewhat ee package do you have?

Oh gosh. It's got Netflix included and absolutely no sport.

I’m kicking myself because Sky tried to upsell us for the tv package and I thought the WiFi & smart tv would be fine. She needs a tv that she can just turn on really. Can you still get those? 🙈

My Dad had BT TV with EE and broadband and found the signal for him patchy, the box would also turn itself off meaning he would phone us as he just couldn't get it back on. We switched to Sky and the signal has been better, plus the TV remote tells him what channel he is on, which helps as he is partially sighted. You can also remotely set it to to record things they like in advance via the Sky app and use voice control to tell the remote to change channel.

@Choconuttolatathat sounds good. Sky tries to upsell us the TV package and I said no because I thought what we had was enough. I do have a complaint in with them so I’m hoping I might be able to wangle the TV part of the deal back again 🙏🏼

Back in hospital here. DDad who has COPD caught a virus (probably Covid) last week and has been bad since, tried steroids and antibiotics at home, but was just getting worse. Was refusing to go in, but dropping his oxygen very low after walking around the house, so I went a round-a-bout way yesterday and took him to the GP who witnessed his oxygen levels after walking in and sent him in via urgent care at the hospital. He listens to them! The GP at urgent care was one from his GP surgery who he knows and she convinced him he needed to stay. Took all day but he is finally where he needs to be, on a ward and the respiratory team will review him.

I wouldn’t mind one of those myself 😅

@Choconuttolata how are things?

Adds TV breaking down to list of things to worry about.

How is DF @Choconuttolata?

New bedroom flooring is down and I’m pleased to say she is delighted with it. Awaiting delivery of furniture now. Once DB is back from his hols I’m going to present him with a list of jobs that need doing including the ones he was supposed to do and if he can’t commit then I’ll get someone in.

Ah well at least I don’t need to worry about the TV.
Last year I spent several hours with DM completing the attendance allowance form in the hope they might get a cleaner (they could easily afford it without but I thought it would make them
more likely to agree).
Instead DF commented on how they couldn’t seem to spend all their money, DM refused the cleaner and DF bought a state of the art TV from John Lewis .

Mum’s smart TV is the thing that has almost broken me. It’s so complicated, and she insists on having use of a recording device too, that when she presses the wrong button neither of us can sort it out. DH keeps being called upon and he’s losing his cool, neighbours have been ‘overused’. What is worse is that she doesn’t want to wait either. Last time she was about to call out emergency TV repair man before I rumbled her plan. Goodness knows how much that would have cost.

My parents changed TV about a year ago and it was the absolute bane of my life for about six months. First DH had to set it up and tune it in, or whatever you call that process now it’s all digital and on WiFi. Then DF complained for ages that he couldn’t get Freesat. They had Freeview, as far as I can tell they’re exactly the same. He also wanted to record programmes, he can’t get his head around them being on catch up services so for example they’ll record a BBC programme when they could watch it on iplayer later. Then the issue was DM couldn’t use the remote as the buttons were different. Somewhere along the line my Uncle, DF’s brother, took it upon himself to send him another brand new TV with a “simple” remote (it wasn’t). It was a generous gesture but totally unnecessary and we now had a spare TV. They were swapped around (my DH is very patient, at least when he’s there, he can have a swear and a glass of wine afterwards ). Eventually the “old” one went to a bedroom upstairs. Honest to God I was ready to throw the thing out the window.

Sorry for the rant. Underlying it are two things - frustration with them that they have to have the TV on from the moment they get up til last thing at night, and pity that they have been completely left behind by technology.

I dread anything of mum's needing replacing. We had to replace the washing machine recently but fortunately the cleaner does the laundry (though mum thinks she does it).
The telephone has driven me to distraction. Mum needs one in the living room, where she watches TV, and one in the dining room, where she "reads" the paper in the morning. As she refuses to wear hearing aids (I don't need them, nothing wrong with my hearing) she can't hear a phone if she isn't in the same room. Especially with the TV at full volume. The living room one died so we got a new set but they didn't say BT on them so she didn't recognise them as phones. Then BT put her area on the new digital system but we didn't know so didn't link her phone to the broadband hub and so it wasn't working. We only found out because I asked the carers to check when I tried all day to call her about an appointment. So, once we'd worked out why got it sorted. Only for her to switch off the broadband hub because she didn't like the blue light on it. Sorted it again hiding the hub.

DDad is back home now @SockFluffInTheBath doing a lot better thank you and I have already had contact with specialist pharmacist and respiratory team about changing some meds and a review appointment in a few weeks so all good.

Re: the TV @IoWfairy DDad also has no patience to wait if he presses the wrong button and it stops working. He will phone and say it is an emergency and expects you to be over there within 5 minutes to fix it even if we are in the middle of eating. He has no ability to see how unreasonable this is at all.

The issue is their capacity to learn how to operate new technology too isn't it @MotherOfCatBoy but now analogue has gone and all the new smart TV's are just so much more difficult to navigate due to apps and if you press the wrong button it isn't easy to get back to the Freeview channels. I am sure that with all this technology there must be some way that allow you to lock the screen so they can't click on the wrong app or something, but I haven't had time to figure it out yet.