Hi everyone, I’m an only child without any other close or extended family caring for my mom since she broke her hip last spring. She has had several other medical issues to attend to since then. I would love to get some advice/perspective from only children caring for an aging parent. Thank you.
More info from you would help give context to your situation:
Does your mother live with you or in a facility?
How old is she?
What are her financial reserves like?
Generally, I have to come to peace with the fact that I can only do so much. My grandmother had 8 adult children and 2 single, childless daughters (my aunts) who took her in to care for her when she was widowed, and others helped offset the cost of her care (she never worked and didn't speak English, so no Medicaid or facility for her). I don't have those challenges, but also don't have much other help. I wish I could visit my MIL more but we are still working at our own business and my only local son has 3 kids and a booming new business, so...not a lot of time to help.
I have to prevent myself from "romanticizing" what my LOs elder care looks like. I have had to settle for as good a quality as I can arrange without negatively impacting my marriage, business or finances. I remind myself that there are so many other elders who are in very bad/sad situations (whether self-inflicted or not). I count the blessings on behalf of my LOs since they are loved, protected, well fed, socialized and receive proper medical care -- even if it doesn't look like a Hallmark movie.
Talking through realistic solutions with your mother while she can still understand it and prepare in her own mind is helpful. If you start to orbit around someone it will come at a cost.
My conversation with my mom (who has been single most of her life and is extremely independent and resistant to change) is: you have chosen to trust me by making me your DPoA. You have the blessing of living next door to us since 1997. The minute that living in your own home becomes dangerous, unaffordable or overwhelming to me, you agree to transition to [the facility 3 miles away]. She begrudgingly agrees to it but realizes there really aren't other options (plus she had a front-row seat to the poop-show that preceded my MIL getting onto Medicaid and into a decent place and doesn't want to do that to me).
Most of the time we (adult children/caregivers) do have other options for their care, but they wouldn't be our first choice (or LO's first choice). Knowing what other options exist would be important for you to know sooner rather than later.
It is also vitally important that your mom has all her legal protections in place: you are her DPoA, she has a Living Will that her doctor helped her craft, she has a Last Will, she has you assigned as her Medical Representative (the HIPAA form you request from each clinic she attends), etc. You are keeping up on the status of her finances; you have consulted with a Medicaid Planner for her state so that you don't inadvertently delay or disqualify her from this extremely important resource.
After being on this form for almost 10 years, I have read about caregivers who have siblings and grown children but feel like they are an only child because no one would help. Equally as frustrating.
I always wished I had siblings/children to bounce ideas off of, but then I would read on the forum about those who have siblings and grown children who give out their opinions/arguments which exhaust the single caregiver even more, or cut off ties.
I remember when my Dad and I had a chat about caregiving. I reminded him that when his own Mother needed help, she had living in the same area two sons and their wives, and had a gaggle of grandchildren most of whom knew how to drive [my parents lived out of state]. And they all shared with the care of Dad's Mom who lived on her own until she reached 90, so that not one person was overwhelmed.
A friend of mine (only child with only elderly family left) would empathize greatly with you. Her mother and aunt had only her to rely on. Both lived across town from each other, both with macular degeneration (advanced). Grocery and doctor trips for both, cleaning their houses/doing laundry, paying their bills, providing "entertainment," etc.---and the aunt had multiple properties and was a true hoarder in all of them, including her home...so even once they both passed, the aunt's hoarder legacy lived on for quite some time.
I think the only way she got through those years was taking happy pills, but even then she always wanted to "run away! run away!" ( A nod to Monty Python there.)