Has dealing with elderly parents made you plan for old age?

[myislandhome]

We have just started the process of trying to place MIL in a nursing home, after deciding she is no longer safe at home. She has been difficult (as you would be), although she has resisted even at the stage where we were trying to make her home safer. Massive stigma/resistance about a bed downstairs or having cares in etc

This has really made me think about a few things

1. How it's so different to when her and FIL's parents were old, they just got placed in any old nursing home and that was it- you go where you get. Now we have done about 20 visits, are on waiting lists etc etc. But that's just an aside. Also, why didn't they think about this for themselves when they put their own parents in care and went through all that??
2. How I don't want this to be an issue for my kids when I get older

Although I am a fit and healthy 60 I've been thinking about this; how we will prepare ourselves for the future so our own kids don't have the constant fear and guilt that we will be at risk at home and not knowing when the "right time" is (sometimes until it's too late).

We live in a regular 3 bedroom semi and I would have absolutely no issue with putting a bedroom downstairs should the time come and if stairs are a danger (2 reception rooms helps). We have a downstairs loo but are considering putting in some kind of shower facility (not care home style, a nice one but that could work for us later as well).

I guess we are lucky that we have the internet (in laws in their 90s have never used it) and can order groceries etc.

I'd also consider downsized retirement living, although I totally understand people who want to stay in their own family homes. MIL has done this but it's like all of a sudden it's become too late to make her safe (she declined very quickly).

I do realise it would be a different kettle of fish if someone had dementia, I'm just talking about old age and frailty.

Anyway, I'm rambling but I guess I'm asking if the experiences everyone is having with elderly parents has made them consider their own futures and if you have started to make any contingency plans?

Yes, definitely. I'm just talking about the ones I've actually seen (and the one MIL is going to).

DF was very anti a care home, but ironically is really enjoying it now, plus regular visits from us where we can go for walks with him and take him out for lunch rather than fire fighting all the issues at their house with an hour’s drive on each side.

Sadly waiting for DF to be ready means the move is too late for DM. Because of her dementia she is very angry with everything and everyone and it’s painful to be around. Had they gone there six months earlier, I think she would have settled.

sittingonabeach

My dad went in for initially, a month's respite after coming out of hospital, a week after he went in he asked if he could stay there permanently. He had been getting frailer and had several falls, luckily, not serious ones but he really liked being in there. He was coping at home but becoming rather more vulnerable.

It was one of the more expensive ones locally but it was spotless, lovely rooms with en suite shower facilities, nice dining room/lounge area with big screen TV, very nice gardens full of plants and shrubs and seating to enjoy in good weather, loads of activities, trips out and he made friends too. The staff were all nice and dad was quite a favourite with several of them due to his nature.

Sometimes living at home on your own can be far lonelier and more dangerous if you are very frail and rarely see anyone but residential care can make a real difference to someone and in dad's case, he really thrived in there.

You don't have to make your life smaller in your 50s. You just need to acknowledge that people get older - including yourself - and things may change when you are older. And then take that into account when making decisions. Making a note of your financial affairs/belongings/wills/ and making sure that isn't in a box with newspaper clippings and old recipes doesn't make your life small. Adding grab bars to your bathroom or converting a bath to a walk in shower before you need to doesn't either.

There is a lot of magical thinking around getting older - that won't happen to me or I'll head to Geneva or I won't expect my children to do anything. The reality is someone will have to do it and I have no idea why anyone would want to make it harder for their children or whoever has to do it and not easier.

Dh is spending hours sorting our his mother's affairs. He isn't retired and doesn't enjoy doing it but he has to do it. The alternative is she doesn't have enough cash to stay in the very nice nursing home near her family. What child is going to let that happen?

sadly MIL has VERY limited hearing (pretty much none) and hates social stuff so I'm not sure she will be as happy as some people. We will see, and hope.

@myislandhomeyour DMIL may never grow to love the care home, but at least she is safe and yourself and your DH can sleep at night, and that is in itself a good outcome.

Yes. My guiding rules: get yourself in best financial position you can, lift weights, if you plan to move (sell/ buy) do this before 70. Doing it later can become overwhelming to the point of not being possible. Finally, try to really appreciate your health while you have it.

I completely agree. I see so many people on here who's only plan for old age is a) go to dignitas b) take matters into their own hands or c) that they've instructed their children to just dump them in a care home and completely forget about them as they don't want to their children to have any stress whatsoever.

I know many family relationships are complex and some people will have very good reasons for not seeing their older parents or being involved so I am not discussing them here. However it is easy to make statements like the ones above when being elderly and needing care is not on the horizon.

But when reality hits or they find themselves older, it is a very different place. Places like dignitas and care homes have very strict eligibility criteria. You can't just go to dignitas because you don't want to be a burden to your family and don't want to be old. You can't just admit yourself into a care home if there's nothing wrong with you.

And for many cognitive decline is something that happens gradually. A lot of people aren't aware it's happening, they may think they are just a bit forgetful and find ways to adapt and the decline also happens. By the time many people get their diagnosis of dementia, they are at a stage of people needing to make their decisions for them.

None of us want to be burdens to our children or have them be our carers and most of us to what we can to try and mitigate the stress as much as possible. But most children are deeply bonded and attached to their parents and will inevitably be involved when we are elderly some way or another. It's a fact of family life. And life is underpredictable and many of us can have a fall or stroke or sudden illness that can lead to us needing a high level of care. And if your only preparation is to bury your head in the sand and tell your children that you want to go to dignitas then it puts them in a very difficult situation. I've seen children become absolutely broken trying to keep their parents at home when they've needed 24 hour care out of this guilt. The most loving thing you can do is to have realistic and honest conversations with them.

And I know those that don't have children or families have had worries understandably and I think I addressed them in a previous post.

"You can't just admit yourself to a care home if there's nothing wrong with you". No, but if you can pay you can chose to live in a residential home or retirement village.

Absolutely. I will take my own life before I become bed bound and hooked up to a financial drip to the benefit of a nursing home. I will plan my funeral in meticulous detail and pay for it in advance.

I think a lot of people don't appreciate the cost of care homes too. Even if you could just admit yourself because you are getting on a bit and don't want to burden your family / children, you need hundreds upon hundreds of thousands saved up if you are going to finance it yourself. And if you aren't, then the LA aren't going to pay until absolutely every other possibility has been exhausted.

And how will you do that if you get dementia? By the time it’s diagnosed you are highly unlikely to be able to or indeed want to follow through on your plans. Indeed from a fairly early stage of the illness you will have minimal comprehension of the level of support others are providing to keep you at home.
Its a ridiculous blanket statement to make. I mean if I knew I was going to get dementia like DM has now I would plan to kill myself probably at 80 as that’s when I would likely have enough agency left to do it. But I don’t know if I will or won’t get it and perhaps at 80 my life will seem more precious to me than the thought of being 80 now.

So, what happens if you become physically incapable of looking after yourself? Maybe you have a fall and crack a hip, can't cook for yourself, or get to the toilet, what then? You get discharged unsafely from hospital and you sit waiting for God? No healthcare service should* discharge you without a plan for ongoing care

• I say should, we all know unsafe discharges happen ALL THE TIME

My parents prepped really well. Their attention to detail was something else, so the post will be long. It may be helpful to someone.

They changed the doors downstairs, making them wide enough for a walking aid/wheelchairs. The new doors could be opened by the touch of a finger at hip height. I should add that the doors they put in were French style with two sides closing in the middle, and made of glass so they could be seen through. They laid good carpets, and made the floors flush. All of this meant great mobility for them for the last 5-6 years.

They simplified all tech - phones, remote controls, the television placement and so on.
They had a really simple, but very effective system for bill paying - bills due in a box by the fridge and bills paid in a shoe box! They could always find things that way, they were in one box or the other. No complicated system that swallows things up (looking at you dh...).

They altered the kitchen a little - placed things in the upper cupboards for example so they did not have too much bending. They got light hoovers that hung on walls ( they viewed hovering and cleaning in general as exercise for mind and body). They changed a study onto a downstairs bedroom, and had a lovely, well heated shower room installed.

It was all elegantly done and did not look like a "modified for age" house at all. It was stylish and subtle.

They made the calculation that the cost of retirement homes etc would be higher than what they spent.

They refused to go to a home. They eventually agreed to a "cleaner" who came in to help them - lighting fires, making a little food etc. They also agreed, under duress, to cameras in the house so that we could make sure they were ok, had not fallen etc.

There was a small, old fashioned brief case under their bed. It contained all instructions - their solicitor, where the will was, passwords, an insurance thingy to cover all funeral costs including meals and so on - that was amazing.

They have both passed away now but I am deeply grateful, to my mum especially, for showing me a dignified way to approach this stage of life, one that facilitates their wishes but is also very considerate of her children's.

Yes my DM said this to me in her 60s but now at the age of 84 she has decided that she wants to move in with me, and presumably have me as her carer, though we don’t have a spare room for her and I work full time. No sign of dementia she’s just been listening to her friends grumbling.

I hope I don’t end up as selfish and unreasonable in my 80s.

At least you won’t have the worry of running out of days allowed in the country to come back to help them. But have you thought about how your own DC will manage supporting you in a country they don’t have residence in? Unless they are moving with you or you all have EU passports. Do bear in mind the family are expected to do all elder care in Spain, even as far as sleeping in and doing all personal care during hospital stays. In patients without family to care for them are basically ignored by staff as it is not their job to carry out personal care.

I feel very guilty indeed about trying to persuade her to move “somewhere sensible” when all her happiness had been in the house she moved to in the50’s when she got married. We all gave her a hard time over healthy eating when she more or less lived on baked potatoes, cake and fudge for no really valid reasons.

All of these were expressions of care and love. Try to be nice to yourself.

One thing a friend advised me to do when mum was dying was apologise! Even if you think you have nothing to apologize for, do it.

So I did, I said sorry mum, for all the times I was selfish and a brat. She smiled, and then laughed. Then I laughed too. She died a few days later. That moment really stays with me for some reason.

It was an unusual but beautiful deathbed moment.

No, I completely understand...I have to see first what is going my daughter's adult life going to be and then I will prepare all of it

Agree with this. DF was much more relaxed and content once he entered a nursing home as he felt safe and secure that there was always someone to help him with whatever he needed. He was constantly anxious in DM’s care as, hard as she tried, one person just couldn’t cope with his complex needs plus her own health problems, and he knew she was close to crisis.

Yes but a retirement village isn't a care home. And I'm in Scotland so can't speak for other areas or other local authorities but the retirement villages in our area don't provide 24 hour care and even the actual care they provide is very basic. They are forever on the phone to us at social work and people's families saying they can't meet the needs of people living there if they have increased to the point of needing a care home.

And also where I am, you most certainly can't move yourself into a residential home. Ours have quite strict eligibility criteria and they won't allow a healthy person to move in with no care needs as a way to simply avoid burdening their family.

What a lot of twaddle. Did you get Spain confused with the remoter parts of Benin?

Family are not expected to do all elderly care in Spain - or, if they are, then my family never got the memo. There are excellent carers and care facilities if one can afford them. Culturally people do chose to do more but its by choice. And as for sleeping in hospital to do all a patient's care, you are no more expected to do that in Spain than in the UK.

You are very rude and you have no idea what you are talking about. I have first hand experience of this over the last few months supporting DM with cancer treatment in Spain. Constantly criticised by health professionals for not being available to escort DM to all the almost daily hospital appointments, shouted at by hospital staff for not staying overnight in her hospital room after her operation. Interpreters had advised me not to as I don’t speak Spanish. Next day found DM left naked under a sheet having been refused food, water and bedpan despite her requests. Obliged to pee in the bed. Nurses refused to help me dress her to go home. So she had to go home wrapped in a dressing gown. Interpreters agreed this is not uncommon.

Go ahead and stick your head in the sand, you are heading for a rude awakening.

You could be completely healthy one day and have a catastrophic stroke the next day. Or something similar which requires you to be bed bound and hooked up to a drip. What then?

People make these ridiculous blanket statements without realising that there's a very good chance something will happen before they have a chance to "take their own life".

And if they have children or family, they are left to pick up the pieces and wracked with guilt because their family member has failed to have any reasonable and sensible conversations with them.

I so agree. How many people have actually done this. It’s easy to say in reasonable health - that and saying put in a care home or shoot me before I go into a care home.

IME that will change. The instinct to survive is strong, and when it comes to it you may well find that bedbound is better than dead.

DH was definitely one of the "If it end up like that shoot me" types, but he spent his last 12 months bedbound.

From an outside perspective he had no quality of life, but he still enjoyed a game of chess with DC, having friends visit to share a drink, talking about the news, watching a drama. He wasn't ready to die, even right at the end when he was in terrible pain.