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.

@GnomeDePlume yes DF has always been pretty selfish. It’s usually been masked by DM but unfortunately she can’t do that anymore.

Breaking news he has agreed to go in because the hospital refused to discharge him home alone and the care home persuaded him.

Thank the lord.

After 3 episodes of "I want to go into a care home can you sort it" followed by "I manage perfectly fine why are you trying to force me into a care home" plus goldenballs criticising every recommendation I am now refusing to respond on the matter. When it's finally necessary he can sort seeing as he knows more about the individual homes and their policies without speaking/visiting to them than I do after visiting and discussing mum's needs.

^ this is wise

Mum now isn't being discharged as she hasn't been to the loo since Saturday 🤷‍♀️
Surely it would be easier to just do the bloody tests whilst she's still in??

@Raven08 you would have thought so

Nope, apparently now she is being discharged!
🙄

@GnomeDePlume I totally understand why you feel grumpy and resentful. As I've mentioned before, my brother also refuses to acknowledge the reality of mum's decline. I can understand him feeling more lost about the idea of losing mum than I do, as our parents were always the centre of his life (he has a partner but it seems to be a rather odd relationship, and he was always the golden child). I think you mentioned before that your brother was in a similar situation. I can see that this might explain why they find the situation really difficult but I can't understand how grown men can pretend to themselves that it's not happening. Similarly I can't understand why, even if somehow it was possible to fight off every physical illness, they would want to keep someone they love alive and just existing in this way indefinitely.

@GnomeDePlume my friend is in a similar position as you with her DM, it’s agonising and she said she wishes it was over. I am so sorry for you ( now that I have hopefully stopped feeling sorry for myself).

Ah...male siblings!
The crappy gift that keeps on giving!
My golden balls brother is utterly, utterly useless. A 50 year old man child.
He had what I will generously term a "very protracted adolescence" at home. My mother made every excuse under the sun for his behaviours, even stealing from me 😕
My sister was a moody horror and, again, allowances were made, even when she physically attacked me (I still have the scar..)
She is a nasty person, but unlike my brother, is capable, she'd just rather not bother.
I do feel like I've thrown mum to the wolves tbh, but actually, she'll be thrilled that my brother is around more.
My sister will just cry wolf and rarely turn up 🤷‍♀️
I feel oddly at peace with it all.
She'll recover some semblance of condition, or she won't.
She'll accept carers, or she won't.
She'll have the tests, or she won't.
I can't control any of that.
And thats ok.

Ooof. DF’s nursing home has had to lock down because of a D&V bug. I knew this could happen but it is worrying, awful for staff and residents. DF hasn’t got it (yet) but he is so frail it’s a worry. And they are probably all being kept in their rooms.

Oh, that's a worry 😟
I think I caught the megacold™️ from mums last hospital admission 😷

@Raven08 I think your stance is the right one. At some point you have to step back if only for your own sanity.

Some of my resentment is aimed at my DM. She knew that DB was too reliant on her emotionally but didnt want to push him to grow up and be independent of her to fend off her own loneliness. Now we are where we are.

DB is going to be desperately lonely when DM finally goes. DM will have got what she wanted, company but it is DB who will have to pay for it with his own loneliness.

@GnomeDePlume
That's really sad 😕
If mum had been able to stay at the house, I'm sure my brother would have left his dreadful wife and moved back in by now...
Mum would have loved that.
But...her mobility declined rapidly and she needed ground floor accommodation.
Her medical issues are all self inflicted.
She smoked for decades. Didn't eat the diet she was advised, didn't exercise 🤷‍♀️
My sympathy is therefore rather limited.

DH went up to DPs with some suitcases to help them pack for the care home.

DM filled all three with packs of Tena pads (thankfully not used) so I will go up at the weekend and add some clothes. She also harangued DH about some non essential paperwork for an hour.

Bless her, she seemed totally on the ball last weekend and was very clear about her desire for both of them to go into a care home. I think the effort has been too much for her.

DH said DF was quite up for the care home now fingers crossed that remains as I just paid the huge deposit from their account.

Done the fortnightly visit.
Was there while the DN dressed her leg, which looks utter agony, not surprised they've now given her some morphine to take beforehand. (I was very careful washing my hands after helping with this). Can Larry Ellison get leg ulcers please - I have nothing against him but I bet he could find a treatment breakthrough.

I have ordered some protein shakes and will be nagging reminding her to drink them and to walk around as much as she can.

I got her to toddle round the kitchen and inspect her own supplies. Now, the under counter freezer she can't look in, okay, but the rest she can. She can and does engage gardeners, plumbers, workmen etc but seems to have more inertia when it comes to her groceries.
She could keep track of what she's ordered, she could check the fridge, she could engage one of the carers to meal plan and batch cook for her. But doesn't.
Partly I think she's never been all that interested in food, partly I suspect her husband did most of that sort of thing because of her arthritis.

I cheered her up by cat videos and talking about a possible trip up north to see her old buddies. She got quite enthusiastic, which was a great triumph.
Big purple DNACPR form in clear view on the hall table. Wise woman. She does NOT want someone pissing about with her so she can live an extra two weeks with broken ribs.

@MysterOfwomanY
I've reminded mum to try the selection of drinks the dietician sent...I suspect she won't bother 🤷‍♀️

Well, the bloody rollercoaster continues.

DGM fell while leaving the bathroom, having decided to go and use it at 5am to shower and dress to evade the nurses. She was on the floor for an hour because she'd taken her falls pendant off. And then somehow this was all the staff's fault. She had to be talked down from discharging herself.

So now the CH have decided she's fine, she has next to zero care needs and she only needs to stay there 2 weeks and then she can go home with a care package, that may or may not be in place before discharge. They sent one patient home by herself without telling her NOK she was being discharged as requested. No care package arranged, they said it would start "in the next few days". Needless to say, I'll be having words with the care coordinator next week and making it very clear if they send her home alone and don't tell us, with no care in place, the hounds of hell are coming to visit.

I'm going for the weekend with DH, the boys are staying home because DS1 is working and DS2 has a sports event. DF is having a week off, which he does need, but christ only knows what fresh hell next week will bring.

As for any hope of getting her into residential care, that's gone. DGM has decided she hates all care homes and all care home staff and she's going home and that's that. And so the rollercoaster begins again. I'll probably lose DF before her at this rate, he's cracking under the stress, but this woman could survive nuclear Armageddon!

I am at the stage where I am the only one at home seeing serious changes with my mother who is in her early 70s. It's not just one or two things over a few weeks. It's years of unbelievably odd and stressful behaviours and emotional outbursts.

Nobody understands.

I think I know in my heart and soul this is dementia but it's just not diagnosised. There is too many things happening that is just not right.

One of the hardest things is that I am at the brunt end of so much crap. I also work in care but not in elder care so I don't have experience in dementia. I do have experience with autism. I see such a cross of in a few behaviours and outbursts between autism and dementia. So there's definitely a neurological condition happening.

One of the worst things is going to work and having to put on a smile no matter the crap that I could be faced with at home. There's no end to any of this regarding care. My mother doesn't require assistance with daily living tasks. Just some things around executive functioning. It so so so hard. Getting up at the crack of dawn to put on a laundry wash before my mother gets up out of bed or she might burst into rage if she sees me. Otherwise damp towels could be lieing around the house for days and she wants to manage the laundry. She has a horrible habit of loading the drum and just not starting a wash for days. So I have to micro manage so much.

Then she's putting away stuff that is damp or just piling them up. Sometimes I have to micro manage so much at night time too. I remember one night having to stay up late to manage a situation after she went to bed. The situation was that she decided to pull the tumble dryer out from it's location and use an extension lead for the tumble dryer. It made no sense and it was so dangerous. I had go in under the counter to plug out the extension lead and then put the dryer back and hide the extension lead then stay up brainstorming what to say in the morning when she gets up and sees I undid her work and waiting for the rage. The morning came and she didn't even notice.

I just can't cope any more. With working in care and having to micro manage so much at home. I think if I had another job of anything like maybe factory work, it would be some sort of a break from other people's neurogical diseases and bullshit.

@TrayofRoses I'm sorry things are so hard with your mum, but please don't be ableist about autistic people. I'm autistic, as are some others who post here. We are not neurologically diseased, thanks. If you can't cope with working in care and are burnt out, it would indeed be better for those you care for if you did get a different job.

@TrayofRoses oh that sounds so hard. No advice to give, but sympathies

Autism isn't a neurological disease @TrayofRoses
You ought to know that if you work with people who are diagnosed with it.

I'm autistic and I wasn't impressed with your post.

Be prepared for them to ignore you @CrazyGoatLady.
DM was in for months and was waiting for a care package to be arranged for at least four weeks with me asking daily for an update. As I was getting dressed to go to my best friend’s husbands funeral one morning I got a phone call to say ‘Dm is on the ambulance.’

What ambulance? Where’s she going? Home!

No notice, discharged to a cold house with no food. And the house was only 10 mins from the hospital so by the time I got there she was outside the house in a wheelchair with the ambulance driver.

Very luckily I managed to get hold of DB who had to leave work so I could go to the funeral. To be fair, Social services came through with the care package the same day so we were lucky in that respect.

I think you've done the only sensible thing by taking a step back, but I know it's not easy. If nothing else a break from being the default carer will give you some space to decide what (if any) involvement you are willing to have going forward and hopefully will mean that your mum will have to at least consider other solutions.
I'm having to do something similar. My mum and brother refuse to engage in any discussion about what sensible care options but have a long list of things that they deem NOT acceptable. This includes no paid carers in her home (unless basically free, guaranteed the same person each day and guaranteed to be at a time that suits her which may change daily), no assisted living/residential care, never being left alone between 7pm and sunrise, no changes to her routine/house to make it easier for her to manage alone or for someone to stay with her comfortably etc. Brother encourages all of these but also has a list of things he considers unacceptable to ask him to do including early mornings, late nights, any admin/phone calls, cleaning, laundry, being away from home overnight or giving up his mancave to create a spare bedroom in his own house. Which means it's clear that the only possible solution that would be acceptable to them is me staying with mum every night or moving her in with me and becoming her default carer. I've been very open about the fact I'm not prepared to do that but their attitude seems to be that if they refuse all other options I will have to. Unfortunately it seems that the fact I have dropped everything to deal with past crises (most of which could have been avoided if they were a bit more realistic) has backed up this view. So now I'm visiting regularly, dealing with medical appointments/life admin etc but refusing to go running when they complain that it's all getting too much. I can't help feeling guilty but I think this is the only way either of them will ever accept that external help is needed and that we have to look at mum's 'needs' rather than 'wants'.

"Neurological disease"!?
Ffs 🙄

@teaandbigsticks
Wowsers 😲
And I thought my mum and siblings were difficult!
Hold your boundaries...I know its hard x