I've given up 4 months of my life to take care of my mom. I put my life on hold, took family leave, neglected my sons, neglected me, neglected my friends, and just neglected life trying to take care of my mom since October while my sister never even took any time off.
My mother gave me DPOA Financial and it's been that way since October. I've taken care of everything with little help from my sister. Every time I take a break (3-4 days away) my sister would get sick and have to go to the hospital, as some of you know.
I have all my moms paper work and there is none at my moms house. There are different people coming in and out, caregiver, and she asked me to take it. Now this last week she'd been asking me to bring the paper work back. I finally said OK, knowing my mom cannot even READ now, she will look at something and can't read one thing. Her eyesight has been effected and the doctor knows it. Anyway I'll continue....everytime I am away for a while my mom starts calling me asking me a bunch of questions. I answer them then she calls back with the same questions again and again and again. Beginning Dem/Alz I realize this by reading from these posts. I also realize she's just a shell of the mother that was and although that in itself is very very hard to deal with, I've dealt with it continuing to go over and do what was needed to be done.
Everything that my mom needed I ordered. Everything that needed to be paid I paid. Everyone that needed to be notified I notified. I even alphabatized all her paper work and put it in a nice file cabinet and in a safe deposit box.
Keep in mind that my sister, her husband, and their 2 teenage kids live in my moms house yet I've been the delegated one so everyone else just kicked back. Anyway everytime I am gone for a few days when I return I feel like a stranger in my moms house and I feel my sister is busy undermining everything I do. Well here goes the killer!
Low and behold my sister convinces my mom to remove me as DPOA and make her DPOA. Can you believe it. But although I am very dissapointed in my mom I know she is being manipulated and handled but I am going to look at it this way.
They need not bother calling me when she goes to the hospital. I won't fill in. My mom need not call me when she THINKS no one is there with her, I will not respond. I will not answer my phone.
I have made myself sick, literally sick from all of this. I actually now know that one can become sick yourself just from doing so much for that "special parent". I do not plan on being sick anymore.
I've been complaining about my sister not doing anything for a while on line here but now the ball is in her hand and I am passing the batton on to her. She can have at it and I will become the complacent one. I will become the one that has been talked about and been called the deadbeat. I will take all this in stride, although I am hurting at the thought that my mom has agreed to this. I am truly hurting.
I'll allow about 3 days to hurt and then I'm gonna pick myself up, get back in shape, and get back to work. I'll let my sister take care of all of this and I will feel no shame about it.
Now don't think I'm not rulling out praying because after I finish this bottle of wine, I'm gonna open up my Bible and ask God to remove this malice I have in my heart. Gonna ask him to give me peace, gonna ask him to show me how to forgive and forget. Oh I'm gonna fall down on my face and pray because no matter what no one says there is power in prayer.
Ok , I guess I`ve had my pitty party and my life will go on . My Dad and I were like very good friends and I look at his pictures allot and ask him to give me strengh to go another day. And I guess he does because here I am .
Good luck with your problem, and take care.
Becky
I've told my mom that I can come over on Saturday. I'm off and will go over at that time. I'll check for nanny cams though, my paranoia. I won't stay the night and I'll tell my mom exactly why I won't. She will understand.
I am going to use this time to speak to my mom about what has happened over the last 5 weeks, she needs to hear from me, she really does. She needs to understand why I am not there at her beckon call and I want to explain to her what has happened. I want her to know that I love her more than anything but she hurt me by putting my sister in charge of her and that I feel as though I am the adopted child rather than the biological child.
Really I need to let her know and I need to spend time with my mom because simply put I miss her as much as she misses me. Yeah I'm a sucker but I just love her so much, unlike any of you, and I need to spend some time with her.
Besides that as you know they cannot keep anything a "secret" aymore and I need to hear what she needs to tell me too because I am feeling like she needs to talk to me too.
I know I'm being stupid but I can't help it. I'm hooked into my moms web.
I am my mother's child. Remember my sister is adopted, I'm not. I am my mother all over although I fight not to make the same mistakes she did with me with my sonz.
My mom moved away from her hometown when she was bery young and neber went back. I am my mother's child.
B
Understand, the dog poop incident happened about a month before my mom had her stroke. She was able to get around. Again I say this occured before my mom got sick.
My sister and her family live in my MOMS HOUSE. They've been there the better part of 16 years. Convinced my mom that it was to help her but it was really because they pay $175.00 every other week for rent. You heard me. Last year just before Christmas I convinced my mom to increase their rent, as she did to $200.00 every other week which brings the total amount of rent to $400.00 per month for a family of friggin FOUR! Can you dig it. No wonder they always have money. I've always been rather pissed about that too. but again that's a different thread.
Get the picture a little better now pirategal?
It's exhausting...... mentally and physically.
It was my intention to call the D.A's office of elderly abuse as well. I actually phoned a very nice lady from Dept of Aging who gave me amny resources following up with a list of mailings which I got out yesterday and read through and made some calls myself.
My mom knew my intention though and she said NOT to do anything because it would make it hard for her. Which it would. There have been many instances my mom knows that I could do something, but now it's a different story.
POA no I don't want it anymore. This is the way it will be, and my sister can have at it. Like I said, I've got to work on my own family and I don't live there and I'm not getting sucked into it anymore.
I actually think my mom is afraid of my sister and I've thought that for a long time. But that's a different thread.
In 2001 when my mom had her first stroke, this is how my mom explained to me WHY she had the stroke.
Said my sister had made some pancakes. Four days later the pancake batter was still sitting on the sink and she kept telling my sister to throw it out, and she or the rest of her dirty family never did. My mom got so overwhelmed that she had the stroke. Now as I've said mom is manipulative and NOW as I look at all things I don't know whether this was true or not, but it does place harse feelings in me towards my sister. I've always known they are dirty, matter of fact when we had Christmas at my house, my sister wasn't allowed to cook in MY kitchen.
No POA for me. Let them handle it, I just wish my mom could understand.
My mom cannot walk to the stove, she cannot walk period and uses the walker to and from the wheelchair. She is pretty much bedridden.
You say I should call my sister, well quite the contrary, my sister should call ME and tell me what's going on. I remember just before my mom got sick, my sister and her family went out of town. She failed to call me so my mom called and told me and asked me to bring some food over for her as she couldn't stand long enough to cook anything. I called my sister and read her like a book and told her to please let me know when she was going out of town so I could make arrangements for mommy. That Friday night, I went over when I got off work and took mom some dinner.
Saturday afternoon I went back over and took her breakfast, lunch, and dinner before I went to work and when I walked into the living room, the dog had made 20 piles of poop in both the living room and the dining room. My sister and her family had left their dog inside thinking their son, (who didn't go with them) would be there. Hell he left right after they did. Can you believe that. And that's one of the things that led to my moms stroke, being in a house with such filthy people.
Here my mom was in the next room, with all this dog poop surrounding her. She walked with her cane then, and managed somehow to go sit on the front porch. Guess she thought she would shield me from this mess but when I went in I was flored. I was so hurt for my mom I didn't know what to do. So what did I do. I walked my mom back into her room, closed the door to the living/dining room and called off from work to wait for my sister's family to get home.
My mom was so afraid that there was gonna be a storm in that house, (and there would have been) that she got more upset with me waiting for them, than all the dog poop. She actually told me to leave so there would be no trouble.
Mom had started having accidents and I was cleaning them up at that time but I was NOT gonna clean up behind my sister's dog's poop, that was just a little too much.
I asked mom if any of them ever apologized to her and she said no but she heard good old sis when she came through the door and she said "OH MY GOD". Yeah whatever.
My mom has always known that my sister and I have never really gottern along, just condual (excuse the spelling) to one another. Hell my mom made it that way playing us against one another. But it has also seemed like my mom has always been beholding to my sister for staying there with her. Where some parents encourage their children to leave, my mom never did that. AS Crowemagnum says she created an envoirnment of FOG (fear, obligation, and guilt). She wanted to hold on to someone. She always said that she needs my sister there to take care of her. Well by george she's there to do just that.
I know I got a little off the subject, just giving you a little history.
I've gone back to work.....got to continue to make a living. My son just got a new job after being laid off from his other job and I'll need to help him just a bit until he gets on his feet, then it's outta here for him cause I want my boyz to be independent.
Certainly my mom is all confused and won't understand but for me I'm hesitant to go over there anyway. I don't trust any of them anymore. My mom has to feel something, she has to know I'm hesitant because when she calls she says she just wants me to come by and hold her hand. I feel bad, but I'm also skeptical because of how the entire rug was pulled from under me. Mom had to have some knowledge of what was going on, even though she is rather helpless in the situation she is there under their control.
It's a mess that I don't want to involve myself in. I want to work now. I took leave for all of this, then I was removed, and I just don't want to get sucked back into it. I don't want stay the night over there because I don't want them to say I removed anything. For all I know it could be a set up and I'm going to explain it to my mom like this. Let the "help" stay the night again just like Valentine's Day Weekend when they took a trip to Las Vegas. Sis never called and told me she was going, mom told me. Even then sis made arrangements for mom and I just went to visit and sit a while, the entire time there was someone "paid" to be there.
Am I being unrealistic?
I think taking your mom out is a great idea, if she's up for it. No one wants to be chained to one spot. But...will anyone object? Legally, what can you do? That is the question, and one I'm trying to answer for our situation. We both have tough ones... I hope someone can shed some light.