Thank goodness DH and I have solid LTC insurance policies. Working hard to stay really healthy at age 59. MIL was in hospital a 2nd night. BIL and GF are making it through - GF has a port for her chemo and had chemo TX on Monday; I know how the chemo can make you feel a whole lot worse than 80/90+ YOs.
Doesn’t surprise me about FIL being in total denial how bad the situation is getting. Hopefully grand-dau will line up more help for them at home during her visit. Then with BIL/SIL visit - another set of eyes assessing.
Here’s the idea I am working on. I am making a list of things I insist my parents do NOW - before things get worse. This includes:
preplanning the funeral - Dad keeos giving me verbal instructions - if he is so concerned about his funeral - he should just go ahead and arrange it!
adding me to primary checking account so I can pay their bills - my mother will not be able to do this
adding me to safe deposit box
The idea is to make things easier for ME by doing them now - so I have less to do after he passes away. It feels like they think I do not work - do nothing all day long - and will be at their disposal 24-7.
Good ideas, rvm. Rules about how to be added to a bank safety deposit box access may vary a lot. Well worth checking into all of the above. As to the checking account, that is worth doing ahead of need, as is having checks printed with your name on them along with parent/s. I have managed parental finances for over 10 years and the biggest boon has been access to online banking. I pay most of my father’s bills that way. I was able to set up that account without a lot of bureaucratic hoops, as parents wanted it and they hadn’t established online banking for themselves. I have the legal POA, but it wasn’t required to just go online and set up an account that theoretically, we both could access. There can be some advantages of both pre-planning and at times, of pre-paying funerals.
Other things to do are to know where all documents are, drs, attorneys and accountant’s, financial people contact info, have account numbers for utility and insurance bills, insurance info for cars, home, health, social security, medicare. Now it is easy to take photos of wallet cards and bills that could capture what you may need later. I put together a very large binder with critical information in it, though I doubt it is completely up to date. Keep a running list of medical incidents by date and medications, allergies, etc. The problems arise if you are in a new Dr’s office and a bit of history is needed for optimal care.
Collaborating with your parents and responding to their discussions with concrete steps helps to advance the completion of the tasks. I’d suggest we take care of anything they brought up “now”. I also would find out what is involved in becoming their authorized Social Security and Medicare representative. That is much better done when they are well, as last SS told me, they make their own decision about authorized reps, independent of standard PoAs. worth some current research.
Don’t forget to be named on the gap policy as well.
My husband is returning from colorado today, where his 88 year old frail mother insists on going back to her home alone, after father died three weeks ago. My BIL is frantic with worry, being the closest son, 2 1/2 hours away.
But, after. Year in assisted living with dementia husband, their mother needs to grieve and reclaim her life, a least for awhile.
She falls into the camp “of those who don’t want to be a burden”, wants to continue driving, and be independent.
It’s hard growing old, facing illness, loneliness and death.
And, it’s hard being the over stressed child of these parents.
My 86 year old mother pushes my buttons every time. I’m with her, so I get it. But, she recently reminded me how hard it is to be dependent, unable to do things (macular degeneration ) and she reminded last week me How awful, terrible, it is being unable to drive.
My sister stopped at the rehab facility to find that an IV was put in our mom’s arm - the arm with the bracelet on it that says NO BLOOD DRAWS/IVs THIS ARM. No one was called about an IV, nothing posted saying what it is for. Mom is confused. Turns out she has low sodium levels, ok, but the charge nurse had no idea that putting an IV in an arm with lymphedema is wrong.
Mom has gone from self-sufficient to this in less than 5 months. I have no clue where she’ll be at the end of the year.
I’m close to going to the safe deposit box and pulling everything out. I don’t want something to happen and have it sealed.
I don’t think her taxes were done this year - not sure if she actually pays anything, but it is always possible. She’s been so able to take care of these things. It’s hard to come to the realization that she won’t be able to anymore.
@zeebamom talk to the charge nurse/nursing director about the IV put in the wrong arm if your sister did not. Should have checked bracelet. Should have had notation about Lymphedema somewhere. Was the nurse a LPN, a RN? Rehab should not be with errors like this. Is your mom being followed by her regular doctor?
Make sure you do have the documents out that are necessary from her safety deposit box.
It was apparently a contract nurse who did not understand lymphedema (?!). They apologized all over the place. When she couldn’t insert the IV in the correct hand, she went ahead and did it in the wrong one. Why she wasn’t paying attention to the notes will be a conversation between the supervisor and the nurse. Mom’s veins are really small due to the chemo she had, so they should be using very tiny needles.
An ARNP finally came up with a workaround.
I worked for a bank years ago and saw first hand what happens when people put wills and must-have-immediately-upon-death documents in a safety deposit box. I don’t think the end is near or anything, and her will isn’t in there, but I’d be more comfortable clearing it out.
“One of the recurring themes on this thread has been that empathy is the first thing to go in dementia.”
My parents were never empathetic, even growing up. As a teen I was beaten by my brother, and my parents said to not tell the doctors how I got injured, so the police wouldn’t take me away. My mom passed relatively young, due to ignoring many doctors’ recommendations and then going right to an ostomy and starving to death with terminal cancer.
My dad is near 90 and does not even understand the concept of empathy. I talk to him and he has no conversation abilities, and this is with him lucid most of the time. Honestly think he could be on the autism spectrum, maybe Asperger’s. He won’t call if I don’t. If I call, I have to ask him how he is doing, and he is always “great” and I ask how my many siblings are doing, and they are either always “great” or he recounts something from two years ago. He literally doesn’t know how to act with people.
I think anyone who has had supportive parents throughout their lives, and now have role reversal or lack of empathy on the part of older parents were lucky. I had to stop talking to my mother when I was in my 20s she was so toxic to my life. I did start talking to her again after months.
With my dad, he has Life Alert and I figure the first time we’ll find out anything about his real state, despite visits, is if he falls and has to go to hospital.
As for this lingering/malingering thing, lucidity can be an issue. If a child was ill, and going through medical treatments, most of us would fight the fight and keep projecting towards better days in the future. But with the elderly, and also younger disabled people, maybe better days are behind them and it’s hard to see the point.
But I just wish my mom could have seen my kids. At least my dad has been able to, no matter how dysfunctional they were and he is.
My mom is on her rehab floor. Although my sister lives there she really isn’t a good judge of mom’s abilities or status. I think she’s used to a slow decline and doesn’t recognize things. My other sister had a friend stop by and visit mom who was able to say mom is too weak to live independently. However since she’s a resident she’s allowed to go to the main dining room for dinner, which has much better food and the social highlight of the day. She can even call the main dining room to deliver her lunch, and the front desk brings her newspaper to her every day. That’s pretty much her life in a nutshell so she’s content to stay where people keep an eye on her. She goes to the cardiologist next week.
Meanwhile my sister drives us all nuts. She gets all worked up over everything. I’ve been telling her she needs to learn to compartmentalize and not let mom’s daily everything occupy such a huge space in her brain. Mom could get this valve and live another 10 years. Sister could spend the next 10 years in a constant tizzy over mom’s everything.
I used to be anxious, and then I decided it was not worth it. Anxiety breeds anxiety. My friend is going through a tough divorce, and that makes her anxious, but day to day things make her even more anxious. The dog has fleas, and her daughter got a flea bite. Have to vacuum the whole house, have to throw out stuff. I like the Nike “just do it” though I understand that judging the mental and physical health of an older person can be difficult if you don’t see them all day. What is the “do” that you “just do”?
But sometimes I think well-meaning friends and relatives who only stop by can be a distraction or even detrimental. “she’s doing great” or “how can she live by herself?” can be true at different times on different days. My dad has moments where I think “how can he live by himself?” (and he is still at the family home), but most times I think he is okay. But a visitor might see him at a bad time and want to get him out of there ASAP.
It’s good to have many kids to share care, but the sharing is never even and what “care” is can vary depending on the sibling’s experience. My MIL was the only one of four siblings to take care of her mom, heck to even see her mom, for the last ten years of her mom’s life; her mom and she shared a house. Her one sister would visit perhaps monthly, and never “eldersit”. Honestly, we would go visit around monthly (about two hours away) and we would hang out with grandma while my MIL went shopping. In a way though, having to take care of her mom 100% meant that there wasn’t fighting about what to do; she talked to her mom and she thought about it, and sometimes talked to us, and then proceeded.
(fwiw, the reason my MIL’s mother moved out of her family home in the first place, around 70, was her husband died, and he was really nasty to her for most of the marriage, so she was happy to leave that house. This guy was so wonderful that he punched my MIL in the nose when she was 16 when she was trying to defend her mother from his drunken rage)
FIL is old, mid-90s, he is mostly all there mentally, though definitely forgetting things. It’s too bad he just gets angry at everyone when he forgets (we all get lectured for not having told him whatever it is previously) but the saddest thing is how just glum he sounds. He was an amazing physical specimen, had a joint replaced in his mid 80s because he was too slow on the tennis court, he was able to do so much more (physically) than most and took pride in it. Now he does not walk well, does not get up well etc. And instead of having any feelings of pleasure in being alive approaching 100, in having most of his mental faculties, in still living in his lifetime home, in having all his kids & grandkids be in pretty good places, etc., every time we talk to him he is tired of being alive. If you tell him about something you did, like travels, he is not happy, he is jealous, though he traveled extensively.
I am making mental notes to be happy with my lot when I get older and my world shrinks. I have trouble feeling much sympathy, he was better off until nearly 90 than many people in their 50s, he has had a longer good run and done more than most people ever will. If he were my kid, I would tell him to snap out of it.
I wish we could be helpful, but there really is nothing to be done.
somemom, my dad started taking an antidepressant (Lexapro) when he was 88 and complaining about everything all the time. He really didn’t want to take it, but once he did, it really helped.
You could try again. My dad refused for a long time and then my brother and I told him that it was really hard to help him because he was so negative all the time. He said, “I’m not depressed and I don’t need an antidepressant but I’ll take it because it makes YOU feel better.” And he took it. We could see the difference almost immediately. He stopped a few times when he was still filling his own pill boxes but once we took it over, he took it without comment.
Some Drs are excellent at describing what anti-depressants or anti-anxiety agents might do for their patients in a language that is more palatable, particularly to a generation that did not grow up in an age of ubiquitous therapies and psycho-active medications. They normalize it as something that helps a lot of their patients, suggest it may help with sleep, pleasure in daily activities, smooth over rough edges, increase energy, make things easier, etc. Sometimes the words make a difference.
Agree with oldmom; If I had a competent, but resistant, elder who might benefit, I would periodically re-visit the issue, picking up on how they describe their complaints. If they are not competent, family members can sometimes be an advocate with physicians for looking into options, as they are often in the best position to see problems of irritability, brooding, worrry and moodiness. As different options work for individuals, monitoring results/side effects is an important part of the process. I have a relative whose mother was on an extra “vitamin” during the last year of her life. She was not competent to assess all the pros and cons, but the relative was. It helped her a lot.
Good thoughts to all here who work so hard with and behalf of their elders.
My father (88 and doing well physically) told me today how glad he was that he was taking the anti-anxiety medicine. His main issue was feeling guilt about something he said to someone who has been dead for 10 years. I was concerned at first, but now see how well the medication “smoothes over the rough edges” and helps him enjoy his days.
