Cockroach cafe - Spring in autumn

[GnomeDePlume]

A new thread for those of us dealing with elderly family members. All welcome.

A place to rant, discuss, vent, decompress. No judgement just solidarity.

@PermanentTemporary 💐. This period between the death and the funeral is a very strange time. It is a strange kind of limbo.

I found my sleep was very disrupted after DF died (I was with him at the end). I started sleepwalking and also waking up staring at DH as I was convinced he was DF. It lasted a few weeks.

@PermanentTemporary hope all the sadmin goes well. I found it stressful having to do it all when DF died but DB and DM were no use. At least I felt I was doing something as inactivity would have driven me mad.
I wanted to say thank you for all the sound advice you’ve given on these threads over the years. It’s been invaluable.

@MotherOfCatBoy hope the funeral went well.

DO not mention hearing aids. I am being driven up the wall by DM constantly breaking them, losing them, crying because she has done one or both, ringing me or pressing the community alarm button because she is panicking because she can’t hear and then denying that she’s ever had any problem with them.

@PermanentTemporary @MotherOfCatBoy wishing you both all the best navigating funerals, sadmin and collecting the threads of life back up after the stressful time leading up to a passing. It can all feel very strange and discombobulating.

@NDornotND I hope you finish the antibiotics soon so you can have that G&T!

DGM still in hospital, now with a blood clot on the lung that's being treated. May have been due to hospital being slow sorting her regular meds out, inc blood thinners, but I guess we may never know. She remains on oxygen and currently unable to manage without it, so for the time being won't be going anywhere. That isn't stopping the hospital tapping their watches impatiently though. At least this time she recognises she can't cope at home, but we are getting the hard guilt trip from the discharge team about how "people do better at home with family support" and could we not just arrange to stay with her "for a bit" while she gets back on her feet. The only way is not to give in I guess, because it just isn't possible with how far away we are, DF's state of health, and me working full time. I don't know how many times we have to go over it with them. Sigh.

And breathe!

This is a weird one but I don’t know who else to ask, sorry. DH looks at me as if I have two heads if I ask him.

i have very vivid dreams. I don’t believe in any woo around them, just my brain processing events. However, I do pay attention if I get recurrent dreams as it’s usually my subconscious trying to deal with something - most obvious being that if I am stressed I’ll dream about being back at uni taking an exam I haven’t revised for. So when I get that dream I take steps while awake to address whatever’s stressing me.

So, my new recurrent dream is I am back at my childhood home, and mum and dad are there and they are as they were about 10-15 years ago. I’m aware mum seems to have has made a temporary improvement in being able to talk to me and do things around the house and has discharged herself from her care home. I know she’ll have to go back to her care home when she deteriorates but what I’m really bothered about in the dream is whether they’ll hold her room for her or whether she’ll have to go on a waiting list.

I’m obviously subconsciously worrying about something to do with mum but I don’t know what or how to fix it. I’ve absolutely no concerns about the care home, they are fab and she’s in the right place. They’re not upsetting dreams but I wake up feeling vaguely frustrated that I should be doing something but I don’t know what.

Any ideas? I just thought as so many women here are at a similar stage of life and dealing with similar issues, there may be some collective insight I could tap into.

That is a very vivid and clear dream. There is an AI for everything these days it seems. The Dream Interpreter AI says:

"To dream of waiting represents a sense of anticipation or expectation in your waking life. Symbolizing patience and the ability to endure delays, this dream often reflects a period of transition or a forthcoming event that you are eagerly awaiting. It signifies the need to exercise patience and maintain a positive attitude during this time. The experience of waiting in a dream can also indicate a sense of frustration or impatience, revealing repressed desires for immediate gratification. This dream may urge you to reflect on your attitudes towards waiting and remind you to embrace the process rather than solely focusing on the outcome."

dreaminterpreter.ai/dream-dictionary/definition/waiting

I am an infrequent poster and may have changed my name. However I do follow the threads.

I am sorry for those of you who have lost parents recently. I agree it’s a difficult time between death and the funeral.

My Mum has dementia and her decline cognitively has been quite rapid. She is in a care home but I am not convinced it is right one for her long term.

I know no care home is 100% perfect but when the Nurse from the memory clinic hints other homes have different provisions that may suit my Mum and you also have concerns you do start wondering what is best.

My Mum’s current home is about 1.5 hours away so a 3 hour round trip. If a move is appropriate I would like her much nearer to me. I could then visit more than once a week. In an emergency I could get to her quickly.

The two dilemmas I have is whether moving NHS Trusts will take a long time to transfer records etc.and potentially impact continuity of NHS care. Does anyone have experience of this?

The second is whether the move itself would cause a further decline. With Mum’s rapid deterioration it’s a real possibility. I would ask for a Best Interests meeting before making any decision as what is best for Mum is my priority.

Thanks. I was going to dismiss AI because I use it at work and get annoyed with people only giving it half the information so they get half the answer, which I then have to correct. And that particular site would tell me planes symbolise travel and journeys, when in reality when the red arrows spontaneously do an air display over our house in my dreams, it means either DH or I are snoring and that’s how I’m processing the noise! (Happens a lot!)

however, I did type my dream our version of Co-pilot and it actually gave me some very insightful points. Basically it’s programming says that my worry about the care home letting her back in is me carrying the mental load and that I’ve struggled to get her to a stable situation and I’m anxious that any change could upset that stability. Interesting.

DF still in hospital, he seems to have an issue with the blood supply to his bowel. He has got to have another CT to look at the blood vessels in more detail, but he wouldn't be suitable for a large operation under anaesthetic, so we may be looking at just making him comfortable depending on the results.

Ah, fingers crossed for you. Dad got taken by ischaemic bowel after a couple of strokes. He wasn’t a candidate for surgery either. It was a matter of days for him but he was very comfortable and peaceful.

@PermanentTemporary
I kept on getting the urge to go back to the hospital where DM spent her last month - very strong urge to drive up and park as normal, and then hang out in the canteen/by the snack machines/in the chapel, even though there was no longer a patient to visit.

And my memories of her death were, and still are, fragmented.

I read "the body keeps the score", which is not, in fact, a chakra-woo book at all, but a very clear and accessible book about the neurology of trauma and memory and emotion.

It explained how normal memory formation is disrupted in stressful situations when the brain is flooded with (iirc) cortisol etc. And that's what leads to flashbacks, PTSD, fragmented memories etc.

In my case the flashbacks and return urges weren't upsetting. I thought the hospital had, by and large, ensured her last days were as ok as they could have been, and I knew her last hours and departure from life were ... Okay. I still feel fortunate.

"Educational" experience yesterday which will sound familiar to a lot of you.
Not an elderly relative, but a disabled friend who now cannot see or use half her body (her cognition is somewhat fragile too).
She decided- with less than a day's notice - to join a regular lunch meetup ... in the middle of a shopping centre (not in a cafe on a street), with absolutely no mobile phone signal.

Turned up, only half an hour late! pushed by the driver of a wheelchair taxi (so far, I am surprised but impressed!).
It then turns out that a different driver is booked to pick her up ... two hours later... When normally we have all decamped to a coffee shop with comfy chairs. However we all politely wait, on the increasingly hard cafe chairs, and of course no driver appears.

After 20 more minutes I extract the name of the taxi firm, and via the miracle of widely known WiFi passwords and WiFi calling on my phone, talk to them.
While she protests.
Loudly.
I confess I told her to be quiet (so I could hear them).

You all will be unsurprised to hear that the firm had failed to brief Driver Two to pick up the blind disabled wheelchair using customer from where Driver 1 had left her, and had just ... sat outside the shopping centre for ten minutes, phoned, failed to get through (because there is, no matter the network, no mobile signal in the shopping centre and never has been) and then fucked off to do a school run booking.

The replacement driver, I was told, was "10-15 minutes away".

"taxi driver time" though... :[

We ended up stationing people at both entrances to the shopping centre - it was bloody freezing - to ensure Driver 2b didn't get away!

Ok so this is not ideal, but the worst thing was her telling us not to do this and then doing the I-am-going-to-cry face, because... because...because...her friends were actively taking steps to avoid their blind disabled friend being abandoned on her own in a closed cafe or on the freezing street?

My OH, who is normally, how shall I put it, less brutally frank than me, but was left with her while the rest of us were out taxi spotting (the ones who didn't have other stuff they needed to get to), actually told her she was being unreasonable. Which is pretty strong for him.

In the end she was picked up an hour late.

I am particularly aggravated because it was all too close to when my elderly relative stuck her head in the sand about her tax affairs and then sat there weeping while I, you know, sorted it for her.

God forbid they go, "Oh dear, I have been a bit unwise, thank you so much for helping to fix this," eh!

Thanks for letting me vent.

I know she's been dealt a shit hand. I am still fond of her regardless. But...

Oh so hard when people don't want to accept help despite clearly needing it @MysterOfwomanY.

So after keeping DF nil by mouth all they decided not to do another CT scan in the end as he had two done yesterday. They got a vascular surgeon looked at the scan, he said the issue was chronic due to age (and history of smoking) related narrowing of the blood vessels not acute bowel ischaemia. So he is allowed to eat again and the medical team will carry on treating for a chest infection. 🎢

@NDornotND I meant to say, has your DM been tested for a UTI?
My DM, during her last month which she spent in hospital, suddenly became horribly delirious - it was ghastly to see her like that and her partner and I both thought she was dying there and then. The next day the new antibiotics kicked in, the delirium was gone.
I mean she was still dead a few weeks later, but when you've only got a few weeks left, in a way it matters more that they're not frightening, confused ones.

And we are back on the 🎢 DF had a CT scan last night which showed a bleed on his brain from his fall and the GP called me to say he also has a UTI from the sample given in last week which explains why he has been unwell, fell at home and is still more confused than usual.

I think I'm on the same ride @Choconuttolata . Up and down we go.

GP was supposed to visit DM in her CH yesterday but didnt turn up. It is possible GP 'visit' was just a phone call in the end. This is the GP for all residents not just DM.

We are hoping DM will be prescribed a light sedative so that she will allow personal care. DM is no longer continent, sometimes doubly, but will fight carers who are trying to sort her out.

Light sedation has been suggested for a few weeks now but GP wants blood tests done. But blood tests cant be done because DM wont cooperate. Catch 22. Oh, and just to add to the mess, blood tests were taken a couple of weeks ago but these were 'lost'.

@GnomeDePlume Oh my DM could do with a sedative for personal care as she isn’t fully continent and finds being assisted with toileting very anxiety inducing. She also has hs a variety of skin issues so needs daily creaming everywhere which she finds distressing. She has general anxiety now anyway - her fellow care home residents complain about her moaning and screaming which I understand isn’t pleasant for them. But staff can’t sedate her as then she is a falls risk as she is still mobile.

She is about to move to a nursing home so perhaps they will take a different approach on sedation.

@Choux that must be so hard for your DM. Loss of continence must be so hard for anyone but especially for someone who has awareness of what is going on.

I think even in a nursing home any medication has to be signed off by a doctor.

For my DM, she has little awareness but in the main her distress comes from fear in being rolled on the bed. The distress is so great at times that DB and I have both been asked by care staff if there has been a traumatic incident in the past. If there has then it happened in hospital.

Mum gets discharged tomorrow after 40 days in hospital.

When she went in I couldn’t see her ever walking or getting home again. She is very aware of what is going on and like @choux’smum is doubly incontinent.

Care package is in place with six visits a day, but poor thing her day will start at 6:30am and end at 9:30pm. We’ll just have to see how it goes to see what we need to supplement with.

I'm new here too. My situation is bloody hilarious, in a " if you don't laugh, you'll cry" kind of way.
My elderly DM (83) is becoming more and more frail, lots of infections on top of heart failure and COPD, also increasingly forgetful and confused. She and I still live in our home town but everyone else has buggered off so it all falls to me and my husband. As if that isn't enough we also have guardianship for our GD who is 6. Caring for the oldest and youngest members of the family means no life for us as there are always demands from somewhere. I dread hospital admissions as I get constant phone calls wanting me to take things for her (it's a 20 mile round trip from our house). Last time it was her smart black trousers that needed ironed first!. It's hard not to feel resentful at the hand life has dealt me and the people who caused it, right now I'm in the trenches trying to survive. Ps I like the name forbid thread.

Currently stuck at hospital with MIL waiting to be seen. Found her on the floor this morning and she'd obviously fallen straight on to her face looking at the blood and swelling. She's no idea what happened or how long she'd been there.

The paramedics were there in 10 minutes but they wanted her to be checked at the hospital and took her on ahead in the ambulance. She's complaining about the wait so obviously feeling better. We only went round because she was much more confused than usual yesterday.

Oh no @StillNiceCardigan another one on the hospital 🎢, get them to check her urine if she has been more confused. DF's confusion that led to his fall was caused by a UTI.

DF medically fit for discharge apparently so just heading to the hospital to try and find out what is going on.

We think its her new medication as its seems a coincidence that the dose has just gone up and she went "batty" for want of a better word and really shaky at walking.

Sending and to everyone struggling to juggle elderly care and their own lives.

I currently seem to be stuck in a frustrating loop of circular discussions with DM and B. A few months ago, DM grudgingly agreed to 'consider' a cleaner and a falls alarm so I got full details of options and suggested what I thought would work best for her but she/B didn't want her to commit to anything without B looking at it too. It was clear to me that this wouldn't solve the main issues but it could have been a way for her to get used to the idea of external help and perhaps accept more later. Predictably, before any of this got B's approval it became 'yesterday's problem' (to quote GnomeDePlume) as DM was refusing to even try to sleep if she was alone in her house.

She still says she won't sleep if she's on her own, but they have both decided that this all happened because she was trying to do too much and had a couple of falls (which I am now certain were imagined- always in the middle of the night and never so much as a bruise or scratch or any other signs of a fall). They now claim that DM couldn't go home if she wanted to because I have failed to organise the cleaner/fall alarm that I PROMISED to sort out MONTHS ago. I have sent them all the details for B to look at (as they requested). I've also pointed out that there's very little point organising either of these things for her house unless we know when she is planning to return. They won't discuss how/when she would return (other than DM telling me 'maybe' the Summer!). B remains adamant that the cleaner/falls alarm are the issues to fix and I should JUST SORT IT!!!!

I have no intention of organising them whilst she is not at home (or at least has a plan to be there) because I know that this would involve me having to drive for hours to be there to let people in (they won't agree to anyone going in alone). It would also probably be a total waste of money as I don't think it will change anything- and there's a fair chance it would come out of my pocket ('because it's easier that way') leaving me to foot the bill or be accused of dishonesty if I ask DM to repay me. So the cycle is continuing. I'm sure it's just an excuse to avoid facing up to what really needs discussing. Plus, if I'm going to be very cynical, a way to claim that DM not being at home is my fault so I should move her in with me.

@teaandbigsticks sounds like a diversionary tactic by your brother 'I'm doing everything while DSis doesnt even do this small thing'.

Urgh @teaandbigsticks that sounds awful. Sending 💐