Parents Caring for Parents Support Thread (Part 2)

Parent Cafe
6496

Oh boy…. My mom got a text message (or email but she was having trouble figuring that out) A generic FEDEX we tried to deliver a package, click here to have it delivered again. And by the way, put in your credit card :woman_facepalming:

The credit card was declined. I told mom she had to call the credit card company and see if there were any fraudulent charges. I can’t log in because mom had a log in but that’s been forgotten.

This is not something I can do easily from 400 miles away. My sibling and I’m not blaming, only wants to accompany mom to her numerous appointments but does not want to or does not have the bandwidth to deal with these things.

I told mom she could not enter her credit card anymore without talking to either me or my sibling. Mom is trying to set up her medication to come mail order, she thought this was them trying to deliver it. She’s not driving, my sibling is not willing to drive her to her errands.

I’m not blaming my sibling but mom is not understanding what is spam and what is not. And how to navigate the internet. I don’t get called until things have been done already.

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6497

I was always surprised that my MIL was never interested in anything related to technology. Now, I’m thrilled that she never could grasp it. My SIL kept trying to get her to use a cellphone & bought her a Jitterbug. I kid you not, she got more spam texts and voicemails than I could have thought possible. I told MIL she was not to answer the phone if she didn’t recognize the caller, she could only respond to voicemails from known friends, and she could not respond to texts (none of her friends text). It’s scary out there for vulnerable seniors (and sometimes for my own H!).

I’m sorry your sib doesn’t understand the importance of dealing with this, but I know what it’s like. My SIL doesn’t always understand why things need to happen.

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6498

Yes, it was a relief when dad could no longer remember how computer worked so he didn’t constantly get barrage of spam. It was even better when they stopped answering the phone because that blocked another avenue of spam. Seniors are so vulnerable and preyed upon. It’s awful but so frequent!

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6499

Aarrrggg…..the only thing that saved my mom from this was doing away with her email completely. Even then, she gave away her medicare number to a phone spammer….it is so hard to stop this stuff!!

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6500

We have this issue with phone scams in that Dad is perfectly willing to give credit card etc. info to strangers who randomly call. With Dad’s permission, we finally took over by setting up online logins for all financial, Amazon, cable, healthcare etc. accounts with two factor authentication to his kids’ phones. The kids now get alerts on their phones for transactions over a certain dollar amount and Dad is unable to give out (because he doesn’t know) account passwords. Sad that it came to this, but we were getting sick of spending hours to unwind the scams and Dad is not willing to give us POA. It isn’t a perfect system, but the quicker we can spot the scam, the less time it takes to fix it.

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6501

I know!

I just unraveled the CBD gummy subscription she set up, the clothes she ordered from China, today she couldn’t understand that the mail order prescriptions wouldn’t need a signature. After she called me back 3 times because she was getting text messages and emails confused and couldn’t be on the phone and read the text message!

She had a credit card from the bank with a very low limit that I could monitor but we had to put a hold on it after the CBD gummy fiasco. She has to call them and have them send her a new card.

Some of the issues are that I’m not local, I can’t pop over there. The last time we were there, the internet was down at her living place.

My sibling has ADD, I don’t think can really untangle all of this. Gets upset and annoyed, yells at mom. Mom really wants to do this herself. Sigh! She doesn’t have dementia but can not figure out what is what right now.

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6502

Any chance you can hire someone local whom you trust to help her out with these things? It sounds really stressful.

6503

That’s a thought.

There’s a person who can help. The problem is that mom is no longer driving and is unable to do those errands she has done in the past

I think the issue is that my sibling wants mom to do everything online and delivery. Mom wants to do it the way she’s always has. Neither my sibling nor my mother are very flexible.

The problem for me is untangling the mess which my sibling is unaware of. Because they get upset and yell. Mom doesn’t want to get yelled at so she tries to do it herself. Which isn’t going well.

Also sibling and I communicate only when absolutely necessary. I have my reasons that I’m not going to get into. My husband is in agreement that I limit communication with sibling.

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6504

In my very metropolitan area, there is (or used to be) an uber-like service just for young kids and seniors. We used it for our kids when they were young teens and had to be somewhere and we couldn’t drive them – there was extra vetting of the drivers and code words and tracking available. Maybe something like that is available where she is?

Or…maybe a tech-savvy, trustworthy person to help her do some of it online?

Or…can you set up screensharing and zoom and help her order what she needs from 400 miles away?

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6505

My mom and my mil refuse to use any ride share and also do not like to order groceries online. It’s been discussed a lot.

my mom can’t even figure out how to put her iPhone on speaker and swipe up to get to her text messages, she kept having to call me back. her internet is very spotty. Sharing a screen on her very old desktop seems like something that couldn’t be figured out.

Not that these aren’t great ideas, they are. They are also out of her range of things she can do.

She needs to call some places. She’s decided that she wants to either ignore or get us to do it. She’s capable, I told her she had to call her bank and order a new credit card. And to call me before she gives out her information.

One of mom’s granddaughters is tech savvy and local. She does help some, but mom keeps trying to figure it out herself.

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6506

before my mom moved to AL, we tried to get her to never open email, period, until she read one of us the subject line. Her credit card is paid automatically and I am the email address, so when anything goes on her card, and when it gets paid, I get the email. At leastthen we know if something is wrong, but honestly this only works because I pretended to be her to set all that up.

Local wrote on a card that was posted at the phone “if you want to speak about my finances or healthcare, please call Local at 333-333-3333”. This did not always work, she would forget to do it or worry she was rude to someone. And my father’s solution was to hang upon people. They couldn’t use an answering machine, a cellphone, or email. My inlaws can’t either. I have no solutions but plenty of sympathy.

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6507

That sounds challenging, I’m sorry.

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6508

My brothers had to cancel all the folks’ CCards because of fraud and ID theft. We were happy to pay did anything they needed and the CCRC covered meals there and they sent a bill to brother who paid w/o complaint.

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6509

My MIL was like this, too. It made her procuring groceries and other things quite challenging because she couldn’t drive for the last ~ 3 yr of her life and we lived about a 1.5 hr drive from her house. For over a year, my H would drive to her house and spend half of the weekend driving her all over creation for her errands.

H tried talking sense into her for months and months. She refused to budge. Grocery delivery wasn’t available yet in her part of town, but you COULD place an online grocery order ahead of time and have it scheduled to pick up at a specific time slot. She’d always say that she “didn’t feel comfortable” doing that, wanted to go around the store like she always did.

Her doing her grocery shopping often took well over an hour because she would write a list and then go around the store and pick things based on the order she had it on the list ( not go up and down each row starting at 1 end of the store and ending on the other end of the store).

She also would refuse to tell H ahead of time what other places she wanted or needed to go to. So H would go there thinking it would be 2, maybe 3 hours tops of errands, only for it to be 8+ hours. And she wanted to go out to eat but insisted on my H paying every time.

That whole entire time, she’d have to go to different pharmacies every week to pick up prescription refills for a big laundry list of different medications she was on. At multiple suggestions to switch it all to a home delivery pharmacy service, she’d say, “I’m not comfortable with that.” She wanted to talk to the pharmacist each week. But why go to different pharmacies? Because this one drug is cheaper there, but this other drug is a couple of bucks cheaper elsewhere, etc.

Eventually, my H got fed up with the nonsense and put his foot down and told her that he wasn’t doing it anymore. She got a church friend to do it after that. And the church friend would come pick her up and take her all over creation 7 days a week. Like, they spent literally all day together. Yet still, MIL would call my H claiming she was so lonely. How can you be lonely when you’re around people literally all day long?

Eventually, the friend got a little tired of the grocery store nonsense and told MIL that as of X date in the future, MIL would have to do online pick-up grocery orders. Suddenly, a miracle happened and MIL figured out how to do online grocery orders.

And then eventually, the friend got sick of the “go every week to different pharmacies” game and a miracle happened again…and MIL switched all over her meds to a home delivery service.

And a 3rd miracle happened and MIL decided that she could, actually, finally do online home delivery orders of cat litter & cat food for her 2 cats.

:slight_smile:

But in the meantime, it was totally exhausting for my H. Totally understand & relate to the burn out & frustration you must feel!

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6510

We have been the helpful former neighbors – to help in time of need for this couple (both 79 - her with not good health) that have to make the hard decisions - they have to close one home (most likely the one by us) and have their waterfront coastal condo (6 1/2 hours between the two) be their one home (which is the retirement home and the place that is his preference). The wife uses a walker but is not motivated or is declining so much to not do many steps. The coastal home would mean stay in place for her, due to outdoor steps which would be hard to get her in and out of the large condo. At some point, both of them will need assisted living, her before him. I told her that if she cannot manage at the condo home, to find an assisted living near there and have moved whatever furnishings she wants from the home – and then let the rest of the ‘stuff’ at that home go. Any small trinkets/keepsakes to go to the condo or AL.

The husband Bill fell backwards from a few brick/concrete steps of their home and landed on his back on the driveway with a hard whack to the back of his head. He returned from dental work being done - instead of stumbling forward he thought he could correct himself and hit his head hard enough that he needed to be in the hospital several days due to the two areas on the brain one showing a pool of blood and the other an area of concern - hospital where the brain/neurosurgeon kept him on a very limited diet in the event he would need surgery. The morning after the fall, he had back pain (from his cervical area from the fall) and I drove him to ER. They don’t like the local Uber and I was available. I believe that the day before (and during the night) if he felt that he was in serious trouble, he would have called an ambulance. After imaging (about 24 hours after the fall) - essentially the day after, they had him transferred by ambulance to the hospital with neurosurgery care - and the local hospital with that care wasn’t sure about a bed there yet (they currently had 60 patients in their own ER and didn’t want to ‘give away’ a bed before their own patients/in network patients were taken care of) so he went by ambulance to major medical center 100 miles away (which actually would be the better choice to me anyway for something that could have gotten serious fast and a better team of MD with major medical center/teaching hospital/Med School). After a few days in the hospital, they determined that he could go home, and my husband picked him up and got him home. So my husband had the two hour drive to ‘catch up’ with Bill. Bill has followed up with his PCP and now is being followed by local spine center/recommended specialists - transferred care from major medical MDs 100 miles away. While he was still in the local ER, I got him a phone charger for his phone (so he could do communicating with his phone which had enough power for the day), and also picked up food for his wife (her choice of take-out). She has a local cousin that picked up on ‘local care’ while her husband was in the hospital.

The husband Bill arranged for Walmart grocery delivery when he returned home. He had a cervical collar and has gotten better follow up with pain management (from the cervical spine trauma). He found he can do limited driving w/o the cervical collar (and obviously non-medicated) - he is an intelligent and practical person.

The wife is very motivated on certain political meetings, and she actually is getting out (with her husband’s help) to what I believe is a close out on that activity at the home that needs to get closed. They have a stair machine that he navigates her into at this home and also getting her to a dental appointment.

They will remain at this home until he gets a lot better and perhaps she either gets stronger/better - but the life they had maintaining both places and traveling back and forth together is untenable. On one drive back south to the condo, a year or more ago, she actually slumped in the car (had a major stroke) and the next exit was a hospital/ER which she got the important shot - she and he have different stories on it all (his would be more accurate on her recovery, but hers is more entangled with her emotions and her own recovery picture). The doctors thought she would have more severe limitations on recovery, and she actually recovered w/o the facial/speech/one-sided bodily signs that first presented. He might actually see other things.

Bill’s two sons are in distant states and are not involved at all - they have their lives apart, and the dad keeps up a relationship separate from his current long-time wife. Professionally, the sons check in with the dad (because they value his professional advice). He picks up the phone more to them than them to him. IMHO even if the wife dies, the husband/dad will not move near the sons - he has his own community. Phone calls are the way to stay connected to his sons. Both sons are married with kids.

They have care services at their condo. It is hard in part because they are more ‘alone’.

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6511

Any experience with overnight Respite Care programs (especially in NY)?

I am on an unexpected week long trip to NY to help Dad and his wife. She got Covid and was wiped out. It took me 24 hours to get here, and we were all relieved she was somewhat on the mend by then (and Dad did not get it). I am trying (again) to help them explore options to be ready for a future crisis. She mentioned some kind of Respite benefit - she thinks covered by Medicare, but my quick google search shows only for caregiver of somebody in hospice (?)

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6512

Start with your local department on aging: Respite | Office for the Aging

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6513

My dad has now gone to church and to see “Downton Abbey” while wearing his prosthetic leg - he used a walker but didn’t need a wheelchair. His next goal is to walk without a walker, but he knows that’s going to be challenging.

He and Lady Friend want to go down to his condo on the Texas coast in early November, to oversee remodeling. ? Not sure how he will use the bathroom since that’s the main thing they’re redoing. I do worry about him making a trip like that. He’s fine until he isn’t. If he falls…

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6514

I believe you are correct that medicare coverage is very limited for respite care when I researched this in the past for dad (IL resident). Short term respite care is offered at private assisted living residences. It wasn’t inexpensive, but I thought it may be an option if desperately needed to give mom respite from dad’s care or to test drive a particular AL residence for long term if that became necessary.

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6515

I looked into this last summer after my mom was in the hospital and she needed help caring for my dad who had Parkinson’s. We ended up with a caregiver that came in the mornings to help dad shower, dress and get breakfast. She would also come so that my mom could go play bridge and run errands. This caregiver also took my dad out for walks when he was able and she did light housekeeping. Nancy was such a huge help to my parents the last few months of my dad’s life. My parents paid $36 per hour for her services and she was worth every penny. We were very fortunate to find her through an agency that did not require a minimum number of hours per day.

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