Parents Caring for Parents Support Thread (Part 2)

[sbinaz]

I do not blame my dad’s grumpy wife at all for his heinous behavior. How he’s behaved for almost 15 years now is entirely his own doing. HIS choices. HIS decisions. Nobody twisted his arm and made him act like a selfish horse’s butt for all of these years. He did that all on his own.

I feel zero guilt for how I’ve handled things with him. My job has been to protect my kids from his toxicity. And I’ve done that.

It’s easy to blame the “outsider” in situations like this. It would be easy for me to blame this on wife #2. Karma has a way of working things out, though. Wife #2 was always insanely jealous of my mom. Well, now she lives in my mom’s house, sleeps in my mom’s bed, even drove my mom’s car, used my mom’s furniture, used the same toilet as my mom did. When my mom died, my dad had a supportive network of friends in the neighborhood. Within 6 months, all of them fell away. All of his former work friends all fell away, too, because of how he behaved.

The way I look at the whole thing is this:
Each of us only gets so many trips around the sun in this lifetime. 6 years ago, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. And then I had a double mastectomy. I got a second chance. I’m not going to mess that up by chasing after the approval of a person who will never be capable of being the person I need him to be.

I still love my dad despite all of it. I don’t wish him ill will at all. I hope that he will end up being placed eventually at an elder care facility that will provide good care for him. But those decisions are not mine to make. And I’m not going to kiss his wife’s butt in order to get information. My dad has made it very clear that he doesn’t want us to know anything. He has 1 set of rules for himself and another set of rules for the rest of us.

Lots of people don’t understand where my sister & I are coming from on this topic. We’ve encountered a lot of people who say, with good intentions, “But he’s your DAD! How can you ___?”

You know what I say to that?

How can your DAD have the nerve to tell you, his kid, just a few months after his wife/your mom died, that he thinks that SHE was emotionally abusive to him because she wouldn’t have marital relations with him on demand while she was going through daily radiation & weekly chemo infusions for pancreatic cancer?

He claimed to my sister and I that my mom was an abusive wife because she wouldn’t do that when she was too sick to. It’s disgusting. Morally offensive. The total opposite of values that my parents taught me.

So no…my sister and I are done. We still speak to him. But he is not really a part of our lives anymore. Our holidays are spent with each other and with my husband & kids & with friends. He isn’t included in that and hasn’t been for a long time.

But because BOTH of my sets of grandparents tried to use money to manipulate their adult children, I’m pretty sure he’s not leaving us anything. Or he’ll do what HIS parents did and not leave anything to his kids and leave something to MY kids instead. But it really doesn’t matter in the end…because when you die, you don’t get to take all of your money and your stuff up to the pearly gates with you. You don’t show up there with a UHaul.

Biggest and most important thing he taught me was how right Maya Angelou was when she said that when somebody shows you who they are, believe them. Because the odds are high that they aren’t going to change. How they are now is how they WILL be. ESPECIALLY as they age through their elder years. They will just become MORE of what they already are.

[kiddie]

I am a firm believer that blood is not thicker than water. Cutting off all contact with toxic relatives is the healthy option for people.

[BerneseMtnMom]

Patterns don’t lie. I am so sorry, but protecting your mental health is the only way forward.

[greenbutton]

Before she died abruptly and unexpectedly, my DIL’s Mom spent quite a bit of time calling her and my son and threatening to sue them for non support under state elder abuse laws. They were 23 and lived in a one bedroom apartment. They had to consult a lawyer friend pro bono. By the time she passed away, she had rejected office of aging help, the police, and the neighbors in addition to her daughter.

every time a sibling annoys me, I remind myself how much trauma family can inflict and count my lucky stars.

[NJSue]

Well, Dad was admitted to the hospital yesterday with small bowel obstruction. He passed out and vomited at lunchtime, and his heart rate was down to 30. They at first thought it was a problem with his pacemaker and sent him to the ER, but it was something else. They are doing something called gastrografin challenge to try to unblock it. Time will tell. They seem optimistic that they will not have to do surgery because that will be very bad for him; he might not survive it. The silver lining is that my sister is going out to MN to be with him, and she will see firsthand what his condition is. This may convince her of the need to move him from AL to SL. I frankly think the facility will use this incident as a justification to crowbar him out of AL if we do not act first. But she’ll be the one on the scene, and it may break her out of her denial phase. He told the hospital social worker that he lived alone with his wife (Mom died in 2006 and he’s lived in a CCRC at various levels since 2018).

[greenbutton]

Oh no ! Hoping for safe travel and best outcomes. Here’s a hug —-

[Colorado_mom]

Sorry for the setback. Hope you sister learns some useful info.

[kiddie]

Today’s crazy story. My father who is in a nursing home, is always having issues with his phone. I have sent him so many chargers, but for some reason there is always an issue. Today, I get a call from his number from a stranger saying he is calling from a local hospital and that he had the phone from the ER. I call the nursing home. My father is still there. Turns out his roommate was sent to the ER and he had my father’s phone on his charger and so they accidentally sent the wrong phone with him to the hospital. They will be following up to get his phone back from the ER.

[abasket]

Ong that must have freaked you out!

[kiddie]

My first thought was that it was some kind of scam. Then, I thought if his phone was in the ER at the hospital, then he had to be there. However, that didn’t make much sense as the nursing home calls me for any medical thing, and would definitely tell me if they had sent him to an ER.

[greenbutton]

One of the first times my Dad was hospitalized via ambulance, they “lost” him. As in, my mom had gone with them, come home, and some time during the night he was transferred to a major hospital 2 hrs away. They called and told her, but she didnt understand the message and they were not clear. I called the local hospital and it really did take some time before the admin could verify where he was.

[NJSue]

Dad’s back in Assisted LIving and my sister has agreed that he needs to go to the memory care unit. So that’s progress. I want this move to happen no later than mid-May, which is the next time I can go out to MN and help with a move and the disposition of Dad’s stuff (he can’t bring it all with him; he’ll be going to a much smaller room). She wants to hold off until June. I don’t know why, but I’m just glad that she has realized that the move is the next logical step. I think she believes that some of his behaviors are because of the hospitalization, but I know he was acting (or not acting) that way before. I saw an article somewhere about things like upper respiratory infections, small bowel obstruction etc. at the age my Dad is. Every medical issue at this point is “just another way to die.”

We looked at getting him a double occupancy room in Supportive Living that he would occupy as a single, so that he would have a sitting area/living room and a nice view etc. but it would cost 241K a year. That’s not a good use of his resources and fortunately my sister agrees. A single occupancy room the size of a cell facing a brick wall in memory care is 183K a year (this includes food and nursing).

One minor bright spot is that in the state of MN you can deduct a lot of your medical care in AL/SL, so Dad is getting a 17K tax refund. It’s still very, very expensive to get old.

[greenbutton]

Is that a typical cost for where he is? That is really higher than our local costs, but yes. It is very very expensive to get old in the USA. Glad your sister is on the same page now.

My mom had a large growth excised from her dominant hand and the staff keep mismanaging the dressing – but she says “well, something’s gonna kill me , why not my hand”. Agree that everything is potentially a new difficulty at their age. Hang in there.

[NJSue]

Well he is receiving the gold standard of retirement care, it is true. He is a retired Mayo Clinic physician and lives in a facility that is associated with Mayo. It’s in the Midwest, though, so it’s pretty reasonable compared to what I have heard my friends say about equivalent care for their parents in the tri-state (NJ/CT/NY) area.

We plan on living in MA in our old age to be close to our daughter but I wish it were not so expensive, otherwise I would move to MN in a heartbeat honestly.

[Youdon_tsay]

Ds1 already has found a place for us in St. Paul! lol He was looking at places for his wife’s grandmother. They deposited at one place, but he said there was another community that he liked better for us.

[greenbutton]

Everyone? How are we doing? Many had lots to manage/deal with/worry about so I hope the past several days have ironed out difficulties or afforded some grace

[Mom22039]

Briefly, Dad and SMom have moved to a Brookdale facility. They are unhappy. Dad is not eating. Staff is telling them they are too much work.

Brother (POA) is visiting this weekend but cannot meet with management due to the holiday weekend.

If SMom complains to me, I will tell her I was the one who voted against this.

[cinnamon1212]

I am taking a week long break from visiting my mom (normally I see her Mon-Wed-Fri) but she was so nasty to me on Monday that I am taking the nurses’ advice, that for my own mental health I don’t need to visit that often. I will resume the visits on Monday. I do call her every morning, though.

[kiddie]

My father is still saying his phone, which is fine (he is talking to me on it), is not working. Getting him yet another new charger. So basically everything is the same.

[SOSConcern]

It seems to be playing out exactly as you had predicted. I wonder how much your dad is going to talk with your brother about SMom and his unhappiness.

Maybe your brother will see/understand, but maybe not.