I'm so thankful I found this website, I've asked several questions here and I feel like this is the only place where people understand me and here I am again... In my last question I talked about our situation, me and my mom have been my grandma's only caregivers for 6 years ( she has dementia ), her two other kids don't care and we are at a breaking point, the situation is unbearable, my mother had a really serious heart attack two years ago, I'm mentally ill, there's no way we can take care of my grandma when we are extremelly sick as well. My grandmother now needs care 24/7, there are many sleepless nights and recently my mother started showing signs of all the stress that this situation causes. My mother rented an appartment for the two of us, her idea was to leave my grandma here in her own home and try to make her brother and sister come by more often and find a way to solve this solution TOGETHER, my mother is tired of doing everything by herself, she's not an only child. She called them to announce that we would be leaving by the beginning of August and that my grandma would be alone from then on, do you think they cared? No, they just said " You can go, we'll take care of it later. " It's been one week and a half since they last talked and not even a phone call or a visit to ask if grandma was already alone or not, I'm disgusted with their attitude. We haven't moved yet because there were some issues in my new room that are getting fixed but we will probably move in less than two weeks and I'm scared to leave my grandma here by herself. I thought about staying with my grandma but my mother told me I should go with her, that this wasn't my responsability, I somewhat agree with her and I don't want to stay here, I want to have the chance to start a new life but at the same time the guilt feelings won't leave me alone, I'm always thinking what if something happens to my grandma? I would always feel like it was my fault because I wasn't here... I already contacted the social services but so far no answer, my mother told me she will call them tomorrow, we will see. I just want a regular life like my cousins, they have their job, their own house, they travel, they meet people, I never had the chance to do any of that, I feel like I've wasted my youth and the worst thing is that my own family never recognized my efforts and I can see that they clearly don't care if I have a life or not, they just want a maid to spare them from all the hard work and problems.
Rhonda
Some answers got me a little bit sad though, I'm trying not to think of myself as mean or selfish because it makes things harder, it really hurts when someone calls me that. I need medical care and constant supervision too, it's not only my grandma who needs it, my mother is taking care of two people all by herself. When she goes to work I stay at home with my grandma for almost 8 hours, as I've said before I have schizophrenia, there's no way I can take care of anyone, I don't even know how to take care of myself properly... I also don't feel like I have to take care of my grandma because she took care of me when I was a baby, people shouldn't compare that, it's not the same thing. I took care of my grandma for this long because I love her and that should be enough. It seems like things are a little bit different in my country, we don't have the resources most of you talk about here, all we have is the social services and they were already contacted and know what's going on. Someone asked why my grandma is still living here with us and not in a NH, she's still here because my mother always thought she would be able to help my grandma until the end, even after my mother's heart attack she took care of my grandma and a NH never crossed her mind, unfortunately things didn't go as planned, my mental health started to get worse a few months ago, my mother started to feel some of the same symptoms she had before the heart attack and she told me that she's going to die very soon if she stays here. I was the one who contacted social services, my mother has a severe depression, she has episodes where she's really violent, she's a shadow of what she used to be and when I try to talk to her about my grandmother's situation she just says she has done all she could do, it's up to the rest of the family now. Can I blame her? Of course not, she even confessed she has been thinking about suicide lately, if leaving a situation behind to try to survive means we are mean then that's what we are.
You have the opportunity and love and support of your Mother. Go, Hannah! Please just go! Don't waste another minute of your life and don't ever feel guilty. God bless you and keep you
I don't have a therapist at the moment but I have a psychiatrist and I'm on psychiatrist medication for my schizophrenia, it's not helping though and my psychiatrist advised me to look for a therapist too, she thinks stress is what's causing my symptoms to get worse, I will have to look for one I feel comfortable with, it's hard.
It's very hard to cope with mental illness no matter what the situation is, the problem here is that I don't have anyone to help me except for my mother but she's away working from 7am to 5pm everyday, I'm left here all by myself with my grandma and that really stresses me out. I try to do my best but I just can't be a caregiver, lately I've been hallucinating all the time, I spend hours on my own world and end up loosing track of time, I forget about meals, medication, everything... I want to do what's best for my grandmother but at the same time I feel like I've already given everything I could, I'm one step away from ending in a psych ward and I'm not afraid to say that from now on I'm going to let the others handle this, we should have done this since the beginning or at least since my mother's heart attack.