Hello all, I'm reaching out to you all because I don't know what to do. I'll try to summarize this as much as possible. Both of my parents are dealing with multiple health issues. I am only child living 1200 miles away. I cannot move to them. They say that they are going to sell their house and move here but they have too many health issues to ever make that happen. They've been hospitalized multiple times and refuse to let me come out. I believe that they are embarrassed of their home because they have always had a beautiful home and taken excellent care of it. I've offered to get carpet cleaners in (due to multiple accidents) and cleaners in so they aren't embarrassed. I've offered support in anyway I can possibly think. I have begged, pleaded, cried, and yelled to get them to let me help them. It's primarily my mom that doesn't want any help which then burdens my unhealthy father even more. This has been going on for about 13 years now and I've made no progress with them. My mom has had multiple strokes so sometimes I get my mom and other times I get a very angry person that is reliving past issues in her life. I've offered to get a realtor, fly out and stage their house, get movers, drive them to my state, find them a house, and on and on. The mom has fallen multiple times and they drs think it's due to low potassium. She ends up in the hospital while they give her several bags of potassium and then she fights them to let her out. Then she won't follow up with her own drs because a health issue will come up. Then she gets mad because the dr office's aren't nice to her because she cancels all of the time and refused in home care when they showed up. If you made it this far reading my ramblings, I owe you a virtual hug! Any advice would be greatly appreciated as long as you understand that this has been going forever and I've tried everything I can think of. TIA!
You can't do ANYTHING at this point to help. Mom refuses your offers and seems to want to live as she and dad choose.
And they have that right.
Sadly, you are in the situation that so many of us are in: aging parents who are stubborn, angry, sick, AND make terrible decisions.
I'd call once a week, keep it short and wait for the inevitable 'fall' that will happen that will force them to make changes.
Depressing? You bet, but you cannot force them to behave. I'm so sorry.