AGING PARENTS

it's absolutely terrifying. many elders don't have the care they need, and they know that level of care would burden their children, so they hide it all. i'm sorry to hear about your mom. we haven't yet tried one of those fall alert systems but I wonder if quincie (summoning you!) knows!?

(also quincie I hope you are doing alright re: your recent health concerns as well)

I sensed the summon! And I am doing well, thank you. My boobs are now gone and hopefully all of the cancer has thus been evicted.

Re: fall alert systems. I do not have first-hand experience with a particular system, but I have referred clients to shopping guides for medical alert systems. IIRC (I am not at work so don’t have that info at my fingertips), Bay Alarm gets consistently good ratings. They may have a fall monitor option. Cameras are increasing popular. Safety check phone calls (which trigger calls to emergency contacts if not picked up) are another option. I think Apple watches offer a fall alert option. My ilx webmail doesn’t work but perhaps Neander could make an email connect to me if you’d like to be in touch off board.

Also if you mom is not already enrolled in hospice, I would strongly strongly recommend; that could get more nursing visits onboard to help with safety and patching up injuries without having to do the ER thing.

Actually Neanderthal I think a talk about hospice would not be premature for your dad. The repeated ER to hospital/rehab cycle is a red flag.

^ otm. when you are a caregiver in the midst of dealing with serial crises it is hard to free up the attention to recognize that red flag and even harder to process it, but hospice is an option worth considering.

We're starting to have discussions re: hospice for my mom now. Before we started talking, I was under the assumption that hospice was strictly for patients whose death was imminent, but I've learned that that's not the case -- as quincie says, it can help with more nurse/social worker visits in the short- and medium-term.

Re: fall alerts, a lot of assisted living/memory care places will have a facility-wide electronic system in place, and in my mom's case it's worked very well. Don't have experience with anything in-home.

For insurance coverage of hospice, the patient has a prognosis of six months were the disease to run its expected course. I’ve had clients in hospice for a year or more as they continued to outlive the best-guess prognosis. You can leave hospice at any time, it’s in no sense a one-way street. Sooner rather than later is absolutely my recommendation. Over and over, families say they wish they had known they could start long before “imminent.”

dad's neurologist said he could take off the neck brace now. victories.

we pretty much move him around instead of letting him walk on his own now to avoid fall risks and it's gone pretty well, having medical equipment if Medicaid pays for any will be nice, and the nursing care.

i'm going to be swole pretty soon, it's good exercise.

the other day, I said "what are you looking at" and he still said "not much", same as when I was growing up.

;)

got dad's Medicaid card in the mail and our caseworker paid a visit and set up an appointment for next Tuesday to talk about coordinating care.

I almost can't believe it's finally happening. relief!

That is fantastic news! Really hoping it makes positive differences in all your lives!

I knew this day would come. Because my mother's phone was off the hook for the last day I requested a welfare check. She's been contacted, but the officer who made the check is threatening to have the property condemned if my sister and I don't do something NOW.

:(

I'm sorry you have to deal with that persistent weight. have you all decided what you plan to do?

She's at my sister's now. Right now we're talking about starting to clean the place out, but I'll believe that when it actually happens.

Oh hello panic attacks; you've come around again. (Familiarity in this case has bred contempt.) Hoping that tomorrow I will see my mother and we will get constructive work done.

j.lu, sorry you are going through this. Wishing you the best - try to focus on maintaining yourself - you'll be in a much better space to help others.

think we've reached shit/fan time

my mom emailed me tonight saying that she wouldn't make thanksgiving because she didn't feel comfortable making the drive. (fair.) i replied that she needn't drive as four days ago i had discussed with her and purchased a train itinerary that was sent to every single email account of hers i'm aware of. and that if she couldn't remember that, it was a problem

then we spoke for 20 minutes on the phone while she searched for emails -- she did actually find the most recent one, but avoided mentioning that 'it was a problem' when she read it to me -- and again and again misconstrued the departure times. basically there's no way she makes that train trip without someone physically positioning her at each of the key points

i don't even know where she'll end up, but she can't stay in hordeopolis. and i guess i'll get to sort it

my aunt fell and hurt her arm last night and i can’t get her to just sit down and stop doing things

i insisted on doing the dishes. she is doing the dishes

i can understand why my cousins are so frustrated with and worried about her lol

My 79-year-old mother came for a visit a few weeks ago. I have to say she's doing great. She's happy in her life, very active, in some ways in better physical shape than she was, say, 10 years ago. I'm trying really hard to focus on how well she's doing and not on how little time she may have left. (I do take encouragement from the fact that her father was very hard to kill; despite abusing his body for decades, he made it to nearly 90.)

Back to ER we go with dad. Mostly precautionary - he's had a nasty bout of diarrhea for weeks that subsided but returned. We think it might be a blockage of stool, as when there's a mass of stool, sometimes a paradoxical bout of diarrhea occurs so the body can get feces out from behind the blockage.

It sucks but my current mood day = this is nothing.

Hope things are okay with yr dad!

thanks tabes. he's home. he's constipated but not enough to keep him there, they gave him a prescription for Glycolax and Augmentin for his UTI, and he's home. twice we've changed him only for him to shit his new diaper before we got him stood up (not his fault at all....poor guy).

things have been pretty smooth lately but now I have to deal w/ mom's frequent freakouts, no matter how much I offer to take off of her plate (nevermind my own blood pressure, which lately sits around 140/100, which I'm addressing w/ the doctor today).

hospital were a bunch of shitheads and I think we're done going to this one. I was there from 6:30 pm - 3:30 am with a little break in between, and he still hadn't been seen by a doc, patients spilling into hallways, only one doctor in the ER.

Yes, take care of yourself too, man! Hope you can find a good way to get yr BP into a more
manageable place, tho obviously you have a lot on yr plate and some of that stress might be out of yr control. Be gentle with yrself!

Reading this thread and steeling myself. My parents and in-laws are all between the ages of 74 and 78, all still living at their own homes etc (and heck my father-in-law is still working), but multiple signs of looming issues. My siblings and I talk about our parents a lot (I live farthest away, so I rely on them for updates), and we all know that a crisis point can come at any time but for now there's not much to do except wait to see what it is. I have so many friends with parents in various stages of decline and assisted living (and of course many whose parents have already died). So it's like, my wife and I feel lucky right now to still have all of our parents in moderately good health, but we know it's not a sustainable situation. We can't even really plan anything, because things could go so many different directions that there's no way to prepare except a general awareness that things will change.

xpost thanks tabes. I successfully got a new prescription today.

unfortunately we took dad back to the ER. dad's diarrhea has been like non-stop, like Old Faithful erupting, copious amounts. since they've confirmed he's impacted, clearly the diarrhea is his body's way of trying to get feces out around the stool, which means its bad. we can't do an enema easily in our house and that's probably what he needs.

we went to a better hospital though. waiting now.

Sorry to hear. I had a small bowel obstruction recently and it was...just ungodly painful

sorry to hear that, i can imagine. and dad in his limited capacity did indicate he's in some kind of pain.

once again they're trying to discharge him. I'm finding this very weird since in the past, when we had a similar scenario, he was admitted for a few days to treat that and his UTI, so I can only surmise they want to free up the bed.

mom, though, pushed back (and did a good job) and asked if they could keep him to observe, and wanted the doctor to talk to her, because the amount of diarrhea he's having is beyond anything we've ever seen w/ him before, and it's been happening for two weeks. i guess they want to push the medication angle but we couldn't even administer any before he started going ridiculous amounts again.

it also boils down to my mother is having freakouts every time he goes that much, and neither her nor I can clean him up by myself when he's like that (usually it takes two nurses to clean him up at most facilities). I can't listen to mom screaming/freaking out every time, esp when I'm working or leading a class, and it's a two person job, and my brother is about to be out of the country. so I'm hoping they just help us by keeping him a few days or sending him to a facility while he 'heals' so that we can get him back when his bowels are normal.

part of the problem is also no doctors really explaining well what's going on so that's why talking to them will help.

Jeez Neanderthal, I'm sorry. Everything I hear about trying to get access to hospital care these days is quasi-nightmarish. And we're really just at the leading edge of baby boomers needing this level of care, I'm afraid this system is going to just break down.

It was horrible 30 years ago, it's unrecognizable now.

Hospital killed my grandpa in the 90s, I guess at least they haven't done that

I'm at my wit's end.

this morning, my mother went down there and a bunch of nice doctors explained dad's situation (mild impaction) and that they'd give him an enema to clear it, and then if that was enough, they'd send him home. and that'd stop the 'diarrhea', which is really feces escaping around the impaction.

nothing happened with that all day, and after I left for day, my mother calls later, and is told he's being discharged, and oh you silly goose why would we give him an enema, he has diarrhea?

I called back and pointed out (again) that the doctors had told us this and was told another nurse had said this was likely a 'mistake' and intended for another patient, which first of all WHAT THE FUCK, THAT'S NOT OK, second of all, come on, the description by the doctor completely matched my dad's situation, they were clearly talking about him and not another patient. and I pointed out to the nurse this wasn't 'diarrhea', this was an impaction that feces were leaking around, and she sat there dumbfounded. she was nice and suggested calling case management in the morning.

I already filed complaints with both Advents with the AHCA for Florida, and basically accused the latter of fraud, stating if there was no enema being administered, why the fuck did they let him stay there all day and rack up charges, when all we asked them for was an overnight observation?

It's probably a mistake but my week off has been fucking ruined with all of this shit. now i get to wake up early and fight another battle.

like this isn't a small amount of diarrhea and my mom and I are being whiny babies, like this is food poisoning levels of diarrhea. I don't mean to be graphic, so I'll hide the text, but he had feces completely smeared across his penis, testicles, leg, everywhere, which is why he has a UTI, and we'd clean him up only for him to go again before we even stood him up, and we'd have to change the diaper a SECOND time. and then he'd go again. he's going every fifteen fucking minutes. this isn't an infant, this is a 170 pound man. we're not built for this, and it can't be good for him to keep getting UTIs and getting dehydrated. not to mention he was in physical discomfort.

they want us to fix the problem with a stool softener, which historically has never worked on dad. we gave him Miralax for weeks once and he still didn't shit, and that lead to a hospital visit.

what doesn't help is cleaning him up is a two person job due to his lack of mobility and weight, and my mom is at the point of freaking out every time he has diarrhea and it's a massive effort to calm her and myself down. we don't have a nurse anymore as we had to release her so mom could get paid 15 hours/week for caretaking. she's in a lot of pain with nerve issues. I can't do this by myself. my brother is about to leave the country for weeks.

we may have to look into another week of respite care, but idk how long that would take for approval.

but maybe it's all a mistake and they'll enema him tomorrow

jeez dude, that's a lot for you all to bear. your poor dad! and mom! and you as well :( wtf at that hospital, damn

a two person job, and my brother is about to be out of the country

at least it's good to potentially infer from this that your brother has been helping out more lately, after the previous few years? strength to you for dealing with each member of the immediate family, let alone all at once

dad's home. they gave him an enema. the nurse was wrong.

quite 'hilariously', there's no reference to the enema in the discharge paperwork, and all of the discharge instructions are clearly written from the perspective of him having like, traditional diarrhea, and not obstructive diarrhea, and neither nurse that discharged him seemed aware that he had one.

how do we know he had one? well, cos mom walked in while it was happening, and they told her that's what they were doing.

meanwhile, the doctor's notes referencing enema are clear and appear multiple times on their website, so how the nurse didn't see them, I don't know.

I have an open complaint where I'll detail all of this but right now dad just being home and doing ok is enough for me.

Stuff's much calmer now with dad home. He's not "going" much, which is always the issue after he has an enema it seems, possibly long term.

Financially, I'm being leveraged to the brink and I'm worried. Mom got through the entire application process to be paid as a caretaker a month ago practically, only for the last piece (training us how to record the time), went nowhere.

Case manager was alarmed to hear we hadn't heard back and went on an all out harassment campaign, only to finally hear from them today, and set up an appointment. The contact was apparently sick and apparently they have two employees or some shit.

Mom in the interim has borrowed about $400-$500 from me in a manner of weeks and still owes me something like $400 from before.

I make 70k a year, but I got reckless with my credit/debt, somewhat out of helping her, but also self destructive behavior a year or two ago, including a 2k gambling loss. In one year I've lost something like 8k and have no idea how.

Very worried about getting backed into a corner and having to file bankruptcy myself. Not there yet AND if I no longer have to lend money I could possibly reverse it in time.

Not the greatest feeling when my bank account is getting lighter and I haven't even bought a single Christmas gift.

My brother just went to England and Italy so now he's cash short (and got engaged) so I assume he will cease helping.

I told mom this in interest of honesty but was careful to tell her it wasn't her fault.

(don't get it twisted, I'm not broke or anywhere near. But losing money that fast could put me there quickly of I don't stop the bleeding)

N can I ask what program this is where your mom can get paid as a caretaker? This has some relevance to my in-laws’ situation.

it's through Medicaid through Florida. there was a lengthy application process, several forms, we had to get fingerprinted, etc, but it apparently will pay $15/hour for up to 15 hours a week at first.

not sure if it varies by state (quincie?).

Thanks- I’m in FL too.

oh cool! yeah then...you can probably use the same process. i'll have to see where mom found the info on how to do it

Awesome- many thanks! My webmail works.

Yep, varies by state. Good work on getting enrolled!

as if everything being terrible weren't enough, i have been informed this morning that there is a raccoon living in the basement of my childhood home where my mom now lives alone. i have tried everything imaginable to get her to consider leaving. i feel like i am in a nightmare?!

Oh, so sorry.

we had raccoons in the attic when i was small, they can be scary beasties! would her local animal control division be any help? not with the larger issue of her wanting to stay alone, of course -- i wish there was some way to make the people we care about do what's best for them (she says, while not doing what's best for her)

i'm really sorry, ll. <3