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!

@bigdogpaws my understanding is that the testing is far more sophisticated than asking who the prime minister is (what was the GP thinking!). GP Assessment of Cognition. They will be testing long and short term memory, attention span, time and space.

There should also be blood tests to check for other things which can cause similar looking cognition issues. Have those already happened?

All of a sudden I’ve graduated as our Dad passed away. We think he wanted to go as refusing tablets, eating and drinking very little. It still felt a bit of a shock as he was still able to stubbornly tell us to stop fussing.

Thank you all for all the support and advice, and the solidarité through what have been tough years 🍷

@FiniteSagacity I hope it was peaceful in the end. 💐

@FiniteSagacity sending best wishes

Thank you @GnomeDePlume peaceful and on his terms. I hope things are peaceful when the time comes for you too.

M’y condolences @FiniteSagacity
That sounds reasonably good, as exits go.

@FiniteSagacity 💐

@FiniteSagacity sorry for your loss, a dignified end on his terms sounds as good as we all might hope for 💐

Condolences @FiniteSagacity 💐

So sorry @FiniteSagacity

@FiniteSagacity so sorry. May his memory be a blessing.

@FiniteSagacity I’m so sorry 💐 I’m
glad he was peaceful. Take care of yourselves.

@FiniteSagacity so sorry for your loss and relieved to hear he went peacefully 💐

@FiniteSagacity Condolences, and wishing you strength for the days ahead.

@FiniteSagacity condolences 💐

Sorry for your loss @FiniteSagacity. I like that he was still able to tell you off even so near his end. Remember we are here to support for what comes next too. 💐

@FiniteSagacity sending

@GnomeDePlume Thanks, that's good to hear. When we went to the GP I was expecting a more detailed assessment as we specifically booked to see her about concerns over cognitive ability. The GP questions didn't really touch on what is concerning about mum's abilities. For example, she was asked if she knew roughly what time it was. Of course she did- she had been asking me what time the appointment was every day for weeks and I'd been reminding her all morning to encourage her to get ready. Which of course is the problem- mum can look at a clock and name the time, or remember an appointment time, but if I say 'be ready to leave at 11am' I can guarantee if left to her own devices she will still be in her pyjamas and won't have been to the loo/brushed her teeth/got her bag together etc. She will then be genuinely shocked if I tell her this means we will be late and/or don't have time for a cup of tea before we leave, and will really not understand how this has happened. She was previously a stickler for being on time so this is a big change. Similarly if she calls me at 3am I have to explain to her why this is not a good time for a chat- she knows what time the clock says and that this the middle of the night but can't seem to understand why if she's awake other people aren't (or don't want to be).

At least the GP did refer us for further assessment though. Mum's had blood tests and CT scans already.

[As a side note, just noticed I have once again failed to log in to this new thread using the same username as the last thread. Posters may remember me a woman with a deluded brother who is convinced mum will be fine soon]

@GnomeDePlume yes, I have said it is non negotiable, if she's determined to return home, this is the arrangement. Anything less will risk her immediate safety and in the slightly longer term, her health.

The problem is, I say it and DF says he'll back me up but then gives in.

@unsync @FiniteSagacity condolences.

Welp I disgraced myself today by more or less shouting at her. However, this seems to have cleared the air a bit.

I'm trying to get more protein into her in the hope of helping the bloody horrible leg ulcers to heal. A week of protein drinks and one leg is now out of the dressings. I'm leaving it up to her as to whether she gets herself more of them, but have done a meal plan for the next week.
This meant lots of looking up nutritional values and writing "with grated cheese on top" quite a few times. An appropriate online order has been put in, a day by day menu written out. And yet again I have nagged her to engage Fabulous Cook Carer to batch-cook for her.

Trouble with leg ulcers. The people treating them have very rarely suffered from them. So they blithely say "oh the DN will put a compression stocking on that leg". They're not there when it hurts so much at 1am (and is too tight to be got off) that the patient rings 111 in agony and desperation.

@bigdogpaws sadly I think we have more than one poster with deluded DBs on this thread! I hope the memory assessment goes well.

I haven't been on this thread for a while, I've been catching up on everyone's news. I am very sorry for your losses both @FiniteSagacity and @unsync.

My Mum seems to be doing ok. She is becoming more quiet and less passive aggressive/martyrish which I suspect is a sign of decline but tbh is much easier to cope with. We are also managing to get her to take her meds some of the time, maybe five days out of seven, but she's not using the glaucoma eye drops at all because there's no-one there to remind her at bedtime.

I wrote this in the previous thread that got full and closed.

My mother is in her 70s and I have years of observations. There's stuff that is just not right or normal. There's something wrong but it's not a typical memory loss. It's behavioural and emotional issues, poor comprehension, poor executive functioning, OCD, spatial awareness issues. There is something seriously wrong.
I am the only one at home seeing this. All my siblings live abroad. She can act in front of them on the rare occasion they do fly home.
I am dealing with a situation. Basically a half sibling built a garage on another siblings plot of land without permission. We knew for a few weeks. Since then my mother has built a tremendous level of hate and anger towards that lad who is a son to her ex husband.
She is like a tempered tantrumed toddler on steroids when talking about him.
I don't talk about him or raise the subject. She was angry a few weeks ago and it faded from her mind and her anger has renewed yet again about him and his illegal build.
My siblings abroad wants me to go to his land and take more pictures of the illegal garage. This isn't an issue for me.
My mother is someone who is like she's on steroids. There was torrential rain on Sunday and and she wanted me to do the task last Sunday but I don't own a car. It made no sense walking a few miles in torrential rain.
She wanted me to do take pictures this morning and I was going to do that but my partner led me astray for a few hours this morning and I just didn't get around to doing it.
I think the weather is due to be dry tomorrow morning. My mother is now insisting that she comes with me. She is likely trying to get a hold of my half brother who build the garage. She just wants to launch an attack at him a d order him to take it down. Don't bother eating lunch - TAKE IT DOWN NOW AND DONT SLEEP OR EAT OR DO ANYTHING ELSE UNTIL IT IS DOWN.
He knows what he did is wrong and I think he is just trying to get some time out of the land. I think.
I am in a place where I feel like I need to keep them separate because she won't stop until that man is hanging from a piece of rope. No joke.
Her anger and response is just not appropriate to the situation that is there.
So what will I do?
Do I entertain my mother and go to the plot of land tomorrow morning and take pictures. There really isn't any need for her to go. She just wants to get angry and then stay angry. I won't be able to listen to her.
Or will I plan my morning tomorrow morning to get up at the crack of dawn, get ready and leave for an very early morning walk before she gets up out of bed and do it then? She doesn't even know how to use any form of technology or phones or cameras. There's no need for her to come to supervise me taking pictures. She just wants to put herself into a position to become RAGEFUL. If I was to leave for about 8 am. I could get home for about 10 am and it will all be done and my ears and head would be saved from a nerve ending loop of hate.

Does anyone know how I can handle this for tomorrow morning:

The option is to entertain my mother's request and go for a walk with her to my brother's land to view an illegal shed but be on the receeiving end of someone who can't regulate her emotions and be on the receiving end of her vitriol for hours. There's also a risk of her meeting my half brother and her dishing out trash and she won't stop until he bulldozes the whole lot that very minute she wants.

Or get up earlier than usual and try and avoid that? Then go back home later in the morning with the pictures that I am supposed to have and claim I wasn't able to sleep early in the morning so I got up early and went for a walk to the beach and then stopped at my brothers field for the pictures.

I came home from work this evening and there was no conversation from my mother and at about 9pm she just got up from her kitchen chair and left the room. She went to bed without talking to me it's so odd.

Yesterday she broke out in an odd intense spell of OCD moving furniture around to a poor location in the home right behind the front door so you can't open it fully. I didn't crititise what she did by the way. This along with some intense anger directed at my half sibling (born to my brother).

I really think she is experiencing a UTI now.

So far to date, the pattern is an increase in odd behaviours and angers and she just eventually realised there is something wrong herself and she goes to the doctor.

I did suspect she has a UTI.

I tried going to the pharmacy before for a antibiotics but they won't prescribe them to me because it's not for me. They need to speak to the person themselves.

I am not able to be open and honest with my mother and say I think she might have a UTI, she will only just be angered.

I remember an incident about two years ago, she was behaving more oddly and she was more angered. Eventually she came to me and asked me for a supplement for a UTI. I was trying to encourage her to go to her doctor or pharmacist and she was refusing to and she was just so angry and bitter.

Eventually I had to go to the doctor for myself and I came home swinging a bag from the pharmacy and talking highly about the lovely lady doctors in the local GP surgery and how good they are. Which prompted her to make her own gp appointment. And it was like reverse psychololgy.

@TrayofRoses
Move out.
Your mother is causing you a lot of distress and is adding nothing positive to your life.
I'm sorry you're dealing with this. It sounds terribly difficult for you.

DM had a good day yesterday.

By this I mean that she mostly slept, ate about 50% of what was offered to her and was washed and changed.