Almost a year ago I took my mother in law in to live with us since her daughter washed her hands of her mother entirely. She is 85, has diabetes that requires insulin and medication, and suffers from severe depression. This has been a struggle her whole life but has gotten worse in her later years. She can walk with a walker and is quite healthy besides her mental issues but has given up. She chooses to just sit slumped in the family room watching soap operas and old tv shows and refuses to allow me to encourage her to play a game of cards, do a jigsaw puzzle together, or anything. She just isnt interested. On top of the severe depression that she takes three separate medications for she suffers from severe bouts of diarrhea. She cannot get to the bathroom in time and we go through 4-6 diapers every day. Its as if she doesnt feel it happening till the last minute and then there isnt enough time because she starts going before she even gets up. This leads to her crying and cursing and saying the most horribly crude things that make me cringe and I have tried to ask her to not say these things but she doesnt listen. I dont want to come down hard on her because she will think I am angry at the accidents and not the behavior associated with it, but after a while it all blends. I have had her to doctors, taken her for a colonoscopy, we have changed around her diabetes medicines and added FiberCon and just keep increasing it. Every time a change is made the diarrhea eases for a week or so and then her body gets used to the change and it returns full force. What makes it so very difficult is that it is hard for anyone to deal with these accidents over and over, but I am willing. What I cant deal with is the crying and depression and language associated with it and I cant get her to stop. I get resentful and then feel guilty for being upset, but it seems like my life is now surrounded and based in a nonstop stream of runs to the bathroom. How she doesnt dehydrate is beyond me, and although the doctors are trying, because she isnt dehydrating they do not realize nor really care about the strain this causes in my home being the focus of everything. If she has a day where she doesnt have the diarrhea she is talking about the fact that something must be wrong because she hasnt gone that day, when inside I am jumping up and down for joy. I wish she was a candidate for a nursing home but her depression and nastiness makes this not an option because I would feel way to guilty. She tells me all the time that she appreciates what I do but I need to remember I am not her daughter, nor ever will be, and I find myself resentful because her daughter doesnt even call her but once every other month for five minutes. Any suggestions????
5:00 PM.