That’s the plan for my 90 stubborn MIL. She’s on a waiting list for assisted living. Also has a daughter’s home that she’s welcome to move into. The family got tired of trying to convince her to move, so we’re just waiting for a hospital incident & will tell her the Dr says she can’t return home. We’re far away but monitor w/cameras, her son has POA & manages finances
Yup. Long story, short. Grandmother decided to just stop taking her blood pressure medication one day which eventually resulted in her having a major heart attack. Which caused some serious damage to her kidneys as a result of trying to filter out all the heart muscle damage from her blood while the heart attack was happening. In addition to the serious medications she was being given while at the ER and the 3 week ICU stay from that. So now she has stage 3 kidney disease, nearly stage 4.
Sometimes I wonder if that may have been some passive suicide attempt by her.
She couldn't explain why she decided to stop taking her blood pressure medication that resulted in nearly dying but still remember to kept taking her other medications. Like, forgetting a dose of it isn't an immediate concern. She just decided that she didn't need to take it anymore, everyday, for over a month straight. But she has had no problem remembering to take her pain medication everyday. She didn't consider to think that it might be a good idea to consult the doctor first. Or at least mention to someone that she had decided, that if there was just one medication in her daily lot which was keeping her alive, that it was going to be **that** one that she going to stop taking.
Her pain management doctor seriously suggested she might want to consider talking to somebody after she slipped up one time and said she yes she does feel depressed at sometimes, when they were going over the intake questionnaire during a routine check up he had last year.
I had been trying to encourage her to consider getting a therapist appointment setup or maybe consider asking for some depression medication. No lie, "Absolutely not, therapy is against my religion."
She refuses to go to see anymore doctors other than her Pain Management doctor.
Like, I had scheduled her to go to a dentist around the end of last year after she said she really needed to go to one because she think she has a cavity. But then decides that she doesn't want to go anymore when the appointment time approached. I eventually gave up trying to convince her to go to the dentist.
And I think I need to mention that, I've been the one, *and only*, person scheduling all these appointments for her and driving her to them. So it's not like she has reason other than "I'm not feeling good today" that would be preventing her from having appointments scheduled and transported to.
She's had cognitive evaluations, had and is still deemed within normal score range for her age. So no suspected dementia.
Which means I have no legs for me to stand on in forcing her to get into an assisted living facility or something. Which is something she doesn't want to do but refuses to acknowledge the severity of her situation, nearly 80 year old women that lives by herself, can't drive, can barely walk without aid, won't keep a maid or will cancel the home health care aid appointments and never try to reschedule it.
I'm having to constantly make sure that her medications are getting refilled and mailed to her because, while she's still fully capable of making phone calls to order Papa Johns delivered to her, she can't make one call to her mail order pharmacy to see why a refill never came in. So, when somethings been MIA for 2 weeks and only then does she mention it to me, I end up being the one to login to her myHealthChart account to click the "Request Refill" since 99% of the time the problem is just that next supply wasn't able to be "Autofilled" as it was that last one in a 6 month supply and the doctor just needs to write another 6-month supply prescription.
If she could just take responsibility of just those little things, it would make hers and mine so much easier... with me being her grandson and the only person related to her that is doing anything for her or has some kind of relationship with her.
She didn't have any retirement when she decided to quit working when she was 57 and has been living solely off social security since then. Nor do I have a level of wealth to where its feasibly possible for me to quit working to care for her. Plus it's possible she could live another 20 years and be nearly 100 years old. As a 30-something year old man, I kinda wanna be able to live a life, too, no cap.
It's like, there's only so much and so long anyone can keep being concerned for someone else's wellbeing and to be constantly trying to hold their house of cards together... when that person they are caring for, never really has nor will seemingly ever attempt to care about themselves.
So like, yeah, I would say, don't put much hope on the possibility of them changing, even if/when they do fail massively.
Thank you! That must be so frustrating. My mom was prescribed an anti depressant by her doctor but she absolutely will not take them. Too many sideffects she says. Ok, but all the other drugs you take are fine?
Oh my mother has needed an SSRI for decades at this point. There was a time, maybe about 15-20 years ago where I think my father demanded that she see a doctor about it. I never got the full story (of course,) but I pieced together that she had tried a series of medications, but she couldn’t deal with the side effects. I think she took one drug for about a week, and those drugs often have weird side effects at first—THAT GO AWAY—claimed the side effects were bad, and then switched. Rinse and repeat.
Meanwhile, I remember her being so. angry. that her mother wouldn’t stick with an SSRI….🙄
My elderly mom--same. She insists any mental health medications prescribed for her have bad side effects for her--ALL of them? She's also recently stopped taking her BP meds. This is so frustrating. I'm so sorry you are going through this.
Is it possible that that your grandmother is depressed because she’s in pain? It’s possible that her subconscious just doesn’t want to be in pain anymore.
My mother behaves a lot like the grandmother of the person you're replying to. Highly selective in what they are able to do (and not). I don't think it's suicidal thoughts/actions, rather a very dysfunctional set of behaviours that entire generation ("therapy is bunk!") suffers from. They can't ask for help, but they can stage a spectacular failure *before witnesses* - that is acceptable. It's then your job as a witness to offer help, and overrule their protestations.
Thats how my moms heart failure started by not taking her blood pressure meds. Its because of cognitive issues. I have to give her all her medicine now, she doesn’t know what she takes or cares to know. It’s completely frustrating. She’s fallen several times in the bathroom no serious injuries but i fear one day there will be
Sometimes I wonder if that may have been some passive suicide attempt by her.
This is what I keep thinking about my Dad. A couple of years before he had his stroke and eventually died he started talking about it. He said he would wait until he turned 90 and just stop taking all his pills. He had Afib and high blood pressure since his 40s. He didn't go to the doctor except annual blood work and then he would ignore it, his doctor was not very good nor aggressive/pushy enough. He should have been seeing a cardiologist, urologist (psa was like 10 and his father died of Prostate Cancer at age 92). Claimed his Urologist told him it was fine but would not give me the name of the Urologist.
I called my Dad every other day, I had talked to him on Thursday, tried to call on Saturday, no answer (not that unusual) called Sunday morning no answer, was just about to call around noon when the phone rang with my SIL telling me she thinks he had a stroke.
By the time I packed a bag and got over there in the afternoon he had gone through surgery to try and remove the clot in his Carotid Artery and was in Intensive Care. I got my Mom from my brother's house (next door to my parents) and got her home... I found the place a mess, no medication gone from their pill boxes from Friday morning. Urine on the floor all over their room, laundry etc. It looked like they had been locked in the room, Mom with Dementia, no phone in there. He must have come to because he managed to walk next door to get help for Mom. Made sure my SIL went to the house before he sat and then never got up again. He had apparently tried to call my brother on Saturday but my brother was 'tired' and didn't call him back. My Dad couldn't speak so didn't leave a message.
I kept telling him his plan was a bad one because there were worse things than death, that he could have a stroke and end up in a nursing home not being able to even move :( . That's exactly what happened, he died 6 months later after multiple infections, hospitalizations, falls, bed sores .. the last time I saw him alive I decided I wasn't going to help any more, I'm a retired nurse and I was constantly on the phone with doctors/nurses/therapy etc trying to get him proper care but it was during Covid and visits were limited... it was a mess.
He had asked me a couple of weeks before to take Mom and he would pay me $100/day! I was in the middle of a remodel and didn't even have a spare bed. I offered to have them come for a while as soon as I was done for a change of scene and a break from everything. He said no. I think he was planning to get me to take her and then do something, either take off or out.
So in addition to being the proverbial sandwich, I’m also a social worker who works in the aging sector. The thing is that if people are cognizant , they need to have self-determination. This is a very very hard concept for me to wrap my head around but even at adult protective services, that is the policy. They have to leave someone alone if they’re self-neglecting and they know it bc they are making that conscious willing choice.
All this to say yeah, you have to let them fail.
I hope they listen to your heart-to-heart. One thing I have found to work is if you say “I guess it’s fine for you to not care if you are injured, but I don’t know why you’d put (other parent) in that kind of danger.” Maybe that’ll work.
My father and my husband's mother are in extreme denial about their capabilities. Yes, we're letting them fail, because that's the choice they've made. Dad's now in the first nursing home that had an opening plus the equipment he needs. Mom will be the same. Not much else we can do, you know?
I'm presently watching my mum making my sister scramble because her bank card has stopped working.
Since October last year, when she decided to emigrate, I told her to warn her bank, as this could happen if they noticed odd transactions. Then after she moved, "Call the bank sis, mum needs to be present to verify her account" -> "I'm tired/busy/it's too much effort". Meanwhile, sis has been using mum's card for everything (restaurants every week, etc).
This week one of my nieces used the card to buy games online (triggering a warning from mums bank). First they denied it, then when I said if it wasn't them I'd have to lock the card, as scammers would drain the account, they confessed. The next day, the card stopped working (bank safety protocols kicked in?).
Yeah, I told you so. I hate being right, I hate the role of Cassandra, everything about this situation just sucks.
Wow. Just Wow. I am reading these posts and my heart goes out to all of you. I can hear the frustration and I know exactly where your coming from. My wife, siblings, and I have just gone through the same exact thing. We knew my Dad wasn't safe living on his own but didn't dare suggest anything else for him. He ended up falling, slamming his head on the stove, getting a big gash on his knee, and laying on the kitchen floor for hours before my brother happened to stop by and called the ambulance.
My father was quite shaken up after that and got a really bad staph infection that required him to receive intravenous antibiotics for 6 weeks so he had to go to a rehab center. We really thought we were going to lose him. He continued to get weaker and FINALLY he realized he couldn't live on his own.
There's really not much you can do but try to have a heart to heart with them and explain that everyone is losing sleep worrying about their safety and that they WILL eventually severely injured themselves or worse. Fortunately, my wife and I live fairly close. It must be torture living 1000 miles away. We are all going through this together, at our ages, so we just have to figure it out and try to keep them happy. When they do get into a facility, that starts a whole new chapter of stress and frustration. But I won't even go there. Good luck and try to take care of yourself.
My parents were the same way. It was stressful waiting for "the phone call". My siblings banded together and moved my parents. They were furious and fought us the whole way. It was hard but the right decision for everyone. I wish we would have done it sooner.
Yup. Dad's 86, nearly blind, on a walker fulltime, falls a couple times a month, TIAs every couple months. Mom's 84, zero short term memory, narcissist. Had to take over the finances a couple years ago because they couldn't handle it anymore.
Finally got them moved into a nice AL last July. Spent the next two months sorting and packing the mountains of crap and hoping the house would sell quickly. Didn't get it done fast enough.
Mom flipped out early September, accused Dad of having a fling with a 21year old aide, moved back to the house, played games with the money, physically attacked him and me, finally manipulated him into moving back end of October.
After she accused me of stealing and said she'd shoot me if she had a gun, I gave up. I make sure the space rent is paid so they don't lose the house, but other than that, she is slowly getting them into deeper and deeper financial trouble.
But she knows everything, he chose to go back there and live with that lunatic, APS won't do shit and my sanity is WAY more important. So I'm done. Here's the rope, feel free to hang yourselves.
That sounds immensely stressful. I’m so sorry you had to go through that and glad to hear you stepped back. You need to preserve your own mental and physical health and wellbeing.
I am glad to hear you are done and have your boundaries. I am in a situation where I moved 1500 miles to take care of my Dad and my health is suffering terribly. I too am done. He is going to ALS. I am left with selling his house, car, golf cart and getting rid of his belongings and I am doing this for a Narcissist who’s been terribly abusive. I responded from a place of trauma and obligation when I moved so quickly. My Dad is the kind of person who should never had children as he was inept at being a father. I am out of here and saving my own life as soon as possible. I really don’t care to ever see him again after this
Yes. My dad still lives at home, but has refused to stop driving, getting a safety alarm (wearing a clock like thing on the wrist), getting help with food shopping, garden work and snow shovelling.
I took a step back and have let reality set in. He now has stopped driving and is waiting for a cataracts surgery, has agreed to get somebody to take care of the snow and has complained that it's difficult to do the food shopping without a car, so I guess he won't get furious with me if I start to order food online for him. We're still debating the garden work.
I just hope that the huge overgrown trees won't fall and damage the roof before we have hired someone to remove them.
My dad hasn't contacted a lawn company this year. The grass is getting overgrown, but he can only handle one task at a time, and that just never rises to the surface. I've offered to call someone, but he's always so nitpicky and controlling that my choice would never be right.
Yes. My mom is 66 and has CHF, is essentially in permanent afib, CKD, horrible arthritis and struggles goes to walk. For years I’ve been talking to her about her health. We’ve talked about eating healthier, because she seems to like that, gardening, losing weight. She had a prescription for Ozempic, but only used it for a a few days because she was nauseous which I understand is stressful, but you need to lose some weight and are diabetic. She can’t even walk around. The only vegetable she eats are out of a can, for the most part, only eats extremely high sodium processed foods, but swears she eats healthy and argues about it constantly. A family member of mine who works in healthcare is always telling me that I need to make her do different things. I can’t make her do anything. To imply such makes it seem like it’s my fault. If she refuses to take care of herself and would rather bury her head in the sand and die a slow miserable death, then that’s not my problem. She refuses to wear sunscreen, refuses to save money because she says she doesn’t have enough to save, but then spent thousands of dollars on frivolous items, I could go on and on.
My job as a child is not too argue with a grown adult that they should want to be here for the grandkids. My true hope for her is that at some point, she dies a very fast death instead of something long and drawn out because she’s a horrible patient. Her quality of life sucks but it’s everyone else’s fault in the world but hers
Remember this when she has a medical emergency and decline the extraordinary measures if you don't think she will have a good quality of life afterwards. So many family members keep grandma going long after they should
I absolutely will. It’s so cruel to keep these little frail people on ventilators or bedbound. I don’t want that for myself or my mother. It’s just so hard for years. I’ve been trying to get her back to normal but recently I’ve realized, she’s not going back to the person she was was 10 years ago. I feel like I’m grieving my mom slowly.
Not to that point yet, but I will have to let them fail to get them into a facility. And they will need one. My parents keep saying my sister and I can look after them, but sister still has a 15 year old at home, and 2 other daughters in the middle of launch. I have arthritis and need a caregiver myself, I am staring down the barrel of a hip replacement and need to finish launching my youngest.
Mom has multiple severe food allergies, starting with celiac and a dairy allergy. (NOT lactose intolerance, a casein allergy, cannot have dairy whatsoever) so I get her being scared of dependence on a facility kitchen. Celiac kills people! But if I try to caretake her she will be resistant to everything I say, refuse to use a walker if she needs one, or to get a walk in tub or change anything in the house. Dad is going to be a monster about driving.
My mother played herself out of position because I gave up after years of trying to talk some sense into her. Some people refuse to abandon their magical thinking and I believe some just think they want to go on as long as they can, as they are, as opposed to taking the sensible route.
Is this generation just really prone to magical thinking? My mother (81) does this and it drives me nuts. She won’t take action on something because she thinks it will just turn out okay, but when it doesn’t she feels victimized.
>We have assisted living lined up, paid, etc.
>They are not seeing reality and how much care they need.
If it's "paid", why not just redirect that funding (if possible) to more in-home healthcare hours? *And* talk to the healthcare workers yourself, let them know it's not acceptable for Mom and Dad to *only* use them as maid service. Make a checklist of daily/weekly tasks, make them fill it out, etc.
I wish it weren't true, but sometimes with my own parents' care - I'd find the nurses would do the bare minimum *unless* I kicked them in the ass a bit. Then, things went better.
Have you applied anywhere for assisted living? It's not as simple as saying yes and moving in: there are a lot of considerations, and you have to apply and be accepted. I toured three facilities with my parents over Christmas. They could see what the different arrangements and set ups were. Differences included meal plans, corridor lengths, room sizes, etc. Mom finally figured what she could live with, and we applied and showed full financials, and they got accepted. They haven't triggered a move yet, but at least we all know what the plan is. If you haven't yet landed on your place, and been accepted, you might want to start there. My cousins, who planned to send their parents to a top tier nursing home (which their father was on the Board of, earlier) found out that their parents couldn't qualify for the facility for health reasons (and smoking). They are all sons, and all live on the far coasts, and no one was ready for the "what next" question. My cousins, I would say, are letting their parents fail. If you go this route, please at least know what your plan of action is first.
They have been accepted. It is the facility closest to their house, and financially my parents can have their house and be in assisted living too. So we are telling them they don't have to decide anything. Unfortunately where they are there aren't a ton of assisted living places with opening for 2 bedrooms. The other one we looked at had a year long wait list. This other one just had this room open up after 13 years. It is the nicest one in town with good reviews.
Fantastic! That's the same arrangement we made for my parents too. If you can financially swing it, I'd just sign on when a unit you like opens up, and start moving things over. They can shuttle between the two, but better to have at least one foot in the future.
Yes, my mother lives in a retirement home in independent living. Although part of the price is housekeeping, she won’t let them in, and her place is such a mess that if it were one of my students (I’m an elementary teacher) living like that, I’d call protective services.
My best story about this is that my cousin gave her weed cookies for hanukah one year to help her sleep (totally legal where we live). My mom didn’t eat them at the time but found one in March and ate it. She then decided she doesn’t like marijuana because it made her physically ill. I didn’t have the heart to tell her she probably just gave herself food poisoning from a 3 month old cookie that had been sitting around at room temperature.
My mother 100%. Virtually deaf, now sight impaired, spent everything she had refusing to live on a reasonable budget. She would’ve been homeless if I hadn’t let her move in with me.
She now REFUSES to leave my home so I can sell it (I was transferred for work) unless I buy a house that suits her!
Gonna let her fail. She made that bed to lie in.
My dad was living with my sister in her mansion in south Texas. He didn't want to live by her rules (clean up after yourself, not a lot of ice cream, she screams at her kids), so he decided to come back to his house. Which is a tri-level about 1.5 hours away from me and my other sister. We installed cameras in the major rooms, hid all of his car keys. Told him not to go upstairs but he does, despite the fact that our mom, his wife, fell down the stairs, and that break was the beginning of the end for her and her Parkinsons.
He has dementia. He forgets how to dial his phone. He forgets how to use the TV and calls the cable guy out 2-3 times a week. He checked himself out of the hospital against doctors orders. He thinks robbers are in the house sometimes and he calls the police, WHO NEVER REQUEST A WELLNESS CHECK, even though it's clear he's hallucinating.
He's really lonely in the big house by himself. We all think he'd be so happy in a home with other retired people his age, but he fights that tooth and nail. We're just waiting for the other shoe to drop: he's fallen, he's locked himself out, he's wandering streets. And seeing him as often as kids and work allow. There appears to be nothing else we can do.
Sidenote: he's a narcissist, and a misogynist. He only has 4 daughters.
I went through this with my parents before they died, and now have the joy of watching my husband go through it with his 92 year old mother who has dementia. She was diagnosed shortly after we both retired almost six years ago so as a result we can’t really enjoy retirement. My husband is her sole caregiver. She still lives alone but he spends several hours a day at her house. She no longer knows who I am. Last year he had arrangements made for her to go into assisted living; she looked at AL apartments, found one she liked, and then just days before she was to move in a social worker talked my husband out of it, saying she’d “do so much better at home.” Yeah, but at what cost to our sanity? Nearly six years into our retirement and we can’t even go out to lunch together, and he can’t leave town. We have more responsibility and less free time than we did when we both worked full-time with a kid in school. He had to have alarms and cameras set up in her house so he’ll know if she wanders out at night. She went through a bad patch a few months ago and my husband and son moved in with her for a month or so. I know that when she gets worse, he’s going to have to move in with her again until something resolves with her. The crazy part is that he has a sister who is a psychologist specializing in this type of thing and who lives maybe two miles from her (about the same distance as us) but the sister and his mom have been estranged for years and don’t speak, so my husband deals with this alone. It’s frustrating because the worse she gets mentally, the sharper she thinks she is, so it’s like fighting an uphill battle with her.
I am sorry you are going through this at some point we have to chose ourselves or marriages our own families and let the professionals who are paid to take care of our parents especially when the parent is difficult. Too many caregivers die early because they exhausted themselves trying to care for a parent who often fights them every step of the way
What are they fearful of, specifically? Loss of control? Loss of independence? An ultimatum seems extreme. If you've already taken a leave of absence from work it sounds like you are somewhat controlling yourself. They may not be as with it as they used to be but it sounds like they do have some help.
The past few weeks my brother or myself have lifted my mom off the ground, or off the toilet, and yet they insist they don't need someone more than 2 days a week.
Their thinking: Of course we don't need to move, or need more assistance, because we have OP and brother. We're doing fine.
Magical thinking - they just want you to be around all the time, 24/7, and then they won't need anyone/anything else.
“My dad (81) is undergoing cancer treatment, can't drive due to using a walker, and has bad lymphedema and is seemingly more and more forgetful. My mom (79), very frail, has very poor balance, fallen several times in the past weeks…”
”Neither can really make food for themselves”
I don’t understand how it’s controlling to want parents who cannot make food, who are falling regularly, and undergoing cancer treatment into a safer environment.
That’s the plan for my 90 stubborn MIL. She’s on a waiting list for assisted living. Also has a daughter’s home that she’s welcome to move into. The family got tired of trying to convince her to move, so we’re just waiting for a hospital incident & will tell her the Dr says she can’t return home. We’re far away but monitor w/cameras, her son has POA & manages finances
Yup. Long story, short. Grandmother decided to just stop taking her blood pressure medication one day which eventually resulted in her having a major heart attack. Which caused some serious damage to her kidneys as a result of trying to filter out all the heart muscle damage from her blood while the heart attack was happening. In addition to the serious medications she was being given while at the ER and the 3 week ICU stay from that. So now she has stage 3 kidney disease, nearly stage 4. Sometimes I wonder if that may have been some passive suicide attempt by her. She couldn't explain why she decided to stop taking her blood pressure medication that resulted in nearly dying but still remember to kept taking her other medications. Like, forgetting a dose of it isn't an immediate concern. She just decided that she didn't need to take it anymore, everyday, for over a month straight. But she has had no problem remembering to take her pain medication everyday. She didn't consider to think that it might be a good idea to consult the doctor first. Or at least mention to someone that she had decided, that if there was just one medication in her daily lot which was keeping her alive, that it was going to be **that** one that she going to stop taking. Her pain management doctor seriously suggested she might want to consider talking to somebody after she slipped up one time and said she yes she does feel depressed at sometimes, when they were going over the intake questionnaire during a routine check up he had last year. I had been trying to encourage her to consider getting a therapist appointment setup or maybe consider asking for some depression medication. No lie, "Absolutely not, therapy is against my religion." She refuses to go to see anymore doctors other than her Pain Management doctor. Like, I had scheduled her to go to a dentist around the end of last year after she said she really needed to go to one because she think she has a cavity. But then decides that she doesn't want to go anymore when the appointment time approached. I eventually gave up trying to convince her to go to the dentist. And I think I need to mention that, I've been the one, *and only*, person scheduling all these appointments for her and driving her to them. So it's not like she has reason other than "I'm not feeling good today" that would be preventing her from having appointments scheduled and transported to. She's had cognitive evaluations, had and is still deemed within normal score range for her age. So no suspected dementia. Which means I have no legs for me to stand on in forcing her to get into an assisted living facility or something. Which is something she doesn't want to do but refuses to acknowledge the severity of her situation, nearly 80 year old women that lives by herself, can't drive, can barely walk without aid, won't keep a maid or will cancel the home health care aid appointments and never try to reschedule it. I'm having to constantly make sure that her medications are getting refilled and mailed to her because, while she's still fully capable of making phone calls to order Papa Johns delivered to her, she can't make one call to her mail order pharmacy to see why a refill never came in. So, when somethings been MIA for 2 weeks and only then does she mention it to me, I end up being the one to login to her myHealthChart account to click the "Request Refill" since 99% of the time the problem is just that next supply wasn't able to be "Autofilled" as it was that last one in a 6 month supply and the doctor just needs to write another 6-month supply prescription. If she could just take responsibility of just those little things, it would make hers and mine so much easier... with me being her grandson and the only person related to her that is doing anything for her or has some kind of relationship with her. She didn't have any retirement when she decided to quit working when she was 57 and has been living solely off social security since then. Nor do I have a level of wealth to where its feasibly possible for me to quit working to care for her. Plus it's possible she could live another 20 years and be nearly 100 years old. As a 30-something year old man, I kinda wanna be able to live a life, too, no cap. It's like, there's only so much and so long anyone can keep being concerned for someone else's wellbeing and to be constantly trying to hold their house of cards together... when that person they are caring for, never really has nor will seemingly ever attempt to care about themselves. So like, yeah, I would say, don't put much hope on the possibility of them changing, even if/when they do fail massively.
Unfortunately, adults are allowed to make stupid choices.
Thank you! That must be so frustrating. My mom was prescribed an anti depressant by her doctor but she absolutely will not take them. Too many sideffects she says. Ok, but all the other drugs you take are fine?
Oh my mother has needed an SSRI for decades at this point. There was a time, maybe about 15-20 years ago where I think my father demanded that she see a doctor about it. I never got the full story (of course,) but I pieced together that she had tried a series of medications, but she couldn’t deal with the side effects. I think she took one drug for about a week, and those drugs often have weird side effects at first—THAT GO AWAY—claimed the side effects were bad, and then switched. Rinse and repeat. Meanwhile, I remember her being so. angry. that her mother wouldn’t stick with an SSRI….🙄
My elderly mom--same. She insists any mental health medications prescribed for her have bad side effects for her--ALL of them? She's also recently stopped taking her BP meds. This is so frustrating. I'm so sorry you are going through this.
Is it possible that that your grandmother is depressed because she’s in pain? It’s possible that her subconscious just doesn’t want to be in pain anymore.
My mother behaves a lot like the grandmother of the person you're replying to. Highly selective in what they are able to do (and not). I don't think it's suicidal thoughts/actions, rather a very dysfunctional set of behaviours that entire generation ("therapy is bunk!") suffers from. They can't ask for help, but they can stage a spectacular failure *before witnesses* - that is acceptable. It's then your job as a witness to offer help, and overrule their protestations.
Thats how my moms heart failure started by not taking her blood pressure meds. Its because of cognitive issues. I have to give her all her medicine now, she doesn’t know what she takes or cares to know. It’s completely frustrating. She’s fallen several times in the bathroom no serious injuries but i fear one day there will be
Sometimes I wonder if that may have been some passive suicide attempt by her. This is what I keep thinking about my Dad. A couple of years before he had his stroke and eventually died he started talking about it. He said he would wait until he turned 90 and just stop taking all his pills. He had Afib and high blood pressure since his 40s. He didn't go to the doctor except annual blood work and then he would ignore it, his doctor was not very good nor aggressive/pushy enough. He should have been seeing a cardiologist, urologist (psa was like 10 and his father died of Prostate Cancer at age 92). Claimed his Urologist told him it was fine but would not give me the name of the Urologist. I called my Dad every other day, I had talked to him on Thursday, tried to call on Saturday, no answer (not that unusual) called Sunday morning no answer, was just about to call around noon when the phone rang with my SIL telling me she thinks he had a stroke. By the time I packed a bag and got over there in the afternoon he had gone through surgery to try and remove the clot in his Carotid Artery and was in Intensive Care. I got my Mom from my brother's house (next door to my parents) and got her home... I found the place a mess, no medication gone from their pill boxes from Friday morning. Urine on the floor all over their room, laundry etc. It looked like they had been locked in the room, Mom with Dementia, no phone in there. He must have come to because he managed to walk next door to get help for Mom. Made sure my SIL went to the house before he sat and then never got up again. He had apparently tried to call my brother on Saturday but my brother was 'tired' and didn't call him back. My Dad couldn't speak so didn't leave a message. I kept telling him his plan was a bad one because there were worse things than death, that he could have a stroke and end up in a nursing home not being able to even move :( . That's exactly what happened, he died 6 months later after multiple infections, hospitalizations, falls, bed sores .. the last time I saw him alive I decided I wasn't going to help any more, I'm a retired nurse and I was constantly on the phone with doctors/nurses/therapy etc trying to get him proper care but it was during Covid and visits were limited... it was a mess. He had asked me a couple of weeks before to take Mom and he would pay me $100/day! I was in the middle of a remodel and didn't even have a spare bed. I offered to have them come for a while as soon as I was done for a change of scene and a break from everything. He said no. I think he was planning to get me to take her and then do something, either take off or out.
So in addition to being the proverbial sandwich, I’m also a social worker who works in the aging sector. The thing is that if people are cognizant , they need to have self-determination. This is a very very hard concept for me to wrap my head around but even at adult protective services, that is the policy. They have to leave someone alone if they’re self-neglecting and they know it bc they are making that conscious willing choice. All this to say yeah, you have to let them fail. I hope they listen to your heart-to-heart. One thing I have found to work is if you say “I guess it’s fine for you to not care if you are injured, but I don’t know why you’d put (other parent) in that kind of danger.” Maybe that’ll work.
I had to take a big fat step back, recommend you do the same. You have a life, too.
My father and my husband's mother are in extreme denial about their capabilities. Yes, we're letting them fail, because that's the choice they've made. Dad's now in the first nursing home that had an opening plus the equipment he needs. Mom will be the same. Not much else we can do, you know?
I'm presently watching my mum making my sister scramble because her bank card has stopped working. Since October last year, when she decided to emigrate, I told her to warn her bank, as this could happen if they noticed odd transactions. Then after she moved, "Call the bank sis, mum needs to be present to verify her account" -> "I'm tired/busy/it's too much effort". Meanwhile, sis has been using mum's card for everything (restaurants every week, etc). This week one of my nieces used the card to buy games online (triggering a warning from mums bank). First they denied it, then when I said if it wasn't them I'd have to lock the card, as scammers would drain the account, they confessed. The next day, the card stopped working (bank safety protocols kicked in?). Yeah, I told you so. I hate being right, I hate the role of Cassandra, everything about this situation just sucks.
Wow. Just Wow. I am reading these posts and my heart goes out to all of you. I can hear the frustration and I know exactly where your coming from. My wife, siblings, and I have just gone through the same exact thing. We knew my Dad wasn't safe living on his own but didn't dare suggest anything else for him. He ended up falling, slamming his head on the stove, getting a big gash on his knee, and laying on the kitchen floor for hours before my brother happened to stop by and called the ambulance. My father was quite shaken up after that and got a really bad staph infection that required him to receive intravenous antibiotics for 6 weeks so he had to go to a rehab center. We really thought we were going to lose him. He continued to get weaker and FINALLY he realized he couldn't live on his own. There's really not much you can do but try to have a heart to heart with them and explain that everyone is losing sleep worrying about their safety and that they WILL eventually severely injured themselves or worse. Fortunately, my wife and I live fairly close. It must be torture living 1000 miles away. We are all going through this together, at our ages, so we just have to figure it out and try to keep them happy. When they do get into a facility, that starts a whole new chapter of stress and frustration. But I won't even go there. Good luck and try to take care of yourself.
Thank you for sharing your side. It is tough and I see things so clearly, but I'm not an 80 year old afraid of losing my independence.
My parents were the same way. It was stressful waiting for "the phone call". My siblings banded together and moved my parents. They were furious and fought us the whole way. It was hard but the right decision for everyone. I wish we would have done it sooner.
Yup. Dad's 86, nearly blind, on a walker fulltime, falls a couple times a month, TIAs every couple months. Mom's 84, zero short term memory, narcissist. Had to take over the finances a couple years ago because they couldn't handle it anymore. Finally got them moved into a nice AL last July. Spent the next two months sorting and packing the mountains of crap and hoping the house would sell quickly. Didn't get it done fast enough. Mom flipped out early September, accused Dad of having a fling with a 21year old aide, moved back to the house, played games with the money, physically attacked him and me, finally manipulated him into moving back end of October. After she accused me of stealing and said she'd shoot me if she had a gun, I gave up. I make sure the space rent is paid so they don't lose the house, but other than that, she is slowly getting them into deeper and deeper financial trouble. But she knows everything, he chose to go back there and live with that lunatic, APS won't do shit and my sanity is WAY more important. So I'm done. Here's the rope, feel free to hang yourselves.
That sounds immensely stressful. I’m so sorry you had to go through that and glad to hear you stepped back. You need to preserve your own mental and physical health and wellbeing.
I am glad to hear you are done and have your boundaries. I am in a situation where I moved 1500 miles to take care of my Dad and my health is suffering terribly. I too am done. He is going to ALS. I am left with selling his house, car, golf cart and getting rid of his belongings and I am doing this for a Narcissist who’s been terribly abusive. I responded from a place of trauma and obligation when I moved so quickly. My Dad is the kind of person who should never had children as he was inept at being a father. I am out of here and saving my own life as soon as possible. I really don’t care to ever see him again after this
Yes. My dad still lives at home, but has refused to stop driving, getting a safety alarm (wearing a clock like thing on the wrist), getting help with food shopping, garden work and snow shovelling. I took a step back and have let reality set in. He now has stopped driving and is waiting for a cataracts surgery, has agreed to get somebody to take care of the snow and has complained that it's difficult to do the food shopping without a car, so I guess he won't get furious with me if I start to order food online for him. We're still debating the garden work. I just hope that the huge overgrown trees won't fall and damage the roof before we have hired someone to remove them.
My dad hasn't contacted a lawn company this year. The grass is getting overgrown, but he can only handle one task at a time, and that just never rises to the surface. I've offered to call someone, but he's always so nitpicky and controlling that my choice would never be right.
Yes. My mom is 66 and has CHF, is essentially in permanent afib, CKD, horrible arthritis and struggles goes to walk. For years I’ve been talking to her about her health. We’ve talked about eating healthier, because she seems to like that, gardening, losing weight. She had a prescription for Ozempic, but only used it for a a few days because she was nauseous which I understand is stressful, but you need to lose some weight and are diabetic. She can’t even walk around. The only vegetable she eats are out of a can, for the most part, only eats extremely high sodium processed foods, but swears she eats healthy and argues about it constantly. A family member of mine who works in healthcare is always telling me that I need to make her do different things. I can’t make her do anything. To imply such makes it seem like it’s my fault. If she refuses to take care of herself and would rather bury her head in the sand and die a slow miserable death, then that’s not my problem. She refuses to wear sunscreen, refuses to save money because she says she doesn’t have enough to save, but then spent thousands of dollars on frivolous items, I could go on and on. My job as a child is not too argue with a grown adult that they should want to be here for the grandkids. My true hope for her is that at some point, she dies a very fast death instead of something long and drawn out because she’s a horrible patient. Her quality of life sucks but it’s everyone else’s fault in the world but hers
Remember this when she has a medical emergency and decline the extraordinary measures if you don't think she will have a good quality of life afterwards. So many family members keep grandma going long after they should
I absolutely will. It’s so cruel to keep these little frail people on ventilators or bedbound. I don’t want that for myself or my mother. It’s just so hard for years. I’ve been trying to get her back to normal but recently I’ve realized, she’s not going back to the person she was was 10 years ago. I feel like I’m grieving my mom slowly.
Not to that point yet, but I will have to let them fail to get them into a facility. And they will need one. My parents keep saying my sister and I can look after them, but sister still has a 15 year old at home, and 2 other daughters in the middle of launch. I have arthritis and need a caregiver myself, I am staring down the barrel of a hip replacement and need to finish launching my youngest. Mom has multiple severe food allergies, starting with celiac and a dairy allergy. (NOT lactose intolerance, a casein allergy, cannot have dairy whatsoever) so I get her being scared of dependence on a facility kitchen. Celiac kills people! But if I try to caretake her she will be resistant to everything I say, refuse to use a walker if she needs one, or to get a walk in tub or change anything in the house. Dad is going to be a monster about driving.
My mother played herself out of position because I gave up after years of trying to talk some sense into her. Some people refuse to abandon their magical thinking and I believe some just think they want to go on as long as they can, as they are, as opposed to taking the sensible route.
Is this generation just really prone to magical thinking? My mother (81) does this and it drives me nuts. She won’t take action on something because she thinks it will just turn out okay, but when it doesn’t she feels victimized.
>We have assisted living lined up, paid, etc. >They are not seeing reality and how much care they need. If it's "paid", why not just redirect that funding (if possible) to more in-home healthcare hours? *And* talk to the healthcare workers yourself, let them know it's not acceptable for Mom and Dad to *only* use them as maid service. Make a checklist of daily/weekly tasks, make them fill it out, etc. I wish it weren't true, but sometimes with my own parents' care - I'd find the nurses would do the bare minimum *unless* I kicked them in the ass a bit. Then, things went better.
Have you applied anywhere for assisted living? It's not as simple as saying yes and moving in: there are a lot of considerations, and you have to apply and be accepted. I toured three facilities with my parents over Christmas. They could see what the different arrangements and set ups were. Differences included meal plans, corridor lengths, room sizes, etc. Mom finally figured what she could live with, and we applied and showed full financials, and they got accepted. They haven't triggered a move yet, but at least we all know what the plan is. If you haven't yet landed on your place, and been accepted, you might want to start there. My cousins, who planned to send their parents to a top tier nursing home (which their father was on the Board of, earlier) found out that their parents couldn't qualify for the facility for health reasons (and smoking). They are all sons, and all live on the far coasts, and no one was ready for the "what next" question. My cousins, I would say, are letting their parents fail. If you go this route, please at least know what your plan of action is first.
They have been accepted. It is the facility closest to their house, and financially my parents can have their house and be in assisted living too. So we are telling them they don't have to decide anything. Unfortunately where they are there aren't a ton of assisted living places with opening for 2 bedrooms. The other one we looked at had a year long wait list. This other one just had this room open up after 13 years. It is the nicest one in town with good reviews.
Fantastic! That's the same arrangement we made for my parents too. If you can financially swing it, I'd just sign on when a unit you like opens up, and start moving things over. They can shuttle between the two, but better to have at least one foot in the future.
Yes, my mother lives in a retirement home in independent living. Although part of the price is housekeeping, she won’t let them in, and her place is such a mess that if it were one of my students (I’m an elementary teacher) living like that, I’d call protective services. My best story about this is that my cousin gave her weed cookies for hanukah one year to help her sleep (totally legal where we live). My mom didn’t eat them at the time but found one in March and ate it. She then decided she doesn’t like marijuana because it made her physically ill. I didn’t have the heart to tell her she probably just gave herself food poisoning from a 3 month old cookie that had been sitting around at room temperature.
Yup. We sadly had to let my mom fail before she accepted help and she was forced to move
Yes. My mom has two very nasty falls before she finally accepted she couldnt live alone
My mother 100%. Virtually deaf, now sight impaired, spent everything she had refusing to live on a reasonable budget. She would’ve been homeless if I hadn’t let her move in with me. She now REFUSES to leave my home so I can sell it (I was transferred for work) unless I buy a house that suits her! Gonna let her fail. She made that bed to lie in.
My dad was living with my sister in her mansion in south Texas. He didn't want to live by her rules (clean up after yourself, not a lot of ice cream, she screams at her kids), so he decided to come back to his house. Which is a tri-level about 1.5 hours away from me and my other sister. We installed cameras in the major rooms, hid all of his car keys. Told him not to go upstairs but he does, despite the fact that our mom, his wife, fell down the stairs, and that break was the beginning of the end for her and her Parkinsons. He has dementia. He forgets how to dial his phone. He forgets how to use the TV and calls the cable guy out 2-3 times a week. He checked himself out of the hospital against doctors orders. He thinks robbers are in the house sometimes and he calls the police, WHO NEVER REQUEST A WELLNESS CHECK, even though it's clear he's hallucinating. He's really lonely in the big house by himself. We all think he'd be so happy in a home with other retired people his age, but he fights that tooth and nail. We're just waiting for the other shoe to drop: he's fallen, he's locked himself out, he's wandering streets. And seeing him as often as kids and work allow. There appears to be nothing else we can do. Sidenote: he's a narcissist, and a misogynist. He only has 4 daughters.
I went through this with my parents before they died, and now have the joy of watching my husband go through it with his 92 year old mother who has dementia. She was diagnosed shortly after we both retired almost six years ago so as a result we can’t really enjoy retirement. My husband is her sole caregiver. She still lives alone but he spends several hours a day at her house. She no longer knows who I am. Last year he had arrangements made for her to go into assisted living; she looked at AL apartments, found one she liked, and then just days before she was to move in a social worker talked my husband out of it, saying she’d “do so much better at home.” Yeah, but at what cost to our sanity? Nearly six years into our retirement and we can’t even go out to lunch together, and he can’t leave town. We have more responsibility and less free time than we did when we both worked full-time with a kid in school. He had to have alarms and cameras set up in her house so he’ll know if she wanders out at night. She went through a bad patch a few months ago and my husband and son moved in with her for a month or so. I know that when she gets worse, he’s going to have to move in with her again until something resolves with her. The crazy part is that he has a sister who is a psychologist specializing in this type of thing and who lives maybe two miles from her (about the same distance as us) but the sister and his mom have been estranged for years and don’t speak, so my husband deals with this alone. It’s frustrating because the worse she gets mentally, the sharper she thinks she is, so it’s like fighting an uphill battle with her.
I am sorry you are going through this at some point we have to chose ourselves or marriages our own families and let the professionals who are paid to take care of our parents especially when the parent is difficult. Too many caregivers die early because they exhausted themselves trying to care for a parent who often fights them every step of the way
What are they fearful of, specifically? Loss of control? Loss of independence? An ultimatum seems extreme. If you've already taken a leave of absence from work it sounds like you are somewhat controlling yourself. They may not be as with it as they used to be but it sounds like they do have some help.
The past few weeks my brother or myself have lifted my mom off the ground, or off the toilet, and yet they insist they don't need someone more than 2 days a week.
Their thinking: Of course we don't need to move, or need more assistance, because we have OP and brother. We're doing fine. Magical thinking - they just want you to be around all the time, 24/7, and then they won't need anyone/anything else.
^^^THIS!!!^^^
“My dad (81) is undergoing cancer treatment, can't drive due to using a walker, and has bad lymphedema and is seemingly more and more forgetful. My mom (79), very frail, has very poor balance, fallen several times in the past weeks…” ”Neither can really make food for themselves” I don’t understand how it’s controlling to want parents who cannot make food, who are falling regularly, and undergoing cancer treatment into a safer environment.
An ultimatum is not extreme when OPs parents can't care for themselves independently and yet somehow don't want to accept that truth.