Cockroach cafe - Spring to Summer 2026

[FiniteSagacity]

New thread for us all to gather and have tea, cake and something from the stronger shelf as needed.

Keeping the cockroach name in honour of those who have graduated the thread in spite of the suggested thread names!

Happy Birthday @rookiemere . You are not a horrible person. It is fine to let the CH handle things. You are allowed your own life. There will be plenty of residents who dont have family members who can come along for hospital trips.

@rookiemere you did exactly the right thing in having your day out and as you say, mark a start for a new phase of your life The whole point of paying the CH enormous sums of money is for them to care for your mum and do things like sit around with her in A&E waiting for an X-ray. It doesn’t sound like a life threatening incident and as @Zucker said, it’s not as if you’d be doing anything the care worker couldn’t do.

It does take a long time to adjust your thinking but you don’t have to centre your DPs any more, you and your DH are allowed to have your own lives.

Happy birthday @rookiemere! You did the right thing. I hope her arm is ok. have some cake

Happy Birthday @rookiemere. My mum also went to hospital alone this week for an X-ray. She had a query broken hip (unlikely as it was two days after a slip off a chair fall) and suddenly seemed to be in pain, was struggling to walk. She is 93 with advanced dementia so can’t explain anything about how she is feeling. I live 4 hours away so had to let her go alone. The care home didn’t have anyone free to go with her. The paramedic said he would speak to the dr and hopefully get the x ray done quickly but in the end it took a few hours - she needed sedating to get it done - and then patient transport had stopped and she was in A&E all night! By the time I realized she wasn’t coming home that night it was too late for me to get there.

She came back to the care home with no discharge notes (maybe you don’t get them if you have only has 24 hours in A&E) so we don’t know how she did overnight but she is ok now. It was probably diverticular disease not a fracture. An x ray is the only thing she would ever go to hospital for and I will be very reluctant to let her go again. It was really unlikely to have been a fracture this time as she walked on it just fine the day after the fall.

We can only do what we can do @rookiemere. We can’t stop having any life at all.

@Mumbles12 Quick! Go on a "big" holiday while you can!!

My visit today coincided with the DN dressing leg ulcers. For which ER now has morphine (she had 3ml while I was there, as I had to help draw it up) and Gabapentin too. Leg ulcers SUCK.

I encouraged the lunchtime carer, who looked plenty old enough to know how to, to cook an omelette for her. ER had pointed (slightly performatively) at the meal plan I drew up, blithely ignoring the fact that it was from WEEKS ago and she had not, since, bought what was on it. FFS.

Not sure whether it's the morphine dulling her cognition, or age, or just not being up to as much without her late husband chivvying. Who knows.

I am v much in "drop the rope" mode ATM, so I have dropped the meal plan crap, and if she doesn't order food, well she has biscuits, she won't starve, and the experience may be motivational.
I didn't ask about the Stannah stuff, I am not going to get involved with her somehow getting rid of one of her email addresses , and I just "mmh hmm"'d at her telling me she had ordered some more protein drink bottles.

We took her out (thanks to my OH getting her & wheelchair up and down the garden steps 💪) in the sun and got her an ice-cream. Chucked out some obviously mouldy food from the fridge.

There were moments where I was pretty exasperated, but managed to scream silently behind her so she didn't see!

She gave us some chocolate for Easter, a nice thought. Luckily for my spare tyres, I didn't like it, so OH gets it all 😎

She didn't say anything today about changing care company either and I didn't ask.

Hopefully if the nieblings have to keep an eye on me in my old age, I will be an easier prospect!

Happy birthday @rookiemere. Other posters are right, you being there wouldn't make any difference.

Thank you everyone. We did go out for dinner @TheBroonOneAndTheWhiteOne as arranged with DH, DS and his girlfriend. Thankfully I had a hankering for Chinese food so we had already arranged to go to the non posh Chinese buffet as I don’t think I would have been up to dressing up and lots of conversation.

You’re all right of course, that is what they are paying the care home large sums of money for ( although they may not see it that way) and if it had been something major or life threatening then I would have been there, but it’s hard to get over the guilt.

I have been going through all their old photos today and feeling sad when I see the vibrant people they used to be, although DF is having quite a renaissance in the care home and was gleefully telling the staff as they were trying to assess DM, that he has a doctorate in psychology ( he doesn’t). Hopefully DM is back by Wednesday as that’s when they are getting the assessment to get some of the care paid for and she looks much more deserving than DF these days.

@rookiemere Happy Birthday. I hope you enjoyed some of it. Try to remember that this is exactly why your DM moved to the care home- so that professional carers are there to deal with all these things and you don't have to cancel your life

@rookiemere as you’re years in, I’m pretty confident that you’ve already had some other challenging birthdays and you darn well deserve to enjoy one. Happy Birthday 💐

Thanks all for talking me down from the brink.

Call from care home, DM does indeed have a fracture and got back to the care home at 2am - she must be so exhausted. I will visit this afternoon. I was going to say it feels like another nail on her coffin, but the sad thing is she’ll just continue on with even more suffering. She had been complaining her eyesight was getting worse so I had bought her a new 7x magnifier, but I doubt she will be able to lift it now. She’s already on quite strong painkillers so they seem unable to give her more, so she will be in pain, but at least she is back in the care home.

@rookiemere That sounds tough, but really does show that the care home is the right place for her, with people on hand to help when she needs it.

@GnomeDePlume Just wanted to say I'm thinking of you and hoping things are peaceful for you and your DM.

I wondered if anyone here has much experience of LPA? I have paperwork ready for Mum to sign to make me finance LPA, as she asked me to do and which B agreed was the best thing to do. B is now saying that he should have it, as he is with Mum more and has started to suggest his family moving in with Mum. Which would make sense in most families but whenever he's been asked to deal with anything with any admin element he has made a mess of it or put it off for months and I've had to do it, so currently I deal with all mum's finances and life admin/medical appointments etc. I think what he's looking for is to have LPA so he feels in control but have me to anything time consuming, which would obviously be unworkable. Mum has told me she wants me to keep doing everything but I think she feels she can't say no to B. I am thinking the best move would be to try to get LPA asap but have a solicitor to speak to mum and witness it etc. The last think I want is to be LPA but have everything challenged but equally I am certain that B would not deal with things properly if he was LPA. I really don't know what to do for the best.

@bigdogpaws get the paperwork you already have for you submitted asap. If your B wants also to be on there, then his first step is to work out what he needs to do to amend this one once it’s approved and issued. If he’s no good at paperwork then he’ll fall at this first hurdle.

Clear and very insightful answer.

You can have joint and several LPA which is what DB and I have for DM. It means either of us can act independently. In reality that means I do everything.

Another fall for DM this morning. The carer found her on the bedroom floor. No idea how long she’d been there. We managed to lift her between us which was just as well as DB didn’t answer his phone again. The third emergency in under two weeks and every time he has not answered his phone. I phoned SIL and was very abrupt.

District nurses are due so they will check her over but she didn’t seem hurt.

I was on my way out of the door to my volunteering stint which I adore and had been looking forward to all weekend so gutted to miss it on such a beautiful day.

Aw sorry @BestIsWest it’s horrible when you miss something that you’re looking forward to, particularly when it’s something that adds structure to your life.

"You can have joint and several LPA which is what DB and I have for DM. It means either of us can act independently. In reality that means I do everything."

Exactly the same here, with Mum and Dad each listed for each other too. So last year when Mum and Dad started to struggle and asked us to start using them, I did all the legwork (they were lodged with a solicitor, we had to get Mum and Dad to write to their solicitor giving consent as they still had capacity, plus I had to send in two forms of ID for each of them and me) and pay for each certified copy - one of each LPA for me and DB = 8 copies = about £100, and he bloody lost his. I also did all the setting it up online which is in several steps with waiting for passcodes to come by post etc. 18 months later he still hasn't done that either.

So there is a warning there, even if the LPAs are registered there are various steps before you can start using them online, it's not instant. Then some organisations take several weeks to accept them.

Bit late now, but is it possible to be as unavailable as your DB? What would have happened if the carer had to ring an ambulance instead - would it precipitate different care decisions?

Sorry you missed your volunteering day. Hope you found something nice to do instead.

@funnelfan DH has been saying the same thing. I’m thinking he’s right.

I know if she went into full time care the burden of sorting which home, sorting the finance, clearing and selling the house would all fall to me and I don’t think I can do it.

I’d encourage you to at least think about it, because those are tasks that are done when they are done. The way it’s headed you’ll end up have to sort a care home under time pressure due to discharge from hospital anyway. Which is considerably more stressful, believe me! Any house clearance etc can be done to your timescale not anyone else’s. I’m still doing mums 15 months after she moved into her CH - I live 100 miles away and DB is abroad.

I will have to think about it I know. She will be an absolute nightmare. She made my life hell when she was in hospital last year for two months.

Did your mother give your brother the same hell when she was in hospital?@BestIsWest It may be time to enact some of the same strategies your brother uses to disengage from the shenanigans.

My situation at the moment my father seems to be getting on ok in the nursing home. It feels like at any moment the other shoe will drop and we'll be rushed headlong into crisis mode. He did something to his leg a few weeks ago that needed an xray and alothough the home were willing to send a carer along with him, my mother insisted we (me) could collect him and bring him instead. I have a theory she enjoys the misery. It won't happen again. I think I was railroaded into it without realising what was happening. I'm not enjoying this parent role switch that's happened so slowly you don't see it coming.

To be fair, she did give him the same hell. She kept writing letters saying she was being held prisoner, crying, packing her case, getting staff to phone and generally being quite nasty. I do need to disengage but I also care about her.

What experiences do people have of financial LPA where the attorney can act immediately (rather than waiting for capacity to go)... specifically, using them with banks? Halifax would be one of the institutions and IME can be error prone - I'm in two minds about whether to do anything now, as it would be a real PITA if they screwed up and removed ER's access to her own money 😬

@BestIsWest I'd just get yourself sorted out as the LPA sharpish. Don't worry about flakey brother.
After all, there's nothing stopping your DM from changing that any time she wants.
It's sensible to keep records of what you do as attorney anyway - in your case, time it all 😈 so if DB is interested you can "talk him through what it will involve" .

I am added to my parents bank accounts and when I registered the LPA there was the option for either me to take over entirely or for them to continue to have access too which is what we did. This was Lloyds, Halifax are part of the same group. So I have my own debit card for each of their current accounts to do bits of shopping for them and can perform other actions through online banking such as payments and transfers. They still get paper statements and never did do online banking. But I can't access their accounts on the app only the browser, so can't pay in cheques for them unless I go to a branch (DMum can still manage this by herself and does have a branch locally, I don't).

Thanks for your advice re LPA everyone. Unfortunately I don't feel able to have joint and several LPA with B- I know that there is a duty to keep records of everything and restrictions on how mum's money could be spent and I don't trust B to do it properly. My work involves dealing with charity/trust finances so I can't afford to be linked to any suggestion of mishandling funds (eg if records were requested and we didn't have them). My plan is to send B some documents about the responsibilities and record keeping duties of LPA to help him decide whether he wants to do it. Then, as PP suggested, get the LPA asap and if he changes his mind he can work out how to change it. I know that Mum always said I should handle her money if she couldn't. B had previously said he was happy for me to be finance LPA (in fact he almost insisted on it) and I can't help wondering if he's read (as I have on the government website) that allowing someone to live in mum's house a below market rent would be a gift that an LPA isn't allowed to give. I know there are ways round it (probably involving getting a court agreement) if everyone decided that was in mum's best interests (eg to care for her) but I suspect his thinking is that if he is LPA he can just do it and (to coin his most used phrase) 'it will be OK, who's going to care'.