notrydoyoda Posted January 2012
The Caregiver & Dysfunctional Families: How are you doing?
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- My sole mate is sole care taker of both parents. Where do I find help dealing with this?
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Thanks. The only thing is that I believe my wife's twin sister must be the one to tell her about these ideas instead of me telling my wife that her sister and I discussed this which she thought of in light of our ages and health challenges.
We will visit her again in another week.
Golden, thx for the hugs. Yes, I did take on too much emotionally at a young age. My mom always told me that I was her life line and I guess I took that to heart and couldn't let that go in a way that would have served me better. I have no regrets about being there for my mom when she needed me. My problem is now I'm sort of left without a purpose even 8.5 years after her death.
I don't even feel like I have a family. We all sort of splintered when mom died. I predicted this would happen. I miss having a family unit but I don't miss them cause I always feel judged when I'm around them. Having said that I judge them too. If we could all just accept one another maybe we could be close but I don't foresee that ever happening. I pray about it.
Last week, I saw my PC doctor and my new PT.
My doctor is concerned about the amount of clutter in my house and the stress that it is causing me. I’m having some pain, which sometimes is terrible, in the upper part of my thighs on each side, plus where my legs and torso fit together. To make sure that I didn’t have any structural damage, my doctor ordered me an x-ray that day. I have not heard back from them.
Earlier, my doctor ordered a CAT scan of my brain to make sure that I have not had any mini-strokes, as that might explain some of my balance problems. She did refer me to a PT for help in that area.
Although I saw my PT to evaluate my balance problem on Wednesday and started the treatment exercises on the same day, I was not up to doing them on Thursday or Friday. I tried Thursday night but had to force myself to do what I did, but did not complete it. I'm still not sleeping here like I did at my sister-in-law's. I hope that today is better.
I told my doctor I slept much better at my sister-in-law’s place than at home. She thinks it is because I feel less stressed there. The critical difference is the two locations here, and my sister-in-law's duplex is not cluttered. I will have to hire some young men to come and move the containers of clutter up in the loft because I am no longer up to that.
The analysis of my balance problems is that I'm ok as long as I do not have to stand or walk with my feet close together; my ankles need to be stronger, as do my legs. When I tried the balance test of walking with one foot directly in front of the other, I flunked. My wife is having balance problems also, but she has not started with a PT yet. She is waiting for her PC doctor to get the referral completed.
My sleep problems are so bad that I’m not able to get much done plus I don’t do what I do at the same level as before. For example, I’m usually very prepared when I send documents for him to prepare our taxes. This time, I sent him copies of the same thing and some outdated items he did not need. I usually have my income spreadsheet ready to send him, but not this time.
The only thing is that I believe my wife's twin sister must be the one to tell her about these ideas instead of me telling my wife that her sister and I discussed this which she thought of in light of our ages and health challenges.
We will revisit her in another week. I have emailed my sister-in-law that she must bring this up when we are up there visiting. When we left, my wife told me that her sister had invited her to live in the adjoining duplex for free, but not right now. In talking with her sister, I was glad to hear that she does not want to do anything significant like that now because it has not even been a year since her husband died. During our phone conversation, my sister-in-law mentioned that a continuous care senior community might be better for us, given our ages and health challenges, which will not get any better. I’ve researched such places with independent living, assisted living and nursing home care.
With my wife's mild cognitive decline, discussions like her sister and I need to have will be difficult for her. The main thing that I believe will help is my wife’s desire to spend as much time as possible with her sister.
About all that I can focus on right now is my narcolepsy test planned for the last of March. I’m exhausted and not up to moving. Whenever we do move, we will need to pay people to help us prepare to remove the stuff that we can’t take as we move to wherever we go. Two years ago, I entered a new educational experience. I have had to stop, and the school has given me an academic sabbatical.
I woke up very early this am which is typical as I don’t usually sleep for a whole night at one time. Soon, I will go back to bed. I need several more hours of sleep. I hope that I can do my PT exercises. I will see my PT three times next week.
As always, I wish you all the best. Please update us at your convenience. Thinking of you and hoping that you will find answers to your struggles.
My mom speculated some months back that the house was being prepped to be put up for sale and her worst fear has come true. She wanted the daughter, who's roughly her age, to sell it to her, but put it on the market without telling her beforehand. She thought it was a sneaky move and feels stabbed in the back. She refuses to sit by and let some random person buy it and she's gonna try to buy it herself. She doesn't want any neighbors that have dogs and or kids or neighbors who are loud all the time and or do questionable things i.e. run a meth lab.
She's gonna see about selling a few dozen acres of wooded land she owns outside of town and see if that will cover at least some of the cost. Before this, she vowed to never sell that land and keep it in the family forever.
If things don't work out with buying that house, it'll either be because of the daughter changing her mind and taking the house off the market, someone buying the house before my mom can, my mom not having enough money to buy it, or my mom passing unexpectedly before the purchase is completed. The latter was the case with some land close to my house that my great-grandparents tried to buy from a relative way back in the day, but the relative died before the deal was done and the descendent didn't want to follow through with finishing the deal.
It would be crazy if my grandmother is unknowingly about to kick the bucket and her death allows my mom to sell my grandmother's home and use the money from that to buy the house, thus sparing the wooded land and keeping it in the family.
I'm really starting to think that along with being 92 regarding physical limitations, she's also a 92 year old mentally. Along with wanting basically no new neighbors next door, she's paranoid about a lot, complains about everything though I've known her to do those 2 things since before caregiving started, sits in bed all day watching the news, Jeopardy, and crime shows, scrolls Facebook, and won't leave the house, but that's mainly due to fear of getting Covid and or the flu. Doesn't like it when there's a sporting event on TV and she's forced to wait on watching the news. Idk how many boomers are like that, but my mom is definitely an old soul, boomer or not. To me, these feel like qualities you see from people in their 80s or 90s rather than early 70s.
In the latest paranoia moment from her, we got some snow a few weeks back and she didn't want me shoveling the snow and ice out of our driveway for fear of me getting hurt. I had cleared some a couple of days prior before I begrudgingly agreed to not get anymore aside, though when I snuck out to get what little I could out of the way a couple of hours later, it was frozen solid and I would've had to wait another day to leave the house and get groceries anyway. I was at home for a little over a week. Had I gotten more out of the way than I did, the wait time might've been reduced by a day.
If only she had the same motivation to exercise and start PT that she has trying to avoid getting iffy neighbors.
Your mother is never going to do PT or exercise. She is never going to get better. She will only get worse as her limbs atrophy from lack of use and she becomes completely bed bound. You will be her care giver for the rest of your life and if she lives into her late nineties that means you have 20 years to go. At least prisoners have a chance for parole. You have no such chance.
I do find it ironic that her mother is still alive. What does she think about her daughter's nonsense? Who takes care 94 year old mom/grandma?
I'm not assisting nor indulging her in this. She's the "my way or the highway" type of person. I personally want her to let things be with the house next door and let someone else buy it, but she'll never listen to me. She values safety and peace & quiet more than anything else. Yeah, there's the chance of getting bad neighbors, but she fails to realize bad neighbors aren't the only ones out there and there's the chance good, honest people would buy it.
Should she make it to her late 90s, I would have 25 years to go, not 20.
Yes, my grandmother is still alive. She suffers from alzheimer's and dementia and she's long been at the point where doesn't know what she had for lunch. Her long term memory was showing signs of going not long before my mom's cancer diagnosis. She's been in the nursing home since 2011. She's about to turn 96.
She's still with us due to both the quality of care she gets and the longevity genes she inherited. My great-grandmother died not long after turning 94 and my grandmother officially outlived her a couple of years ago. When she moved back to my hometown, she was 80 and my mom thought she was in the same stage my great-grandmother was in when she was put in the nursing home at 91. She had predicted my grandmother would pass within a few months to a year after the move and that prediction continues to age poorly. Had me and my mom been told 15 years ago my dad and my aunt who recently died would pass before my grandmother, we would've been like "yeah right."
Why don't you leave?
Not getting your motivation at all.
Neither my wife nor my sister-in-law are ready to make this move yet.
My wife's sister's husband has barely been dead a year. So she is not ready, plus she is once again fighting another UTI and this time a really bad one. She has these often because of the collateral damage caused by the treatment of her ovarian cancer back in 2001.
My wife wants us to move into the duplex next to her sister that her sister owns and offered to us for free, but upon further thought, her sister no longer thinks that this is a good idea. I've asked her to tell my wife of her change of mind herself because it is her idea, although I do agree with it.
We will be up there next week and hopefully, this will be discussed then. Next week will mark the first anniversary of her husband's death.
A friend told me tonight that since my wife is on morphine for her pain, she can't sign a legal document. That means that her durable or medical POA would need to and be able to. I need to go back and look at those documents, but I think that I am the primary POA on each document. Very likely, this will be an even harder pill for her to swallow. It may be shocking news to her sister for it sounds, at this point, that this will put us in the driver's seat. That has a bad ring to it, potentially.
Morphine often causes mental confusion, inattentiveness, and poor balance. I and her sister have seen these symptoms in her. Her pain doctor has told her not to drive because if she has a wreck and they discover that she takes morphine, then she will be in big trouble.
Just of comparison, I take codeine (another opiode but much less strong). It takes half an hour to kick in, and I time it so that I finish driving before that happens. I did that after a shopping trip only this morning. I don’t drive if I’ve taken two tablets.
The ‘competency’ questions should be asked at the time of signature, when the answers will reflect how the morphine has effected the brain. And of course you can be quite competent when you are in pain, so laying off the morphine for the duration of the legal consultation is the best option. Just like I can drive safely in spite of pain, which can be a great help to get home!
Thanks for your reply. She is on 15 mg 3 times a day.
She's also on Oxycodone/Acetaminophen 5-325mg Tab 4 times a day.
Her pain doctor has told her not to drive.
Very good question. She occasionally tells me she's more frustrated at her physical shortcomings than I am, but truth is, she's wrong. My expectations for her are greater than the ones she has for herself.
I'd leave, but she would have to be hypnotized into doing PT or getting extra help OR someone has to give me a couple of million dollars so I can go ahead and put her in the nursing home. That much would cover it for the next 30 years should she make it past 100. And if she dies in under 30 years, whoever gives me the money would get back whatever remains from the $2 million.
Otherwise, I have to continue on with my status as being stuck between a rock and a hard place. Like I brought up a few months back, unless something happens to me, I won't be free until either my mom or grandmother passes.
All you have to do is walk out the door and get a job.
Your mother balancing her mental illness on your back. If you stop proving that back to her, either she will end up in the hospital and placed in a facility, either paid for with her funds and assets or go on Medicaid.
However, it seems as though you WANT to stay trapped and lose your life to her.
I encourage you to seek out some cognitive behavior therapy for your codependency problem.
She is on morphine and other pain medication because those are the only ones that work. None of the others have worked.
She already has been diagnosed years ago with mild cognitive dissonance and these meds seem to have made it worse. Her attention is not good. She starts talking about things as if one knows what she is talking about, but we won't until we can stop her and get her to tell us what on earth she is talking about. She too often assumes that others know the context of her statements, but we are very often clueless. Sometimes, when she asks for take-out food and I repeat back to her what she has said, she denies that is what she said at all. Her sister has seen all of this in her.
I too am guilty of out of context statements and questions. It makes my husband crazy.
Seems like this thread is up and running.
Knowing I couldn't do anything at all, no matter how smart and obvious (like getting POA in place, which still is not done after a decade), without support from others in my family (harsh lesson from hands-on days), I called my older bro earlier tonight and had a short, to-the-point chat. Does he think it's a good idea if our mom takes our dad into her home? His answer was enlightening: "No, but what are the options?"
Aha. If I find options, better yet, teach my mom how to find them through the Agency of Aging, etc., is that something I'm willing to do..? Is this something that she will do? She said she would consider it when I talked with her, but she needs some hand-holding and hand-pulling in that direction.
Or do I just let it all go, keep a healthy distance, and say, "Sorry, things are so tough" every time my mother talks about the hardship of caring for my father? AND caring for my brother, whom she has financially enmeshed and enabled for a decade.?
My mom said moving my dad in with her would be easier on her, as that way she doesn't have to drive to his place several times a week. The underlying issue is that she should never have enmeshed herself as his sole caregiver in the first place. There are funds for his care. II believe she's addicted to being needed and so then is distracted from her own life/needs.
My dad's medical care needs have not escalated. I talked to him earlier, too. He's doing ok and can continue on his own with a little support for grocery shopping and such. I asked him if he wanted to live with my mom. He said, "It's been presented as one option." I asked him if he'd like to go to another place like where he is now, and be in his own apartment, and he said that's fine.
I have two parents who do not plan for the long term and aren't up to making good decisions for themselves. It's no surprise they married quickly after meeting in the '70s, had three children, and were divorced before my younger bro was born. That was a long time ago, but the patterns remain. There is no planning things out or considering consequences.
I need to tread carefully, mostly for my own sake. There are a couple of months before my dad's IL closes. I can find housing options and get him applied. He told me I could do that.
The reason I'm so against my mom taking him in is that she has already done this dysfunctional enabling/enmeshing thing with others. Let my dad-who she hasn't been close with for 40 years before recent times-be independent for as long as he can. They are not romantically entwined; it's a caregiver/caree relationship. It's in his best interest and hers that his care is provided by others, and she works on her life. Her small house is hoarded and a bad environment for a man in his mid-80s who will need more care at any time and certainly within a few years. I feel strongly that his staying on his own would give him a better chance to get increased care as the need arises.
I have to stop thinking about this for now, put it aside, and do my school finals first. Then, I'm thinking of contacting the Agency of Aging where he is, seeing if I can make an appointment or what other leads I can turn up. Maybe that's what I CAN do. And accept whatever happens because I tried, at least.
And if I find that it's too triggering, frustrating, and makes me resentful, then I can step away, but no one can ever say I don't care and didn't try. My family often likes to paint me as selfish. It is pure self-preservation on my end. I must determine what my boundaries are here.
Thoughts?
Let me tell you something - you are NOT a selfish person, you never have been and you never will be. In fact, you are a self-less person.
Please let that sink in before you make any decisions.
And why is bro, who is there, not looking into the options but throwing them out as bait?
I won't go further as I have just woken up after a few hours sleep, but wanted to share this.
(((((hugs)))) Look after yourself!!! You are already carrying a heavy load.
I'll tell you that nothing gets a name-caller as upset as your just accepting the name called with "Selfish? Really? Do you THINK so? I am going to have to think about that just soon as I have time".
Give them a sly look, a giggle and move on. They will spontaneously combust.
My Dad taught me many, many lessons. He had more parables than the bible.
One of the first was that old:
"Sticks and stones will break my bones
But names will never hurt me."
And you know what, I can't remember when a name HAS hurt me. They are just labels. Weapons that someone uses in desperation when they THINK the name will hurt you, when they have no REAL argument.
A much respected forum member, has called me passive-aggressive.
And the truth is that I CAN be. It's something I do to mildly annoy people who I myself find annoying.
You can't live long withOUT being called a mess of names I suspect.
And it was someone else right here on Forum who said "Embrace it"; she's right!
Because, quite honestly, hee hee, nothing will annoy the namecaller MORE!
There is also the fact I had a big brother, who when we were kids made me entirely immune to name-calling by tossing everything he could find at me: So hard to remember those now much loved labels, but "Dramatic Pill" (which he put to a kind of sing-song tune) and "GRET-ah" (meaning Garbo) stick! Hee hee.
Alva - when the name calling is in the setting of an abusive family it's not just name calling but part of the bigger manipulation/dysfun scheme and affects us. You may get shunned or ranted at by family members for being selfish. Living with a mentally ill mother who raged constantly and also called me selfish or unpleasing to her in some way, as I did, is not just name calling, it's abuse.
I seem to recall that you have said that you grew up in a loving home. It makes all the difference. You did very well to shed your bro's darts.
However, I agree that learning to accept the label with equanimity is a very good way to deal with it and throws many labeler's off.
In mother's case it didn't matter how you responded, she continued to be abusive anyway.
In short, being called names in the context of an abusive family is not the same as being called names when you are in a loving family.
I agree . Unless you lived in an abusive home you don’t know what it’s like . As you said , if we turned those labels around our mothers came back at us with worse .
I don’t know what it was like to grow up in a loving environment . All I knew was angst .
I also don’t understand how they come up with the only 1-3 % of people are narcissists ( or whatever the number that is thrown about ) . Most narcissists refuse to be assessed and diagnosed . My mother happened to have been diagnosed same time as her dementia diagnosis. After speaking with my mother ( without me in the room ) , the doctor asked me ( in private ) what mom was like when I was a child . The reason the doctor asked was because of the things my mother said to her. I asked the doctor what Mom said. The doctor told me , “ you don’t need to hear those things “ and told me mom had to go to a facility.
I know a lot of people think that term is used too much on this forum but , it stands to reason why people with narcissists for parents end up on this forum . If the parent was like that your whole life they could be a narcissist that was never diagnosed. Again , who knows how many there really are since they never go for therapy because they don’t think there is anything wrong . And of course there are different degrees . I read that a lot of people can have one or two traits of narcissism . When a poster comes here I don’t think it’s fair to assume that the word narcissist is being used lightly. Someone with a parent like that is likely to find this forum in desperation . The caregivers with pleasant parents aren’t looking for the same kind of support .
I think it amazing in many ways that we have survived and gone on the live decent lives.
Decent lives is a good word for it .
It’s not always been easy .
My father was loving in his own way but also blind to my mother’s afflictions until he was much older .