I'm blessed in that my mom is very appreciative of what I do for her, unlike so many on this site. The one thing that she does that just drives me up the wall is when she argues about things I'm trying to get her to do.
Today in the Chicago area, the humidity is extremely high, with temps in the mid 80s. The news reports list the humidity as "oppressive". When I helped her shower this morning, I had her air conditioning turned on and told her to leave it on, given the temps and humidity outside. She agreed. Tonight when I made my nightly call, she was tired and sleeping. And of course she had her A/C turned off and windows open. GAAAAH!
When I try to explain that she needs to turn on the A/C, she tells me she doesn't feel the heat and on and on. And she can't reason that she's so tired because the heat and humidity is sapping her energy. I want to SCREAM! She can't remember jack, so when I get her all set up, an hour (or five minutes) later, all of that logic and reasoning has gone out the window. It's just so frustrating!!
So I'm just venting and looking for ideas or sympathy for these loved ones who want to argue, argue, argue about every little thing that we're trying to do to keep them safe and happy, when they have no reasoning ability any more.
sickness and frailty are the primary culprits here . edna is faking nurses out and tossing her meds in the trash . shes tired and doesnt want to be sustained ..
Lucky we live in Ireland and hot temps is something we dont have to worry about so theres no thermostat here. In winter i set the gas heaters to come on and thats in the garage so mum dosnt go there as i lock the door and she has no key but wouldnt touch the gas as she wouldnt know how to use it thankgod so i can imagine in hotter countries this would be an issue with thermostats yes a nightmare! the joys of living in a damn cold country right now its 4degrees yep winter is coming am dreading it!
Yeah, I probably should just let all of this stuff go. She can't remember anything two minutes later, so getting her to do something is a moving target, which is also frustrating. She'll do it one minute and totally forget the next and change what I've just gotten her set to do. I don't live with her, so she's on her own with a lot of this.
The other piece of it that is frustrating is we're just now getting over a couple of months of dealing with her not taking her meds. She wouldn't listen to me (argued every time I tried to get help to give her her daily meds) and forgot her blood thinner for three days. That resulted in ischemic limb, which meant a 4-hour trip to the ER and a trip to the vascular surgeon and weeks of dealing with a bum foot. This all means much more work for me. It's just frustrating. She's not doing it on purpose and I know that, but it still can drive me up the wall. At least now I've got people coming in 2X a day to give her her meds. Small victories. :)