AGING PARENTS

my wife lives in fear of the day she inherits the staggering hoard of antique car parts that fills the barn and house of her childhood home

Call those American Picker guys.

my wife lives in fear of the day she inherits the staggering hoard of antique car parts that fills the barn and house of her childhood home

FWIW, the antique/collector car underground is surprisingly helpful when it comes to these situations. Last year a friend of mine had to deal with her father's car/car parts hoard and after just a few well-placed ads got connected with a collector who paid $$$$ to take the whole works. That world is obsessed with "old cars in barns" stories.

my wife's grandparents on the other hand (who are in their 90s, lucid, and sadly well aware of their daughter's state)

This is heart-breaking

my hard left (but stock market baller dad): "wait for rick santelli's take, he knows what he's talking about"

Aging parents.

I'm not sure if I mentioned it before, but one of the reasons I moved to Los Angeles was to spend the last few years of my guardian's life with her. She raised me and though she was not my biological mother, she was the closest thing I ever had to one.

Today marks two months since she passed away. There was a lot of reflecting going on in the last three months. Earlier in 2013, I remember having a conversation with a good friend and telling her, "I don't know if she can make it through another winter". But the next winter seemed so far away. And even a couple of days before her passing, death seemed so far away.

Now, I'm not judging anyone, obviously, and I think it totally depends on other circumstances, but we would have never put her in a home. Too many thoughts going through my head right now to write something coherent.

I remember about 8 of us slept in her hospital room for probably four days, because we didn't want her to be alone. Many of her family members visited and she seemed to be improving. As the black sheep in a Catholic family, I always looked at the science, and was sceptical ever since maybe April of 2013. And everyone kept...I don't know if deluding themselves is the right word, but they kept holding onto their faith and at the hint of any positive news, they'd forget about all the other ill-occurrences and symptoms she'd had and would continue to have. It was shocking to me, and I tried to say something, but pretty much got accused of so many bad things and being so negative, when I was only trying to help.

Too many thoughts.

She was probably the strongest person I have ever met in my entire life.

I remember when I first created this user, it was meant as an experiment. I really can't keep it up anymore, as it is too much work and seems quite infantile and frivolous. Still trying to understand if there was a deeper meaning for all of this than what it all appears on the face of it.

Created a new user.

god bless you. i mean that. and i don't believe in god. but i feel for you. i went through something similar w/ my grandmother, but it's too difficult to write about right now.

I spend most of this period visiting at weekends, and other times - and in that rather mad space where you seem cut off from the concerns of normal life, unable to relax for a minute, and living a kind of nightmare existence that no-one else around you realises. (Nothing like the horrific life of a full-time career - but bad enough).

The only thing you can say about it is that it passes, and you realise that what felt like an endless enduring period was in the end just another temporary era.

Pfff - i'll requote this again, mostly for my own personal benefit. Good to know that people have gone through this shit, since it often feels like you're living a nightmare that's completely oblivious to everybody else.

An Amazing Village Designed Just For People With Dementia

For example, one common symptom is the urge to roam, often without warning, which had led most "memory units" and dementia care centers to institute a strict lock-down policy. In one German town, an Alzheimer's care center event set up a fake bus stop to foil wandering residents. At Hogeweyk, the interior of the security perimeter is its own little village—which means that patients can move about as they wish without being in danger.

http://www.anglotopia.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/truman-show-lightning-travel-agent.png

The whole concept makes me very teary, I think that is a wonderful way to care for dementia patients.

And the fake bus stop made me lol, I bet that would work wonders with my father in law.

If I could live out my final days as a shambling Number Six perpetually harassing The Village in that annoying old-person way... I would be so fucking happy.

right? it makes total sense

What if you already are? WHAT IF YOU ALREADY ARE?

The floors are now able to tell The Village if you've wandered too far: http://www.future-shape.com/en/technologies/23/sensfloor-large-area-sensor-system

Was it on this page where I talked about my grandmother thinking her dog was being electrocuted through the carpet by her neighbors?

Because I'm so glad she never saw that link, Elvis.

TMI ahead.

So back in March my mother managed to sneak out of the memory care floor and make it outside by hiding next to the food cart in the elevator and then casually walking out the front door. Alert! The facility calls the cops and everything becomes comically ridiculous with all the procedures that have to be activated when a well-appointed assisted living facility in 2014 surveillance state Orange County goes on lockdown. I'm so fucking thankful I have a job however tenuous because I dodged being the one who had to take the call to persuade my mom to go back inside - my sister did. It all works out OK and she goes back in. The folks at the facility were trying to figure out how she managed to get off of the second floor, but I know the real reason: all the 60s/70s-era pulp espionage fiction she loves*! Alistair MacLean, Len Deighton, Robert Ludlum, Clive Cussler, etc. she read it all. One unexpected benefit of being the child of a super-conservative mom is that we saw every James Bond** movie, every nihilistic conspiracy movie, cold war/WWII/etc. movie on opening night at the Big Edwards in Fascist Island.

The situation over there though was worsening. My mother was just being obnoxious and belligerent, kept trying to get out, and just horrible to everyone. Two weeks ago the facility finally had enough... An Official 5150 (really! It's on the form) and she was moved to a psych hospital for a couple of weeks so her meds could be straightened-out. Success! My sister saw her today and the difference was incredible. She's still talks in cycles and thinks she fell down and hit her head while ice skating but at least she's friendly. One staffer described her as being "the mom you wished you had." Hoping so at least for her sake. I haven't been over there since she told me to shut up and shrieked like a pod person.

*I've been hauling all of these books out of the hoard and taking them to Goodwill by the van-full. My sister and I just started in on month four of this and by my rough calculations + actual vehicle weighing we've hauled out 8.5 tons of crap: most of it books, old clothes, leftover material from abandoned construction and bags upon bags upon bags of paper garbage. One set of civic trash cans have already been killed and replaced (for free!) with larger/stronger ones. Last weekend I let my inner troglodyte take over and took two van loads of disgusting desiccated furniture and leftover construction material to the San Juan Capistrano landfill. At least there's an ocean view out there. The master plan for that part of the county is that the landfill will close in 2067 and then a regional park and city built over the top. I haven't been to the county landfill in over twenty years and I had no idea just how oversized it is now. These days you just kick the trash out of the van onto the landfill moonscape while a bulldozer the size of a McDonalds stands by to grind your filth into the ground. I totally nerd out on infrastructure and things the CLUI does but holy shit there's an eye-croggling amount of Future Bullshit our followers are going to have to deal with. I hate hoarding. I fucking hate it. I hate the corporations who sell "collectables" to elderlies because it's only collectable to a dying generation. I hate the default "that will be worth something some day" and "one day I'm going to fix that up" attitudes. I'm even more annoyed when my hoarding gene is validated and something I hung onto becomes useful again. Prima Deshecha Landfill is now my #1 search term on my phone's Google Maps.

**Of course there will never be a movie about what happens when the older children of an 89-year-old Stage 4 Dementia Moneypenny have to deal with her craziness. I'm still waiting for that perfect existential moment to hit while driving the Aston Martin around but so far no success. Too many assholes that rev engines at stop lights and try to ruin your day.

whoa! I can't believe your mom sneaked out! That is scary but also totally amazing and I can't help but cheer for her.

Glad she is doing better. What meds is she taking? <<< that is a totally personal question so feel free to ignore, of course, but I do have a professional interest in such things or I wouldn't ask!

Your cleanup is amazing. So is your writing. TY for these posts!

I wish I could be around in 2067 for a 20th Century bureaucrat to explain to the new mayor what to do with the landfill.

"Well, our thinking back then was that you could build a park on top of it."

Porcelain Air Bud doll, commemorative plate remembering the 5/23 attacks, wicker bean bag roll by...

"Yeah, that's what you were thinking, eh?"

medication adjustments can really make a huge difference

my father in law (dementia) was aggressive, argumentative, downright misogynistic to my sister in law and his female carer and over a period of 6 months had turned into this horrible man that they didn't want to be around, and did not at ALL resemble the man he had been before things ramped up.

a month ago they took him off a few medications, put him on some new ones (I couldn't tell you what exactly the changes were)...he's back to his old self. He can follow a logical flow of conversation, doesn't get aggressive or agitated with ideas that are new to him, and is much friendlier to be around especially for my sister in law and his carer

I think it's difficult when they are on so many medications for physical ailments AND mental ailments, and in some cases they may have more than one doctor and none of them know what the other is prescribing, or aren't made aware by guardians or whatever. having someone knowledgeable to act as a *medical* advocate for aging patients where mental health is an issue can really make a difference

Glad she is doing better. What meds is she taking? <<< that is a totally personal question so feel free to ignore, of course, but I do have a professional interest in such things or I wouldn't ask!

I haven't seen the full report back from the hospital so I don't have the full details. The text from my sister simply said "Better living through chemistry"

I wish I could be around in 2067 for a 20th Century bureaucrat to explain to the new mayor what to do with the landfill.

You don't have to wait, you can read about the toxic mess at the former Coyote Canyon Landfill site

From all outward appearances, Newport Coast—the prized real-estate development project of Orange County's wealthiest, most powerful man, Irvine Co. billionaire Don Bren—looks to be a slice of heaven on Earth. Elaborate gates and private guards protect hillside neighborhoods with sweeping, Pacific Ocean views. Mediterranean-style houses, some accurately called "palatial estates" in real-estate guides, can fetch $20 million or more. Even the palm tree-, succulent- and flower-lined, litter-free public roads suggest paradise.

It's the perfect setting for a crime or, at least, a bizarre mystery.

Just as Bren hails himself as the perfect, proud capitalist even though his private, cash-cow project is (cleverly) publicly subsidized, Newport Coast is built on a contradiction. Next to all those gorgeous estates is one of OC's largest toxic dumps: Beside Newport Coast Road, the 395-acre Coyote Canyon Landfill contains 60 million cubic yards of municipal solid waste generated from household, commercial, industrial, recreational and agricultural trash sources during a 30-year period.

But the waste—so extensive it goes 200 feet deep—hasn't just been sitting there. County officials and Bren have allowed a gas-recovery company to burn the trash to generate power. Incinerating trash can have negative consequences for nearby humans through the release of dioxins and arsenic into the atmosphere. In January 2010, a decision to burn Coyote Canyon trash around the clock seven days a week doubled the cancer-risk threshold, requiring government air-quality officials to alert 200 Newport Coast households to the danger.

This is where our crime mystery begins.

After the decision to keep Coyote Canyon incinerators burning nonstop, Anna D. Steiner—a practicing medical doctor, single mother of three children and well-to-do Newport Coast resident—noticed that her children (ages 14, 12 and 11) began suffering unusual symptoms, including bloody noses and chronic abdominal pain. Concerned, Steiner took them for urinalysis testing. Arsenic—a lethal poison in large doses—was detected, but in levels considered normal. The kids continued to exhibit signs of sickness, and Steiner continued to test. In May 2010, her youngest child twice tested positive for above-normal levels of arsenic in her system.

The findings were understandably alarming. Steiner wondered if Coyote Canyon landfill activities caused the poisoning, or if a sneaky, would-be killer was loose. On the advice of a social worker and with the hope of solving the mystery, she went to the local police in Bren's home city for help.

If there are any Boston-area ilxors who read this thread, I need your help.

We live in nyc, but my wife is in Framingham right now trying to get her mother's situation sorted out. In a nutshell, her mom has had severe OCD for a long time and it has gotten to the point where it is seriously imperiling her health (she's barely eating or drinking because of her inner edicts). She lives on her own in a subsidized complex and gets social security. She still drives (is only in her early 70s) and goes out every day, but is highly, angrily, nastily, cunningly resistant to treatment for her problem. My wife is down there to basically force her into treatment by hook or by crook, preferably CBT and with a female practitioner, maybe inpatient if medicare/Tufts HMO will cover it. Wife is gonna stay down there for a week and half but there is def gonna need to be something like a caseworker popping in on Mom after that to make sure she is working whatever program is assigned her etc. I am hoping one of y'all might know a) a provider that fits the bill in the area around framingham/metro west and or b) some kind of MA state program that is especially geared toward this kind of instance with elderly patients? Or a state hotline that points one in the right direction? Wife does not have much internet access down there and only has her smartphone with her so I'm trying to come up with a game plan from my perch in nyc...

By the way, if anyone here is facing these kinds of issues with your parents. PLEASE do everything you can to have power of attorney, bank accounts, etc. squared away. I don't know what we would be doing now if that wasn't taken care of.

Does anyone here have any advice on convincing a reluctant parent to cooperate in this sort of business? My mother is living in squalor reminiscent of the pictures upthread, and in the past has dodged the question when I try to bring up this subject. I dread the idea of something critical happening, and having to dig through feet of stuff to try and find her information.

(I am so cowardly in the face of this that I am considering getting back together with the guy I dumped years ago, just in hope of getting some emotional support.)

hey jon. to get the attention of the people you want, just keep posting here: Boston -- Classic or Dirty Water?

that's kind of our thread. (even if you didn't get a response last time)

it's been more inactive as of late than it has in the past, but it's possibly your best bet on ilx

Best wishes and positive thoughts to all on this thread -- this is hard, hard stuff.

Since his retirement, Pa C. has been living in a cabin in the north Georgia mountains. Over the last year or two it has become obvious that his ability to function on his own is waning. What finally prompted me to intervene was his inability to make the drive to or from our house, about 100 miles, without becoming confused and lost and arriving many hours late. After his last nerve-wracking attempt, I talked to him very directly about how much stress and fear his diminishing capacity was creating for me and for the rest of the family. His short-term memory is shot, but he's otherwise still fairly cogent, and he seemed to respond much better to my saying "you can't live this way any more because it's scaring me to death" than "you can't live this way any more because you're frail and demented."

Once I got him to acknowledge there was a problem, he gradually let me get more directly involved. That was about six months ago. Last week he moved into a place a few blocks from ours and so far seems to be adapting well to his new environment. How I am going to adapt to spending many hours a week helping him shop, clean, etc. remains to be seen.

I think a huge part of the challenge of these situations is breaking through the psychological conditioning of childhood in relating to a parent, whether that conditioning disposes one toward passivity, rebellion, deference, terror, or whatever. It's difficult to get past habitual emotional responses and find new ones that are based more on current events than on history. This opportunity for emotional reorientation is one faintly positive aspect of events that otherwise can feel overwhelming.

By calculation I'm up to around 13 tons of crap out of the house and into the Goodwill and Prima Deshecha: City Of The Future. Most of the heavyweight: mouse-pee infected furniture, 1200 pounds of rusted wrought-iron furniture, enough books to stock several Goodwill stores of the type of books Goodwills carry, and unending piles of accumulated bullshit that's hard to deal with. Every day I utter "Fuck, do I just put all that into a bag?" I feel like I'm paying some perverse type of psychic penalty for being really into Mad Men - having to dig out a mid-century modern house

I keep thinking in terms of restarting a derelict spaceship ("life-support is at 35% captain") but the reality is more ferally practical. I want to get the fucking toilet working so I don't auto-conclude "enh, it's just easier to pee in the trees on the hillside." On top of all that, I'M MOVING IN. It's hard not to think of it as squatting in a derelict place, but if those maniacs in Slab City can make it work out in apocalypse land I certainly can deal with this. Mad respect to those folks in Detroit who buy ten dollar houses and somehow Make It Work.

Meanwhile my mother is... well let me quote from an email my sister just sent me:

It seems that when mother is left alone, she walks around a bit and participates on the periphery of things going on, which is a big improvement. As soon as one of the staff is in the room or I'm there, she manipulates and moans and groans. There was an issue a week ago of two staff people having to make her get in the shower, and those people are now "evil."

There's another hoarder on the floor! She comes into other residents' rooms and takes stuff.

Potential problems!!

The CENSORED is having a hard time renting out the room next door because mother enjoys walking around in the nude. She doesn't go out in the hallway like that though--yet. Another big problem (brace yourself for this one) is that she is also very sexual and noisy about it. A number of dementia patients are like this--more men than women. I asked if there was some kind of med to tone it down, and there is one that they give to men sometimes. CENSORED STAFF will ask the doctor.

You cannot get enough praise and support for what you're dealing with, ET.

If I lived near you I would totally adopt your mom and hang out with her, because it is SO MUCH EASIER when it is not *your* parent!

i think you deserve a break
how heavy, on a scale of 1-10 is this for you? (feel free to not answer this if you don't want, i don't mean to pry)
i ask bc if it were me (and it will be eventually on some scale), i think i would be completely imploding. i hope you have someone you can talk to and hang with irl to decompress.

1 = can totes handle this no problem
10 = take me down to the hospital

aw dude, sending you good vibes.

It's all over the scale. Sometimes I wish my memory wasn't quite so sharp because *everything* in there has sense memory and you can't turn that off. My gf has come down several times to help me dig out and she approaches it as pure archeology - separating the treasure from the trash - and is asking the honest "keep, eBay, Goodwill, or trash" question and I keep having answering "trash" and getting frayed around the edges because every single fucking thing in there was a choice my mom made to value that thing more than she valued her family. There's no sense of importance - the piles of unhandled junk mail become equally as important as family photographs, kindergarten drawings, old furniture she compulsively bought at garage sales, broken hot plates, dozens of old desiccated dolls, even more dozens of teapots, hundreds of never opened cook books, water-damaged photographs that I remember not because of the vacation or occasion but because she made me feel bad about wearing glasses ("you got your father's eyes") and demanded that I take them off, and on and on and on.

At some point I just had to push back and deliberately say out loud "you will not be able to make sense out of this because she's crazy. Crazier for much longer than you suspected. It's also not your fault because she got a bad hand dealt to her by her parents." I've been seeing a therapist regularly for about a year and a half now. Good guy - he and his family left revolutionary Iran for Australia and then the US with only the clothes on their backs. Has a perspective on life I can relate to and specializes in PTSD. I actually started seeing him after I was laid off and discovered that nuTech had disrupted me out of my profession and into a New Economy Midlife Crisis. The mother stuff came a few months later and after a sufficiently long period of weed, screeching guitar noise, staying up all night watching X-Files reruns, Diablo 3 and halfhearted attempts at looking for work I had to make the choice of either surrender to depression and just be Depressed Guy or slowly and deliberately get some momentum going again. I went with cathartic determination and my own special blend of black humor.

The last major breakdown I had onsite was last week when I finally found the picture from the time my parents and I went to Florida to see the launch of the last moon landing flight - Apollo 17. A NASA astronaut from Orange County spoke at one of my mom's political groups, got us passes for the launch with everything it entails for a minor local visiting dignitary. Go ahead and guess how important that trip was to seven-year-old me. Anyway, after the flight he got the A17 crew to autograph a print of the launch - not a NASA PR auto pen, but actually hand-signed. The photo disappeared into the horde and hadn't been seen since 1973. Sure, that photo has huge artifact importance to the Telecom household but that to Florida was the last time my parents and I went on a vacation together and acted about as well as a normal family could be. Huge psychic importance and I wasn't giving good odds to recovery as six months into the digging I had found nothing. Until last weekend. Found it sandwiched in between 30 year old magazines and crumbling newspapers. Still in the original NASA envelope. I must have cried for 15 minutes straight.

Some cool side-effects... In the early 50s my dad was trying to sell short-stores to magazines. My mom always said that he put "writer" in the Father's Occupation box on my brother's birth certificate because he felt bad about putting in "Taxi Driver," but I didn't know that he was actually working the hustle. Found a box with all his stories complete with the rejection letters from Esquire. Remind me a little of Elmore Leonard.

Also discovered that my kindergarten art is so obvious of an indicator that I'm going to be into abstract expressionism, obsess over Kandinsky, Leger, etc.

Another side-effect. I'm in the best physical shape I've ever been in this century. My next door neighbor was positive that I was ten years younger. Seriously looking at preparing for a big hike on the John Muir Trail later on.

Elvis i fucking love you for these posts.

One of my parents-in-law is gravely ill rn, but NOT the one whose house is filled to the gills with a physical pandemonium that (I'm told, we've not been allowed in there in the 10 years my wife and I have been together) bids fair to put anything seen on Hoarders in the shade. When that parent in law passes I'm going to be the copilot for a garbage journey that will probably be unimaginably painful and intense for my wife. May tap you for wisdom when that time comes.

oh man elvis

pretty sure my reckoning will be, for better or worse, infinitely more mundane: fifty-year-old sewing/gardening implements, windows 3.1 manuals, 90s-era newspaper clippings, hidden caches of v8 juice forgotten amidst the mess

Seriously looking at preparing for a big hike on the John Muir Trail later on.

My dad and sis have done it. I encourage you to do so.

elvis, your posts in this thread are humbling and inspiring. i have a shit ton going on with my elderly folks at the moment, and i truly appreciate the fortitude, forthrightness, and imo righteous dignity that you present here. take care of yourself. hope you get to go hiking.

otm

ET, this sounds like an almost unbearable load, and yet you seem to be bearing it with forthrightness and even good (albeit black) humour. That you are taking this terrible experience and turning it into this heartbreaking yet beautiful and strengthening series of posts is such a sign of your personal strength and integrity. This is going to sound like a strange thing to say, but I hope that you are writing it down elsewhere, as well. You are such a creative person, creativity is really the way to handle these impossible and unbearable things. (Short way of saying: it's an insane and yet fascinating experience to be digging out the personal archeology of your and your family's life as you try to transform a hoarder's prison into a liveable home. I'd read a book about that subject, should you have the energy to turn it into one.)

I dunno about saying the other half of what I want to say (my talking about mental illness on ILX always ends up coming out wrong) but it's this: you do have the right to feel angry and sad and frustrated and betrayed about your mother's aberrant behaviour. (Some of it - the stuff about the glasses - yeah, that's not mental illness, that's a choice.) But the stuff that very much *is* mental illness - the hoarding, the indiscriminate composting of your most treasured family memories in amidst fucking garbage - the thing that I always have to try to remember when dealing with the seriously mentally ill members of my family, is that people are not being mentally ill *at* you. Intention is one of those hard things to disentangle, because, when someone is hurting you, and badly, it does not matter if they *meant* to step on your foot or not, it still hurts having your foot stepped on and your bones crushed, and you have a right to that pain. But when you're reading into it "my mother didn't care about me any more than she cared about rubbish" - that's not how it is. Your mother's mental illness was unable to distinguish between mementoes of your life and mementoes of the morning's post, but that is not an intentional act, that is the madness, and as hard and as painful as it is, one cannot draw conclusions about what a person truly values, emotionally, from what their mental illness and their compulsions compel them to do.

Like, to use a metaphor here, which will feel very familiar to you: I hoard CDs. You've seen (at least part of) my CD collection, and you know that it's physically impossible for me to get rid of CDs, even promos I don't even like. I keep everything, it's a weird compulsion. Yet, when it comes to the things I treasure, I fucking know the difference between "this is a treasured and meaningful artefact, a demo that was given to me by the guitarist" and "these are 37 copies of the same single (not even my favourite single!) in different formats that I just have because my bandmate was working at their record company when it came out that I cannot bring myself to get rid of." No one looking at that CD collection would know that the treasure sandwiched between 37 copies of junk is my treasure, but I still know. It's a dumb metaphor and probably doesn't work, but it's just about the futility of trying to draw ideas about value from the actions of a compulsion.

Anyway, just sending you light & love and reminding you that there will eventually be an end to all this digging.

Branwell -

If anything I've learned just how human my mother is. I allude to her family background a little in http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?showall=true&bookmarkedmessageid=5052558&boardid=77&threadid=100094 but in short - she was raised in a 1920s-era children-seen-and-not-heard family were parental emotions were, at best, austere. Her father was also a out-of-control hoarder. Furthermore, she was the eldest of five daughters - I can only imagine what the competition was like in the middle of that: fifty years later, my mother still held a grudge against a younger sister who got ballet lessons when she didn't. Others held grudges against my mother for being the one who "moved away and left us." I was born so late into the marriage that all of this background may as well have happened to another person - I never really had an idea of what her experiences were like and reading all the saved letters (and they're *all* saved) has been, well, eye-opening. She was dealt a bad hand, got married at 19, and sadly was never able to get out in front of her own festering mental illness. Who could? It was the 1940s and 50s - mental illness itself wasn't even an addressable problem, much less hoarding. My dad used to say "I wonder how bad it could get?" Um dad, pretty fucking bad!

Of course I bring my own baggage and perspective to the Current Situation. I'm a expert problem-solving guy - perpetually on the lookout for patterns and intentions and latching onto them like Sherlock Holmes. I can't help it - my whole brain is optimized for doing that. After thirteen broken hotplates, 70+ teapots, endless numbers of empty tissue boxes and on and on and on it I finally had to admit to myself that I probably would not and never will find any connections, explanations, and certainly not any answers and to just get on with the digging. If I paused at every "WTF is this?" moment I'd still be outside trying to open the door. I'm also completely terrified because in a parallel universe that's very close to this one, I'm a hoarder too and probably just as bad - towers of albums, books, ephemera, on and on.

I used to think that I was responsible for a lot of her behavior. Two weeks ago I made it to the back wall of the garage (the windows had not been opened in over 45 years - I know this for a fact) and found most of her things that pre-dated her marriage that she could never let go of. There's a lot of it. I wish that she could have found a way to let go but hooboy were there a lot of consequences. I need to write a follow-up post to my exegesis at Tell me all about 10-year-old you

I didn't intend to take over the thread, but megathanks to everyone here for all of the support. Whenever I answer the "so what have you been up to?" question with "89-year-old hoarder mom" more often than not it inevitably ends up being a "I don't know what's going to happen to my parents" discussion. Seems like there's a lot of ambient fear, uncertainty and doubt when it comes to dealing with parents in the final stage of their lives. I wouldn't usually suggest stream of consciousness core-dumps on ILX, but HFS I gotta get this out somewhere.

xxxxxxpost to Jon - please ask away when it's time.

I can only describe the excavation as like writing a book, climbing a mountain, driving I-10 through Texas or really anything that requires constant, steady, unchanging work. It sucks, I hate it. I want my weekends back and then all of sudden, holy shit I made a clean spot. Hey, there's a house under here. That bedroom can now be yellow-tagged.

Sign posts like that keep you going - also taking things to Goodwill where I'm hoping the stuff will, you know, actually get used for once.

OK, one last thing.

You know who I hate? I hate the people at Franklin Mint, QVC, or anyplace who markets ridiculously priced "collectables" at elderly folks vulnerable to the exploitation of nostalgia. Over a long enough time scale, the value of these collectables is a Big Fat Zero. Can only imagine the meetings going on as these people look at aging population of baby boomers and how to best market them out of their money.

the thing that I always have to try to remember when dealing with the seriously mentally ill members of my family, is that people are not being mentally ill *at* you.

Thanks for this, Branwell. You're absolutely right.
I've been dealing with my own aging parents hell, as documented upthread, and yeah I do get in these fits of rage because of my mother's drinking and all the accidents and the middle-of-the-night calls from the local hospital. But beyond all the horrible practicalities, the hardest part is this misguided resentment I have towards my mom - as if she was stabbing me in the back everytime she buys a bottle.

Louis Theroux's documentary about dementia patients in Arizona to thread:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xs16mn_extreme-love-dementia_shortfilms

^^^just finished watching this--thank you for posting. I'm feeling a little torn about doing my next internship (I do 2--am currently in a hospital ICU) in hospice or at a memory care facility. I'm going to try to get a volunteer gig it a local memory care joint to get a little experience.

When I first learned that dementia progression was broken down into numbered stages I kept thinking of hurricane and tornado strength ratings. If you're already at stage five, then what the heck happens when things get even worse?

Last week the nursing home called. In short, my mother's needs have gone beyond what they can provide. They're absolutely correct too... her dementia is progressing very quickly and because of all the falling, she's had to trade in the walker for a wheelchair. She can barely cut her food, much less move a fork to her mouth. Using the bathroom (which she does often) is more of a production. Her instinct is to get up and go, but that's when she keeps falling down and whenever she complains about the pain the home automatically sends her to the hospital for examination. Repeat repeat repeat.

The next step is a board-and-care house. These are residential houses with five to six residents and since they're smaller, the staff (the better ones have RNs on duty) can provide constant and more individualized care. They're also significantly less expensive. So last week my sister and I met up with a Realtor For The Elderly and we visited a half-dozen. Knocked flat at just how camouflaged they are - they look just like a regular Orange County suburban house from the outside, but the insides are all set up for dementia care. Instantly thought of suburban marijuana grow houses or stash houses for the undocumented. Apparently there's a lot of them in OC, because of the crash quite a few homeowners have converted their properties to board-and-cares. Just in time too, there's not enough facility space to accommodate the growing numbers of patients.

Finding the right match is tricky. One house was scratched off because of my mother's casual racist colonialism (the director was Indian and I instantly envisioned my mother going off again on "how horrible it was that England gave up on India"). Another house scratched because the manager looked visibly worried when we mentioned the middle-of-the-night hollering and attempts to walk. All of them have hospice options which I suspect we're going to need sooner rather than later.

Meanwhile there are some issues with her physical health. A couple months ago the doctors ran a complete physical test and found an aortic aneurysm. Surgery is out of the question because of her age and fragility. She's on a pain patch right now, which seems to help but the dementia is front-and-center.

BTW, the costs of all this is eye-croggling. Because of all the outbursts, we had to move her to a private room - a change from $5500/month to $6650/month. Pharmacy costs are equally as HFS: $1800/month - mostly from a couple of black box meds. There's some small relief from Medicare and social security. There's an upcoming change in January that will relieve some more, but I don't know what it is - my sister is handling all the medical stuff while I deal with the house. For that matter, I'm unsure if my mother will make it to January.