Anyone else with elderly parents who are hard to help, and dreading the endgame?

[elliott]

Just had my dad for a weekend and feeling somewhat stressed out about it. Feel I am failing in daughterly duty to help him as he becomes older and more infirm, but he is just impossible to talk to and in complete denial about his own mortality. (my mum died 4 yrs ago and was definitely the human side of their partnership!)
My worries are as follows:

1. I have no idea where his will is (or even if he definitely has one) or where any of his documentation re finances are. I know they will be of byzantine complexity. I am too scared to ask.
2. He is not looking after his houses. He has a small second home he vists maybe two or three times a year. It needs more upkeep and really he needs to let it go. He doesn't want to. The family home has some alarming looking cracks in it. Me and my sibs have suggested he needs a surveyor or structural engineer to look at it. He has done nothing.
3. He is increasingly unsteady on his feet due to a known chronic condition. Very difficult to raise this with him and not sure even what it would achieve. I just worry about it really and wonder what on earth we will do when he can't get up the stairs or get to the shops.

Am I being negligent if I just allow these things to fester and give up trying to discuss them? Or should I just butt out until asked for help (i.e. never?) Presumably at some point there will be a crisis and I will feel dreadful that I was such a coward about trying to deal with anything.

Argggh.

Sorry I realise that was just a bit of a ramble. I suppose I am asking, how far should one 'interfere' and how far just let people be?

But does she want to be helped?
For me it is not that I have demands that I cannot meet, it is more that I can see him not really coping but he rejects any notion of weakness. I don't think he has dementia but he is extremely vague.

going to look at a care home for my dad tomorrow after failing to sell our house and buy the one we could have moved in together.
He is saying he needs to go into a home (he has dementia) but when it comes to it he's not going to want to go and its going to be awful
His house is a mess, he only eats burgers and often forgets to eat completely, he's lived in the same house since 1962
I know how hard it is but I suggest you look into some options now as it will be even harder later.

Hmm it sounds like you are a lot further down the line than me. My dad is still managing ok on his own (anyway I am 3 hours away so can't do much about day to day help), its just frustrating that he won't do anything until it is too late and will be twice as hard. I mean it would be much easier to sell his holiday home BEFORE he is incapable of getting down there, but I can't see it happening. What happens is that one of us will manage to pluck up courage to mention something, suggest he might do something about it, he dismisses it and then that's that.
I wouldn't even know how to go about thinking about options, as far as the house is concerned he wants to be carried out of it in a box.
So how do you actually go about broaching these things? I see people going about doing stuff for their parents all the time, and I wonder how they get to the situation that allows them to do that?

With my dad, he still even now says he wants to go into a home then in the next sentence says he's fine and doesn't need any help.
Its got to the point now though where something has to be done, he is not looking after himself properly and I have to face the fact that I will be looked at as a bully and in his eyes I will have made him do something that will upset him, but we can't go on like we are.
I know how hard it is, they can be so stubborn. Maybe suggest he employs someone to help him with the housework or garden first and then maybe that could lead to further help.
Explain to him that you are worried about him and would like to help him sort things out to make life easier later on.

Oh crikey I can imagine being in that situation at some point. I keep hoping he'll go quickly after a fall or something I really really don't know what we'll do if he gets to a point where he really can't cope.

MIL doens't want to be helped. She has alzheimers quite badly, she lives alone in a large house on top of a lonely hill. It's festering and rotting all around her. She has carers in 3 times a day, but still she is lonely and gives the impression of being uncared for.

The neighbours feel she shouldn't be there on her own and that someone should do something.

And yet she has 3 devoted dutiful children who try their hardest to help, but she doesn't want to go into a home (they tried a respite home for a few days recently, she escaped through the fire exit at 3am and had to be brought back by the police).

It's not at all clear what to do, whether to leave her there, or force her into a home. She wouldn't want to live with us either (thank goodness), she finds our children too lively and our house has billions of steps and stairs, it's the worst house for old people ever.

so I can sympathise, but we are going for the letting her stay in her own home, as she seems to want, though it does look very much as though she's neglected and uncared for.

She can't get up the stairs easily or to the shops, or out at all, the carers do all that sort of stuff.

elliott - I thought my dad was managing ok but it turns out that he didnt realise he was getting really ill and ended up in hospital with pneumonia. He's now at ours for 6 weeks while we weight up the options - we are also 3 hours away and now he needs someone popping in everyday just to say hi and check he's ok.

What I'm saying is I think you should try and force some communication about this - its no good waiting for the crisis.

btw he alwasy said he was ok but was so scared by the state he got into - collapsing on his own and not being able to get up that he has accepted that the time has come for the next stage - ie selling his house and renting a flat close to us.

fennel that's interesting. I do feel guilty about not doing more but also don't think he wants anyone to do more. Presumably though somehow she got diagnosed and got her carers?
My dad doesn't see a doc from one year to the next almost.
I don't know. I guess I am scared of asking. I have tried talking about selling the holiday home but I don't see what else I can ddo. Maybe I need to pluck up the courage to aask about the will. ALthough the thing that really worries me is the house. Fennel do your MILs kids worry about losing their inheritance? I know I should put that out of mmy head as it is his money to fritter away, but it seems such a needless waste. And one of my sibs could actually do with the money (and is probably subconciously relying on it).

MIL is quite bad, her husband (FIL) died of cancer 18 months ago and at that point noone could pretend she didn't need help (even in DP's family of emotional illterates who all avoid talking about anything remotely awkward). She was assessed as needing loads of care, she has to pay the top rate any old person is charged for it as she has lots of savings, but still lots more of the care comes free, paid for by the taxpayer.

DP is in charge of her finances and yes he does worry. He worries that all the money will go on the many hours of care, but he doesn't like to think he's worrying about his own possible inheritance, so he frames it as worrying about whether his mother will run out of money to pay for her care (that's unlikely, impossible even, she has loads of savings and a house which would be worth a lot if it doesn't totally rot around her due to not being looked after at the moment, but of course DP isn't being totally rational about this, he worries about the money because he finds that easier than worrying about his mother in other ways).

His sister gets to do the worrying/arranging about the carers, this is a problem as they come from agencies and seem to skive when not checked up on. But, poor carers, they are supposed to come for 3 hours every afternoon and MIL can be rude and ungrateful to them. That's the alzheimers, she's not a rude person naturally.

and his brother lives closest and gets to do the popping in and doing emergencies.

it's a mess. and it takes a lot of energy and time and money from all 3 siblings and the carers etc. but what else can you do? It does seem she doesn't want to be moved to a home, so maybe we/DP and siblings have to just go with it.

Elliott
Can sympathise so much with your situation and the situations of others who have posted. I am on the other side of this now as my parents have both died, but they proved very difficult to help. You can try to force the issue and hope your father will face up to it, but in my experience you cannot make someone who is really stubborn do anything they don't want to do. My Dad died suddenly and my mother obviously wasn't coping but she refused to accept help or go to the doctor. We couldn't force her. In the end a crisis of ill-health reduced her resistance and she had to accept help. It is agonising to watch them deteriorating and being prevented from helping them.

We found when the doctors and carers became involved they were very sympathetic to the fact that my mother would not accept any help. They said it was a very common problem with the elderly. They don't want to face up to reality and I think their generation is very fearful of being "put away" - we were told this is quite impossible now without their consent.

If you keep offering and doing your best to get your father to face up to his situation and he refuses you are not being neglectful. Painful as I know from bitter experience that it is, you are not being allowed to care if he just won't let you. I think you do have to prepare yourself for a crisis, unless you are very lucky. If you keep trying, as we did, you will then know that you did everything you could to try and support him.

It is so difficult. I really hope that you can get through to him.

Oh dear, older people can live happy healthy lives but to achieve this it helps if they are engaged in some sort of community but still able to retain some degree of independence.

You really need some professional advice.

Help the Aged and Age Concern have now merged but still have separate websites and may be able to help:-

www.helptheaged.org.uk/en-gb/

www.ageconcern.org.uk/AgeConcern/default.as p

Counsel and Care is also an excellent organisation but the advice they offer is more practical (i.e. how care can be financed, etc.):-

www.counselandcare.org.uk/

Also, just because an older person has dementia does not mean that they need to be resigned to a care home. Extra care housing allows the person to retain their independence but have help on hand if they need it:-

www.dh.gov.uk/en/SocialCare/Deliveringadultsocialcare/Housing/DH_083199

Lots of good housing organisations out there that may be able to help:-

www.hanover.org.uk/

www.housing21.co.uk/

www.anchor.org.uk/Page s/home.aspx

Riven my dh just went to the dr and said as his mums next of kin then he needed to know what was going on - the Gp did tell him but that could have been because it was terminal cancer .

With regards to the situation the OP describes it is really hard,my FIL was 80 last week and we noticed a decline over the last 10 years - the only way we could get him to accept our help was ......we told him we needed a new washer we were £50 short and so if he gave it me Id do his washing and ironing.....then bcos he loves to eat but detests cooking at xmas i give a years dinner certificate ....which we say is part of his xmas pressie in reality its 7 dinners or more a week just so we know hes eating right .

Hes a bit deaf so I already do a lot of his phoning up etc and arranging of appointments so generally health wise i have a very good idea of whats going on.

Other than this he manages alone,although his only social life is at the pub ....so we go there to keep him company and a few times a week I need a sitter for ds3 or a dog sitter - that way he thinks hes doing a bit to help us too.

Dont know about his will though thats gonna cause probs .....hes already told me hes leaving me a rainy day fund.....dh will not be impressed.

Oh dear Riven.

You need professional advice.

Some older people are very hard work. The general public do not realise how high rates of depression are amongst older people nor do they know how to recognise signs of dementia.

There are people out there who can help.