Best wishes to all struggling with either wheelchair use, or pushing the damn' things. Distinctly remembering tipping my mother out once (unintentionally).
When Mum was first losing her mobility, she and Dad came over to visit us in Belfast, and we hired a wheelchair for her for any longer distances. One day we went round the gardens at Rowallane House, and D. did most of the wheelchair-pushing, a lot of which was on grass. By the time we got home he was like a wet rag.
Reading Hearing Aids Pros and Cons and it makes a recent incident with my mother particularly depressing.
I’ve been thinking she has some hearing loss for several months. Last week we went to the ear doctor and she had an audiology test (with the specialist audiologist). Comes out of it and says, “well, I have excellent hearing.” So I’m thinking “huh, I guess I was wrong about all those situations that made me think she was losing her hearing.”
Then she went in to see the main ear doctor and as she was coming out I heard him say “we talked about your hearing loss.” Oh. So she does have hearing loss. And she was just lying ^H^H^H^H^H narcissistically distorting/denying the truth when she said the audiology test showed she has excellent hearing.
My mother hates having me know anything about her health or interactions with doctors, so I don’t think there’s very much I can do or change. But the Hearing Aids thread emphasizes getting hearing aids early and wearing them all the time, neither of which ever in a million years will she consent to.
The thread says that if you don’t, your brain’s ability to process sound atrophies so even if you get aids later, your brain can’t use them because it has lost the ability to make sense of the sound.
This is part and parcel of a long term problem where I want her to take care of herself and she just... won’t. Or at least, won’t in the ways that I think make sense. She has her own whole series of specialists and doctors but there are things that I think would be helpful that she just absolutely refuses.
So I periodically think maybe the solution is that I have to let go of what I think would be useful for her. But I don’t know.
Ah, sorry to double-post but a separate thing, that is another won’t take care of herself issue:
She’s been having very bad leg pain and extreme trouble walking for a couple of weeks.
Background: I live in My Town and she lives with me but she maintains an apartment outside Big City (350 miles away) and has her specialists and main doctor in Big City. So once or twice a year we spend a week at Her Apartment and she has a round of appointments.
We were there last week. On Friday she had appointment with Main Doctor and she assured me that she would ask him about her leg problems. So we go in, and she’s normally using a cane or a walker but last week in Big City we used a portable wheelchair to make it easier to get all over the place.
And so I wheel her into Main Doctor’s office and then go wait in the waiting room because she won’t let me stay in with her for her appointments.
So she comes out and we go to the car and I ask her what the doctor said about her leg. And she tells me she didn’t ask him. And I’m thinking “why the f*ck not” and also “what kind of charlatan has a patient come in in a wheelchair and doesn’t ask why” and also (given the ear doctor incident from the day before) “I actually have no idea whether he did or didn’t say anything because I can’t rely on her reporting.”
So she says she’ll call him from My Town and ask when we get home.
Well... today she had a doctor appointment in My Town for something else and the doctor called me in and says “she’s having extreme pain in her leg, she should either go see her regular doctor or go to the emergency room to get it looked at.”
And of course she doesn’t have a regular doctor here in My Town because stubborn narcissistic oppositional defiant... grrrr....
So we’re off to the ER.
I don’t even know what my question is. I don’t know how to make sense of all this or what I should or could do.
I really do think you need to put your Mum in a home. Alright, if she can afford it, the sort of home where they serve you your favourite drink before dinner. They do exist, I have been around one and sat outside another failing to get up the courage to go in. Under the present circumstances, you cannot look after her. That is because she does not allow you to have the information you need to look after her. Yes I know that is hard. My sister and I have done it for both parents in the last fifteen months. Even so, we are accompanying Dad to every doctor's appointment he has so we know what is being said. Dad does not recall what is said and his home has difficulty finding someone to go with him.
It seems odd that she's still on the books of a GP in a place 350 miles from where she lives - do they know that she only spends a couple of weeks a year there? It would be like living in Edinburgh but having a doctor in London.
Is there any way you can contact the doctor and maybe get them to advise her to register with one nearer to where she spends most of her time?
@Autenrieth Road is your mother in denial about her likelihood of being able to go home to her place in Big City? Is she refusing to accept and acknowledge her infirmities? If she is, she's not going to accept that she needs to move into a home, easily. Can you talk to your sister and say you are concerned about your mother's state of denial and plan between you a way for her to accept some on this.
Another option, last year, I took the risk of writing to my dad's doctor to tell him the things that I was sure my dad was not saying. It felt horrible but it was effective.
My AP (not sure I've been on this thread since the new ship, even, but the story continues and grows sadder) continues to grow weaker, more confused and unhappy, but more and more determined to lie in the bed she has made (literally as well), staying in her own home, snapping at all who offer help. She loves it when she hears words of admiration, but the cost is so great. The ambulance was called last week because she had fallen out of bed and lay there for hours until she realised she had a medic-alarm around her neck and that might just be worth using.
The ambos got her up, admired her, and left.
But when she has been assessed she screws up just enough functionality to receive further admiration and adulation and be assured all is well. My sister and I are tearing our hair out. Our brother admires and adulates.
Thank you everyone SO MUCH. Will post later with more specific thanks, too stressed out right now. Trying to figure out how to get mother into assisted living. Trying to find a social worker. Will be getting an elder attorney. The hardest hardest hardest thing is developing and holding boundaries.
Zappa, yes, that sounds exactly like my mother. Sorry to hear you’re going through this.
I have been there. The final straw was my sister snapping and making clear to the hospital that while Dad was not really medically ill and we knew that, there was no way he was safe in his own home. My Dad then went through paranoia, I agreed to him being detained in hospital and is now out in 'temporary' carehome until he is able to go home. At the moment we just need to keep reminding him that he needs to be able to stand at the counter to make breakfast for him to agree that he still needs to be in the home. He is largely wheelchair-bound at present although can walk tiny distances with a frame.
Zappa, those alarms usually have fall alerts in them which can kick in when sensor shows that wearer appears to have fallen. They trigger the calls to the usual contacts listed. Perhaps you need to investigate if hers needs updating to this facility?
Autenrieth Road, please if you can now try to rest before you face the next onslaught. (The mix of ageing parents and hospital discharges must ring the same alarm bells in carers the world over.)
@Autenrieth Road that sounds like a very tough decision to have made, but a very sensible one. I hope a suitable placement can be found for your mother soon. @Zappa, Hope your mother gets the help she needs before she does anything more serious. At least she has an alarm. My mother refuses any such things as she thinks they are for old people.
I've booked my mother in for a couple of weeks respite in a home near me, with a view to maybe making it more long term. At the same time my sister in law has put mum's name down for a place near them that sounds like it will be more suitable as her dementia progresses. Mum is getting more and more unhappy in her flat and needs a lot more company than she is getting at the moment, so this seems a sensible if expensive thing to do.
>old people<
My father comments periodically that a "a lot of the residents here are quite decrepit". He's 91 and "quite decrepit" himself. I told him he's no ballerina himself some time this year, and he huffed at me and I of course said it was a joke, which it is, though a large bit backhanded.
>adulation<
He absolutely refuses "outside help" because apparently I'll do it all won't I, and my sisters collude with him from away. They're nicer than me apparently. Except when I'm leaving, then I'm a good fellow. -- with great effort, he's revised his will so that my dead uncle isn't an executor, only I have to sign things after consulting with my sisters. The task of informing my hopeless brother of anything is also mine to do. Co-signing with people who like 4000km away is ridiculous. I find that I actually like this lawyer, though the bill has not arrived yet. He updated a power of attorney as well.
We had his 32nd eye appointment today since the glaucoma became ridiculous, which was 2 per month for an endless period but now every 2 months since the second laser-beam-drill-holes-in-eye-let-pressure-out surgery. Pressures after the second surgery are holding thank god and so is his bad vision.
He told me about the Notre Dame fire after the eye appointment, and how, after the war, he saw the Kaiser Wilhelm Dom (the bombed out cathedral in Berlin, not of the antiquity of Paris's but perhaps as impressive), in which he was baptised (his family fled in 1936 or 7) and how this stopped him from church going permanently. I never knew that. If God could allow the church to be destroyed and allowed Hitler, and allowed Germans to descend into animals, and a few other things that didn't quite make sense as facts but do as emotion - how could we go to churches which support governments which do such bad things? I left for the office later thinking of "ballerinas and Hitler" and wondering why that sounded artsy and crazy at once. I don't sleep before these eye appts, I should try to admit my worry to myself in the daytime so I don't do it at night and then am all silly head the next day.
I haven't had the heart to post on this thread, it takes me back to such dark places before I managed to get the Dowager into care. ((())) for all of you struggling, I know the paths you have trodden/are still treading.
Went to visit her today - she seems very frail and no longer zooms up the corridor with her walking frame. Luckily one of the residents was having a birthday party (he was 80, but I'd have been happy to believe him a decade or two older <eeek>) so that took up a good portion of the visit.
The only bad part came when I said 'oh, you still have the Mothering Sunday rose I sent you'
'Yes' she said, 'that's from A' (my deceased alcoholic brother)
'No, I sent it. It was nothing to do with A'
'Well, but you picked it out for him, I expect'
'Mum, A is dead' but at least I refrained from adding that dead or alive he probably wouldn't have remembered to send even a card.
So, @";"NOprophet_NØprofit" we all have angelic siblings to contend with, and funnily enough they are never the people who do all the work!
(but she did say later she'd never have managed without me...)
Don't beat yourself up, Mrs. S - from what I've heard of people's experiences with their APs' various types of dementia, it's not uncommon for them to mix up their children, and to appear unappreciative of the ones who they see regularly.
Well at least the Dowager kept the rose Mrs S. My mother chucked out the flowers I sent her as she said they weren't very nice. I couldn't find them to see if that was true, but the company that sent them did refund my money. Last year she liked the flowers but thought they were from my brother so I know exactly how you feel.
Well done for saying you have done as much as you can, @Autenrieth Road @Sarasa that sounds a sensible solution, but not easy @The Intrepid Mrs S, you did brilliantly dealing with your mother for years - and who knows what gets scrambled in their brains.
(((Hugs))) for you all. I keep an eye on this thread and it takes me back to the years we had five elders to see to, one after the other. (Mr Boogs had a Mum and a step Mum).
They are all gone now and we really miss them.
Nobody at all to care for this Easter so I have joined Contact the Elderly. Some U.K. Shipmate’s elders may benefit from this? Our group of lovelies are all 90+ years old. I’m doing a meal for six here a week on Sunday. The organisers do everything, Admin, driving etc etc. Our group are all really young apart from me, a real breath of fresh air! I am a host and all the hosts do is put on a meal. Of course I’m doing potato pie and mushy peas (what else?) followed by brownies and/or fruit and cream.
We bought a wheelchair van for Mum - they are surprisingly cheap, ours had an electric ramp. I think they are cheap because they are bought - like we did - then sold when they are no longer needed. We didn’t care about the price, we just wanted it out of the way.
Pushing wheelchairs makes you realise how uneven the ground can be!
The Dowager had yet another fall and hit her head yet again (no wonder things get scrambled in there!) The paramedics were called but could only find a small cut, which of course bled like anything. I think she must fall in the bathroom, which is well provided with things to hold on to, which is how she can get back on her feet and go to find someone, to tell them that she's 'done something very silly'.
Thank you all Today my SiL and nephew are due to visit Mum - I'm not sure she really likes them very much, so I hope she keeps it together for half an hour or so!
For a few days now, I've been thinking about a lovely friend with a really difficult mother - confused, stopped washing or changing clothes (of which she too has far too many, etc, etc) and not much money - and wondering whether she might find this thread a useful outlet for frustration. Then yesterday I saw from a FB post that her mother was in hospital after a fall. Poor L, poor L's Mum.
@The Intrepid Mrs S . Hope the Dowager is none the worse for wear after the bash on her head. It is a worry. My mother in law used to fall a lot, and though she was lucky not to break anything the bashes on the head did make her more confused. She's either been more carefully or just lucky over the last eighteen months and doesn't seem to have declined further.
Spent an exhausting day with my mum, sister in law and nephew yesterday. I arranged meeting them in a local café , having got mum out of her flat early as the person who is hopefully buying it was coming round to do some measuring up. As mum didn't know about the sale I didn't want her there. She spent the hour or so in the café while we were waiting asking me who we were meeting, and did she know them. As soon as they turned up she did know who they were, phew. After that we went into the local big shopping town to look for various things for mum, me and SiL and took mum out for lunch. There SiL pretended to have had a text from the Estate Agents went off to 'call' them and came back to say we had a buyer for the flat. She used to be an actress and her job is in PR so she did a very good job at being convincing. Mum was delighted but then started fretting that she hadn't got a good price the flat (she hasn't and we're fudging that one) and what will she do with all her stuff. I see rocky times ahead!
Brought mum home from hospital. She’s living with me again. Pricing assisted living places. They cost crazy amounts of money. Now at least I know that what I provide for my mother is worth $7000 a month.
Reading up the thread and as AR says, so good to have others on the journey. AP's alarm went off this morning and the ambos or maybe the medicc alarm people rang around all the very sleepy next of kin. Eventually an hour later they tried again, got kuruman (with whom I share a bed) and informed a now awake me. They promised to call back with an update but there's been no further information ... this happened last year, too, and the alarm people did not, depite promises, update the call.
AP was taken off to hospital earlier this week, too, following a collapse ... but still refuses help. It's getting ugly. We'll see what eventuates today.
I have now - having ascertained she sent the ambos a way again once they'd got her upright - persuaded her that the pain* she is experiencing is becoming greater she must call them again as soon as it becomes unbearable again. I have also persuaded her to accept what I have euphemistically called "respite care." It may be a break-through.
* it seems to be an internal pain and I am wondering about lung ... or some other internal organ. Hmm. The investigations when it presented last week were all external pokes and prods and found nothing.
@zappa - how is your mum now? It's such a worry when you are too far away to be able to dash over and do something, and you are a lot further away from your mum than I am from mine. @Autenrieth Road - a home is expensive but sometimes in the end looking after an AP becomes too much and they are what is needed. Don't forget to look after yourself as well as your mum.
Things are moving with getting mum into care. We have a place and a date and mum thinks she's coming to stay near me for a while until the place near my brothers is sorted.
I was saying to my husband that though mum didn't want to be in a home it's what she needs. He said it is probably what she wants too even if she doesn't realise it. She's bored, lonely, hates housework and cooking. The home should solve those problems.
It won't be before time. At the weekend she broke a lamp and threw the broken pieces out the window which caused the neighbours to complain to the management committee of her flats. She then trotted off to the local pub and had a couple of drinks with some random men, one of whom brought her home. he seems honourable. He told her she shouldn't do such things. She just isn't safe at home alone anymore.
That’s a worry, and a new worry at that. Glad things are moving. When we had dad taken into care as it was physically beyond mum to continue, he was fine, much to our thanks. We had all the help for her but she needed more. He told me a few days later that she may have walked to shops, or be ironing or be in bathroom. No idea he was not at home.
About three months later, she told me she was just realising what a strain it had been on her. That was after strain had lifted. He would try to escape house in middle of night. Inappropriately clothed for mountain weather, or no clothes. He lit a fire in wardrobe as he thought it was a big fireplace. And more.
Sarasa, if they would stay at home and keep out of trouble that would be one thing! but they won't...
Watching an ambulance programme last night - it featured a 94 y.o., blind and almost deaf, hadn't been to the GP in 40 years, lived on salads, refused any help at home except what her daughter and grand-daughter (who lived at a distance and visited twice weekly) could provide.
She fell and lay all night, jammed against a wall on a landing - if it hadn't been her daughter's day to visit, she might have been there days. Anyway after 10 days in hospital she was in a home and happy as a sandboy - and I bet her relatives were mightily relieved. Why does it always seem to take a crisis?!
Comments
I’ve been thinking she has some hearing loss for several months. Last week we went to the ear doctor and she had an audiology test (with the specialist audiologist). Comes out of it and says, “well, I have excellent hearing.” So I’m thinking “huh, I guess I was wrong about all those situations that made me think she was losing her hearing.”
Then she went in to see the main ear doctor and as she was coming out I heard him say “we talked about your hearing loss.” Oh. So she does have hearing loss. And she was just lying ^H^H^H^H^H narcissistically distorting/denying the truth when she said the audiology test showed she has excellent hearing.
My mother hates having me know anything about her health or interactions with doctors, so I don’t think there’s very much I can do or change. But the Hearing Aids thread emphasizes getting hearing aids early and wearing them all the time, neither of which ever in a million years will she consent to.
The thread says that if you don’t, your brain’s ability to process sound atrophies so even if you get aids later, your brain can’t use them because it has lost the ability to make sense of the sound.
This is part and parcel of a long term problem where I want her to take care of herself and she just... won’t. Or at least, won’t in the ways that I think make sense. She has her own whole series of specialists and doctors but there are things that I think would be helpful that she just absolutely refuses.
So I periodically think maybe the solution is that I have to let go of what I think would be useful for her. But I don’t know.
She’s been having very bad leg pain and extreme trouble walking for a couple of weeks.
Background: I live in My Town and she lives with me but she maintains an apartment outside Big City (350 miles away) and has her specialists and main doctor in Big City. So once or twice a year we spend a week at Her Apartment and she has a round of appointments.
We were there last week. On Friday she had appointment with Main Doctor and she assured me that she would ask him about her leg problems. So we go in, and she’s normally using a cane or a walker but last week in Big City we used a portable wheelchair to make it easier to get all over the place.
And so I wheel her into Main Doctor’s office and then go wait in the waiting room because she won’t let me stay in with her for her appointments.
So she comes out and we go to the car and I ask her what the doctor said about her leg. And she tells me she didn’t ask him. And I’m thinking “why the f*ck not” and also “what kind of charlatan has a patient come in in a wheelchair and doesn’t ask why” and also (given the ear doctor incident from the day before) “I actually have no idea whether he did or didn’t say anything because I can’t rely on her reporting.”
So she says she’ll call him from My Town and ask when we get home.
Well... today she had a doctor appointment in My Town for something else and the doctor called me in and says “she’s having extreme pain in her leg, she should either go see her regular doctor or go to the emergency room to get it looked at.”
And of course she doesn’t have a regular doctor here in My Town because stubborn narcissistic oppositional defiant... grrrr....
So we’re off to the ER.
I don’t even know what my question is. I don’t know how to make sense of all this or what I should or could do.
Thanks for listening.
It seems odd that she's still on the books of a GP in a place 350 miles from where she lives - do they know that she only spends a couple of weeks a year there? It would be like living in Edinburgh but having a doctor in London.
Is there any way you can contact the doctor and maybe get them to advise her to register with one nearer to where she spends most of her time?
The ambos got her up, admired her, and left.
But when she has been assessed she screws up just enough functionality to receive further admiration and adulation and be assured all is well. My sister and I are tearing our hair out. Our brother admires and adulates.
Zappa, yes, that sounds exactly like my mother. Sorry to hear you’re going through this.
I have been there. The final straw was my sister snapping and making clear to the hospital that while Dad was not really medically ill and we knew that, there was no way he was safe in his own home. My Dad then went through paranoia, I agreed to him being detained in hospital and is now out in 'temporary' carehome until he is able to go home. At the moment we just need to keep reminding him that he needs to be able to stand at the counter to make breakfast for him to agree that he still needs to be in the home. He is largely wheelchair-bound at present although can walk tiny distances with a frame.
Well done. Prayers that a solution may be found.
:votive:
@Zappa, Hope your mother gets the help she needs before she does anything more serious. At least she has an alarm. My mother refuses any such things as she thinks they are for old people.
I've booked my mother in for a couple of weeks respite in a home near me, with a view to maybe making it more long term. At the same time my sister in law has put mum's name down for a place near them that sounds like it will be more suitable as her dementia progresses. Mum is getting more and more unhappy in her flat and needs a lot more company than she is getting at the moment, so this seems a sensible if expensive thing to do.
My father comments periodically that a "a lot of the residents here are quite decrepit". He's 91 and "quite decrepit" himself. I told him he's no ballerina himself some time this year, and he huffed at me and I of course said it was a joke, which it is, though a large bit backhanded.
>adulation<
He absolutely refuses "outside help" because apparently I'll do it all won't I, and my sisters collude with him from away. They're nicer than me apparently. Except when I'm leaving, then I'm a good fellow. -- with great effort, he's revised his will so that my dead uncle isn't an executor, only I have to sign things after consulting with my sisters. The task of informing my hopeless brother of anything is also mine to do. Co-signing with people who like 4000km away is ridiculous. I find that I actually like this lawyer, though the bill has not arrived yet. He updated a power of attorney as well.
We had his 32nd eye appointment today since the glaucoma became ridiculous, which was 2 per month for an endless period but now every 2 months since the second laser-beam-drill-holes-in-eye-let-pressure-out surgery. Pressures after the second surgery are holding thank god and so is his bad vision.
He told me about the Notre Dame fire after the eye appointment, and how, after the war, he saw the Kaiser Wilhelm Dom (the bombed out cathedral in Berlin, not of the antiquity of Paris's but perhaps as impressive), in which he was baptised (his family fled in 1936 or 7) and how this stopped him from church going permanently. I never knew that. If God could allow the church to be destroyed and allowed Hitler, and allowed Germans to descend into animals, and a few other things that didn't quite make sense as facts but do as emotion - how could we go to churches which support governments which do such bad things? I left for the office later thinking of "ballerinas and Hitler" and wondering why that sounded artsy and crazy at once. I don't sleep before these eye appts, I should try to admit my worry to myself in the daytime so I don't do it at night and then am all silly head the next day.
Well done, that is hard to do. As others say go easy on yourself, it is hard enough to do without beating yourself up. You did the best thing for her.
Went to visit her today - she seems very frail and no longer zooms up the corridor with her walking frame. Luckily one of the residents was having a birthday party (he was 80, but I'd have been happy to believe him a decade or two older <eeek>) so that took up a good portion of the visit.
The only bad part came when I said 'oh, you still have the Mothering Sunday rose I sent you'
'Yes' she said, 'that's from A' (my deceased alcoholic brother)
'No, I sent it. It was nothing to do with A'
'Well, but you picked it out for him, I expect'
'Mum, A is dead' but at least I refrained from adding that dead or alive he probably wouldn't have remembered to send even a card.
So, @";"NOprophet_NØprofit" we all have angelic siblings to contend with, and funnily enough they are never the people who do all the work!
(but she did say later she'd never have managed without me...)
Mrs. S, obviously Not A Very Nice Person
Thirded.
@Sarasa that sounds a sensible solution, but not easy
@The Intrepid Mrs S, you did brilliantly dealing with your mother for years - and who knows what gets scrambled in their brains.
They are all gone now and we really miss them.
Nobody at all to care for this Easter so I have joined Contact the Elderly. Some U.K. Shipmate’s elders may benefit from this? Our group of lovelies are all 90+ years old. I’m doing a meal for six here a week on Sunday. The organisers do everything, Admin, driving etc etc. Our group are all really young apart from me, a real breath of fresh air! I am a host and all the hosts do is put on a meal. Of course I’m doing potato pie and mushy peas (what else?) followed by brownies and/or fruit and cream.
We bought a wheelchair van for Mum - they are surprisingly cheap, ours had an electric ramp. I think they are cheap because they are bought - like we did - then sold when they are no longer needed. We didn’t care about the price, we just wanted it out of the way.
Pushing wheelchairs makes you realise how uneven the ground can be!
Oh dear...
(and it solidary with her too as I just averted a fall myself today).
For a few days now, I've been thinking about a lovely friend with a really difficult mother - confused, stopped washing or changing clothes (of which she too has far too many, etc, etc) and not much money - and wondering whether she might find this thread a useful outlet for frustration. Then yesterday I saw from a FB post that her mother was in hospital after a fall. Poor L, poor L's Mum.
Mrs. S, grateful for many mercies
Spent an exhausting day with my mum, sister in law and nephew yesterday. I arranged meeting them in a local café , having got mum out of her flat early as the person who is hopefully buying it was coming round to do some measuring up. As mum didn't know about the sale I didn't want her there. She spent the hour or so in the café while we were waiting asking me who we were meeting, and did she know them. As soon as they turned up she did know who they were, phew. After that we went into the local big shopping town to look for various things for mum, me and SiL and took mum out for lunch. There SiL pretended to have had a text from the Estate Agents went off to 'call' them and came back to say we had a buyer for the flat. She used to be an actress and her job is in PR so she did a very good job at being convincing. Mum was delighted but then started fretting that she hadn't got a good price the flat (she hasn't and we're fudging that one) and what will she do with all her stuff. I see rocky times ahead!
AP was taken off to hospital earlier this week, too, following a collapse ... but still refuses help. It's getting ugly. We'll see what eventuates today.
* it seems to be an internal pain and I am wondering about lung ... or some other internal organ. Hmm. The investigations when it presented last week were all external pokes and prods and found nothing.
@Autenrieth Road - a home is expensive but sometimes in the end looking after an AP becomes too much and they are what is needed. Don't forget to look after yourself as well as your mum.
Things are moving with getting mum into care. We have a place and a date and mum thinks she's coming to stay near me for a while until the place near my brothers is sorted.
I was saying to my husband that though mum didn't want to be in a home it's what she needs. He said it is probably what she wants too even if she doesn't realise it. She's bored, lonely, hates housework and cooking. The home should solve those problems.
It won't be before time. At the weekend she broke a lamp and threw the broken pieces out the window which caused the neighbours to complain to the management committee of her flats. She then trotted off to the local pub and had a couple of drinks with some random men, one of whom brought her home. he seems honourable. He told her she shouldn't do such things. She just isn't safe at home alone anymore.
About three months later, she told me she was just realising what a strain it had been on her. That was after strain had lifted. He would try to escape house in middle of night. Inappropriately clothed for mountain weather, or no clothes. He lit a fire in wardrobe as he thought it was a big fireplace. And more.
Watching an ambulance programme last night - it featured a 94 y.o., blind and almost deaf, hadn't been to the GP in 40 years, lived on salads, refused any help at home except what her daughter and grand-daughter (who lived at a distance and visited twice weekly) could provide.
She fell and lay all night, jammed against a wall on a landing - if it hadn't been her daughter's day to visit, she might have been there days. Anyway after 10 days in hospital she was in a home and happy as a sandboy - and I bet her relatives were mightily relieved. Why does it always seem to take a crisis?!
Mrs. S, sighing