Boy, this was the roughest part, at least it was for me. The physical stuff was exhausting, but the mental stuff was really sad and funny and also made it clear (to me anyway) that she didn’t know what she was doing. My brother still felt like she did things “for attention.” You think she kept dh and I up until 3 a.m. asking to go home because her parents were going to be so worried about her because she hadn’t made it home from the movies for attention??? OK.
Can you get her checked for a UTI? It often shows up with symptoms similar to dementia. When I got those crazy phone calls (like the ones you describe her making today), it would turn out they my father had a UTI and that was causing his disorientation. The “in another room” type panics sound very much like the UTI hallucinations often seen in elderly people.
Because of the many comments here, I was not surprised that his UTI gave him wacky nightmares and hallucinations in the hospital. Luckily he believed us when we explained that things like manholes in the hospital room floor were not really there. And he said he trained himself to “turn off the movie” (felt like he was tumbling through space) when going to sleep.
My dad is forgetting more and more things, and it’s causing problems. His bookkeeper explained to him that she was wiring money to the company remodeling his condo in three separate transactions since the maximum allowed was $1,000 each (not sure why the money was needed immediately, I didn’t ask).
I knew Dad was remodeling the condo, but I didn’t know about the wires - the bookkeeper takes care of details, thank goodness. Two days later, I got a call from his bank. They were concerned that the wires were fraudulent. At first, I thought they were right, but when they mentioned the wires were sent to Corpus Christi, I figured out they were legitimate and told the agent that. But she said they had called my dad and he said he didn’t know anything about them, so she canceled them. I told her he’s getting forgetful, so he could have been wrong. I told her I’d check into it and get back to her. She gave me her extension, but I must have written it down wrong, because when I called back to tell her not to cancel them the next time, it was a different bank employee’s number. I guess everything went through the second time - no news is good news.
I did call Dad’s financial advisor to tell him not to approve any extra expenditures out of his account before checking with me. I have a good working relationship with the guy, so I think he will follow my instructions.
The bookkeeper is about my age. I’m so afraid she’s going to retire!! That would be a disaster. She’s even paid for things out of her own pocket when there was an issue with Dad’s credit card or something. I’m so thankful for her.
Mom doesn’t have a UTI, but certainly that has been a problem in the past. Her urologist put her on some preventative something (cranberry extract /antibiotic?)that has been terrific. She’s not on anti-anxiety meds and I don’t know that I trust the staff to oversee that. She takes a lot of tramadol as is it; every blessed addition of a med attacks her GI system. I mentioned anxiety meds to the director but not my siblings and maybe it is time for that discussion. My dad was given anti-anxiety meds in hospice and I swear it made him much worse, not better.
The only thing that the hospital staff would give my mom during her final visit was anti-anxiety meds. These were not only not helpful, but they made her more anxious. She needed pain meds, but it wasn’t until she was released to hospice that she received pain meds. The hospital my MIL was in after she broke her pelvis had a palliative care doctor who made sure she was properly medicated to manage her pain. What a difference.
I’m not talking about giving her Ativan or similar which is most likely what your dad was given in hospice but something like Zoloft or Prozac. I’ve seen it make a huge difference though it can initially and temporarily increase anxiety in some people. But the cases I’m thinking of it turned confused angry older people into much happier albeit still confused older people. In one case it’s allowed a relationship with his one year old great-grandson he wouldn’t have had otherwise.
My father was often depressed and anxious at his AL. He refused to see a doctor about it.. When he moved to a nursing home, the doctor there prescribed something which has helped him. The nursing home asked me, not him, about having the doctor check him out for anxiety.
Well, remember the story about my dad’s main caregiver not paying taxes during the year and expecting my dad to help her out? Someone mentioned that the estimated taxes the bookkeeper said she owed seemed way too high, and they were right. Long story short, she doesn’t owe that much. My dad is lending her the money, and the bookkeeper had both of them sign an agreement for a repayment schedule. Moving forward, she knows she’s responsible for all her taxes.
The bookkeeper sent me her monthly invoice for review and apologized for the amount. Oh, my gosh, I told her it’s fine! She’s a lifesaver.
My S2/DIL are due with our first grandchild this summer. As a condition of meeting the baby, they are asking us and my ILs to make sure we have proper tDaP vaccinations. We already did that when we found out they were expecting, also got an MMR booster since we are that age.
DH is worried his folks will say “oh yes, sure, we have that” and they are totally unreliable reporters. He wants them to have new ones, which I agree with, but I also know there’s no way to verify they’ve done it. I am totally on S/DiL’s side on this one.
Just venting. My own mom, they said, doesn’t need to have anything additional bc she is unlikely to have an immune response to the vax anyway (she’s a decade older than my ILs). And we don’t know when, or if, she will meet this baby in person. (She is 9 hrs from my son)
IDK if your relatives have a Walgreen’s near them, but they do these vaccinations and keep very good records.
I keep the vaccination logs for DH and me, but Walgreen’s has it all on their computer system. We annually get the flu vaccine, and I review vaccinations with our PC Physician. The tDAP I made sure of with the length of vaccine protection.
If DH has any contact with the medical providers to help coordinate making sure about their vaccinations. One has to make it easy for people to comply to have the baby be safe.
Otherwise, they just can make sure on keeping the baby from being seen/held by these relatives. Don’t let these older people be ‘bullies’ in their gentle way by saying “oh we have our vaccinations” when they really may not.
Many mothers keep other people from close contact, and that is their right. I went to my nephew’s son’s Baptism (was there over several days), and I never held the baby (nor did I ask to) because I didn’t need to and I didn’t want the mom to worry needlessly. However, the SIL, who lives pretty close, was holding him a lot - however she has four children that the mom had held a lot over the years as babies so that was a comfortable situation between these two moms.
My mil I know got her tdap to meet her great granddaughter that my niece insisted that they get.
Unfortunately everyone should have also had their covid vaccines because when my mil did meet her great granddaughter, all the people involved came down with covid.
I agree that your in-laws are unreliable narrators but I don’t know how you can solve that problem.
If Covid is ‘going around’ and someone has no signs of it, one can wear a mask and keep distant. “…because when my mil did meet her great granddaughter, all the people involved came down with covid.” Who knows where the source was for sure, but it might have been in the community and more than one ‘brought it in’.
A Covid vaccination is not a ‘true vaccination’ and for many is more harmful for their own individual health. My husband got paroxysmal A-Fib immediate signs shortly after the 2nd Covid shot.
Parents need to use their own judgment. Very young babies do need to be protected, and once they enter childcare/others coming in to care for the baby, there is more exposure to various things. Good handwashing and other things help.
I guess I’m sensitive because my fil (who didn’t go to meet his great granddaughter) caught covid from an unknown source but since the mother, the baby, the father, the grandfather, and the great grandmother were all sick with “colds”. Fil and the father of the baby ended up in the hospital. Both tested positive for Covid. I suspect they all had Covid since my fil literally hardly left the house.
My fil never recovered, he wasn’t in good health that’s for sure, spiraled downward and passed away 2 months later.
But sure, covid vaccines are bad. And could have been anything. Everyone dies of something.
During covid, we agreed to stop and see my IL in their driveway on the way to S/DiL. S has serious immune system problems; we were shipping him food boxes to minimize the need to go out of the apartment. We still covid-test before we see S/DIL.
We get to my ILs, and they have invited my BIL to come see us too. He works in an elementary school that was still open and functioning. They had all gone out for lunch and a movie. Not yet vaccinated. (which wasn’t their fault, to be fair, this was early when it was so hard to find a vax) My DH told his brother we’d just stay in our car and talk from there. They thought that was hilarious. And the next week, all three of them had covid.
Of course it is hard to know anything for certain. Knowing where, who, all that. But some people, you just are reflexively wary of. We’ll ask the IL to provide a copy of their documentation and if they don’t want to do that, they need not meet the baby in person.
Definitely everyone needs to do what they need to do for their health and to prevent baby and new mom and dad from getting ill. These situations can be tough.
