We lost my dad almost 3 years ago, he did everything for her cleaned, cooks, shopping worked, pay bills, driving, well she lost everything she is very depressed does not want to go anywhere or see anyone, does not shower can hardly get around (cant walk), we have a physical therapist come in twice a week but she's giving up on that, the doc. keeps giving her more drugs, i am all by myself i work 2 jobs plus have a family of my own so it really is getting hard, any suggestions??
Perhaps. But sometimes it does, and that makes all the difference. As I have said before, the cared for is more important than the carer.
My disabled wife is almost totally dependent on me for everything. She is 78, and anyone that thinks 79 isn't old [see post above] is living in another reality than the one we know.
I live to love her and care for her. I have to lift her from bed to wheelchair, etc, because she is physically weakening almost daily. My joints and back are feeling the strain, but I'm not giving up on her.
Loneliness is cured by therapy, day care, socialising, visits, taking time, doing nail jobs, massaging, applying skin lotion, and just generally being accessible. You know the kinds of things I mean.
Old people do sometimes get tired of living. My 90+ year old mother was the same. When she wasn't living in her invented world where everything was as it had been when she was a child and she wanted to go home to her mother, she would want to die. When my step-dad was dying from complications following amputation of his legs from untreated diabetes I, he wanted to die. He was in his 70s, but had been through the storms of life and had been laid low by a serious heart condition and gangrene and just wanted to be done with the struggle. This 'readiness' to die is a normal part of aging.
I am almost 80 and were it not for my wife and two old dogs I wouldn't mind being called home. Some, especially the young, think that thinking about death and being prepared to die is morbid. It isn't. We're all going to die, so better treat death as a friend, a great adventure, rather than living afraid of it.
Old age itself can be a serious insult to a healthy person because it takes away faculties that we have enjoyed for so many years. It is essential not to lose patience with our elders because we rarely get a glimpse into their world. and so never really understand what their lives have become.
The pity and the real tragedy is that so few are capable of being properly sympathetic and understanding to the aged. When they are categorised as nuisances, or perceived as being more generous to others than than are to those that consider themselves the rightful beneficiaries of their largesse, then we have fallen into the 'pity me' trap that shifts our attention away from those that need it most, even when we judge them to be undeserving.
The final stage of life is most like the first stage when we were helpless infants struggling to make sense of a buzzing, booming, and confusing world.
Yet to get back to your situation, as Iwentanon stated, Sertraline {Zoloft} is a low side-effect medication... my Dad was on it and it calmed him to a pleasantness, that helped his pulse rate and BP a lot ...
he forgot his anger and sadness.. and enjoyed his great-grandkids a lot more...
That is why I hope your Mom can find a pet that gives her happiness +the feeling of being needed, a purpose...to go take a walk even if it is just in the backyard... or otherwise realize that the pet needs her....
Zoloft however will need that Doctor's visit and evaluation... it's an Rx medication... wish you well, +the best possible results !
It is a natural emotional response to a circumstance that is unpleasant, but it impacts almost every aspect of human life.
There is a concomitant physical component to emotional and mental conditions that vary from the norm, just as there is always an emotional and/or mental component when physical illness is present.
It takes some time to understand these correlations, but those that take the time to educate themselves about them are richly rewarded, especially when they are required to assist someone suffering from either physical or mental illnesses.
I had a patient that had been diagnosed as schizophrenic for more than forty years. One day his brother visited him and asked me whether Dougie had 'just given up.'
How sad that in forty years this brother had not understood the nature of psychosis, and too to remonstrating with Dougie about 'pulling himself together,' etc.
I told him that he should never blame his brother for what was happening to him because he was the victim of a serious mental illness over which he had no control.
The main problem with mental illness is that it has no face that the general population can recognise as illness. If someone has a bone sticking out of their leg then the diagnosis and treatment are usually easy and straightforward and one needs not be a genius or specialist to understand it.
Not so with mental illnesses. There are times when only a specialist can recognise the signs and symptoms of a severe psychiatric illness, and this often leads relatives of persons so afflicted to run short of patience, even kindness, with their afflicted kinfolks.
With mental illness it is often the case that what we do not know can hurt others.
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