AGING PARENTS

Gotta vent.

So just went for a quick visit to my aging parents (met my mum in central London to help her with food shopping ahead of xmas) and more importantly to see my father, who I knew had been ill with what sounded like - in phone conversations - something viral (nausea, some vomitting), eating a bit but not much and living on water and tea. The doctors haven't been to ascertain exactly what it is (only a blood test so far) with a "there is nothing wrong" from it.

I knew he had lost about weight but I was mildly startled. I think its about 10 pounds off, legs are thinner. He can walk but may need a walking stick at this rate.

He is having an X-ray on Thursday and an endoscopy on the 5th Jan (that's three weeks away) then talking to a consultant who is going to take a view on it.

This all started after they came back from a summer in India so I wonder if he picked something up that will not shake off. If he is weaker and with this cold weather too...I have to say as I saw him later on the phone (with family who are calling even more to find out how he is) I just...pictured myself reading an eulogy at his funeral. Totally caught me.

I just hope it isn't the last xmas.

I HATE that this is three fucking weeks away I just want it done NOW. We were discussing a private option but he doesn't think its that far away blah. I dunno, hands are tied praying the bad thing doesn't happen otherwise its damage limitation in A&E. Fuck.

My mom has rallied a bit since my last bulletin to this thread. She'll certainly last through Christmas, and probably has months more to run if she doesn't get ill. But she's obviously done engaging with life in any meaningful way.

She doesn't recall anything other than the deep past and has no interest in that either. I visited her weekly up until mid November and she greatly enjoyed listening to me, but her participation was limited to a few words here and there. She no longer has an opinion on anything other than how pleasant it is to see her family. She's very tranquil and that's a good thing.

My mum was rushed to hospital on Saturday and had surgery yesterday: she'd been unwell for weeks and convinced herself she had stomach cancer. Actually just a blocked bowl (just!) and double hernia (just!).

Visited her yesterday and she's doing pretty well. Should come home today.

I had planned for a month for my mom to take the train today and come to my house for Xmas. Opportunity for her to see her granddaughter and meet for the first time her 3-months old grandson. But in classic depression/bipolar behavior, she bailed out two hours before the train departure (“what am I gonna do at your place?”). So gutted

Good thoughts going yr way, xyzzzz - horrible to have that consultation hanging over Christmas.

Thanks Ward.

best wishes for yr mum Scik <3

Solidarity with Scik and everyone who's in this thread.

Obit lovely. Would have loved to have talked science with him.

On Friday, in –10F weather, my mom called me to say that my dad had a stroke, but she'd decided to let him sleep and instead of calling an ambulance. My wife and I drove an hour in our subcompact auto at the height of the blizzard, w/ 50 mph winds to find: there had been no stroke. Dad had a virus. Mom was deep in denial about dad's still-undiagnosed Parkinsonianism, and claimed the symptoms (inability to dress himself, trouble eating, impaired walking, etc.) were recent and resulted from a stroke, and had appeared only in the last two days only. But... they're years old. FWIW, Dad also denies the symptoms. He's fine. However, dad's capable of covering up his infirmities (so he thinks) and my mom won't challenge him because she doesn't want to have to deal w/ him. Meanwhile, I learned my mom did *not* try to help my dad when he fell on the ground a few days ago (and she is physically a LOT more capable than him), and only helped him get dressed when he begged for it. I... don't know what to do about them.

I'm not ready to say goodbye to my parents, but I think that even if they stick around bodily my time with their minds is ... dwindling.

i'm very sorry to hear all that. wishing you strength.

<3

argh

we officially have "caregiver fatigue" :(

father-in-law's condition is deteriorating, we started having home care people come a few times a week for various things but I'm not sure how long we can keep him living with us at this rate. he got nauseous last night and my wife had left her phone downstairs, he called her sixteen times rather than make any noise or knock on a door. he tells different providers different things, fired one nurse without telling us, and is disturbingly focused on his new tiny diminishing 1-time scrip of oxy.

oh dear
sympathies to everyone

I'm so sorry everyone. This is so tough - all of it.

I spent the holidays with my dad, the first after my mom's death. They were OK and better than I feared overall but still hard. I'm still processing her passing and am both angry and sad now for a lot of different reasons too complicated to go into though I've spoken about them here and elsewhere on ILX before. Weird things happen and sometimes it just hits me like the other day when I was driving and for some reason I remembered the way her body looked when we went back to the hospice after getting the call that she died and I just started sobbing.

My dad seems to be doing OK which is nice but I do worry about his health deteriorating and him being alone.

R - that sounds really really tough and I'm sorry you're going through it. I don't have any advice to give as I also struggled with not entirely dissimilar situations and after a while just stopped trying to intervene because I realized that in my parents case they were going to do what they wanted regardless.

mother visited recently and i had the first moment of NOT IMMORTAL and have decided i'm going to be super nice to her from now on

rb - I went through very similar situation, with my mom refusing to acknowledge the effects of parkinson on my dad (saying he was using the illness to justify his laziness...). If you father's not yet medicated, bear in mind that pills can really slow down the progress of the disease. I empathise with spouses who need to downplay/deny or detach themselves from the domestic horror of neurodegenerative diseases but if possible in any way you should convince them to get nurses and outside help asap. I only wish I'd pushed for this earlier with my dad (it ended up - predictably - wrecking my mom)

To continue my previous post from around xmas results have now come - we are onto biopsy for "complcations in the pancreas and kidney" so that's that. Its in 1-2 weeks, results would be a week after so we'll know, at most, by early Feb.

My father sounds weak and diminished, mother was crying on the phone (not something you forget when you hear it), younger brother is in a panic and upset leaving me with having to repress whatever it is I'm feeling. In some ways that's fine, for now. Fighting words around being positive are thrown in...I nod away but keep thinking back to that moment when I saw him on the phone...the gut instinct was hard to shake then. I'll keep quiet on it, post it here.

mother was crying on the phone (not something you forget when you hear it)

my heart now drops whenever i see i have a voicemail message

<3 best to you xyzzzz

thinking of you, julio

Thanks all.

my mom has a lot of opinions about traffic patterns

So its cancer of the liver however it seems to be a few spots of it (its apparently a rare form of it), it is curable and treatment will start soon. No need for surgery, just injections. Talking to a specialist next week.

Not at all over. This has made me face things, not least the ongoing sadness that blocks your insides (even more so than usual).

Sending best indeed. A very good friend lost her dad a couple of years ago and her mom is starting to fail mentally; based on her notes to me, the tangle of issues involved with her siblings on what to do has been awful. Makes me grateful for where I am so far, but I wonder what the future will hold.

thinking of you julio: the liver is an organ it's hard to do without but also one with unusual capacity to regenerate so best of luck to yr dad and yr family x

Thanks, appreciate the message

So...the doctors looked at the results again: my father has late stage cancer (and its a rare form, whose name I can't recall, around 2% of all cancers) (actually in a bit of the pancreas and the small intestines). It will be determined next week but he might be too weak for chemo too - they will try to strenghten him but if he cannot go through chemo then that gives him a few months. With a successful chemo its 2-5 years. Its devastating, he never had much of a retirement.

Had a deep conversation with my mother today and her strength through all of this is something else. The situation might have not been there for me to see it, but I was blind to it too - she is incredible. Its my mission to make sure she will be cared for, and I want to deepen our relationship too.

Strength and love to you all, sir.

^^^^

Best to you and your family xyz

i am so sorry

sorry to hear this, dude: best wishes and good luck and let me know if there's anything i can do IRL (including talking obv)

sounds like you've got some good perspective. thinking of you, j

Thanks all!

(and Mark thank you for such a kind offer I will let you know)

My mother, 85 y.o., has been in hospital for two months now. It is only in the last week or so that we've had the distressing experience of her not recognising us -- NB this is not dementia, but rather the effects of a urinary tract infection she contracted *in* hospital, which apparently causes severe delirium which can last for a couple of weeks after the infection itself has gone away. She is hardly eating and is being fed intravenously off and on, time before last I visited (Thursday) she drank some vitamin enriched milkshake from a sippy cup, but on Saturday wouldn't even accept water.

Track back to when she was admitted, just before Christmas...we'd just flown out to the in-laws in Poland, we receive the news via SMS from my sister -- the carer who normally turns up to get her out of bed found she hadn't gone to bed but had fallen asleep in an armchair (second time this had happened). She was admitted with low oxygen levels and a chest infection. On New Year's Eve she was transferred to a different hospital for rehabilitation because although the initial problems had cleared up, while she'd been there her walking had really deteriorated to the extent that she could no longer walk unaided. Little or no progress was made in the rehab unit -- the deterioration in mobility was, it appeared, something of a mystery to the medics insofar as they couldn't even work out if it had a physical or psychological cause. Then the infection happened leading to her being transferred *back* and...we are where we are.

Yes, urine infections can cause the oldsters to go gaga, we had to get an emergency doctor out for my mother when I was last visiting because she fell asleep and woke up on another planet - the doctor gave her some antibiotics and she was back to (what these days passes for) normal the next morning.

There was one amusing incident, after the emergency doctor had asked my mum the standard questions they ask to test for dementia - what month it is, what's your address etc. - which, despite her urinary infection addled state, she somehow had managed to pull herself together to answer, the doctor asked what medication she took and mum went into the kitchen brought a box of pills through and said, "I take one of these a week before breakfast".

My mother-in-law has also had the weirdness as a result of a UTI, she thought the doctors were trying to kill her, set fire to her, throw her out a window, poison her food, etc. Cleared up after a dose of antibiotics (which took ages to persuade her to take since she thought they were poison)

I'm sure this is connected to oldsters' aversion to drinking water.

a little?

my grandfather, who passed away a few months back, was in an assisted living place for a few years and ended up having a UTI that progressed to sepsis, leading to a brief hospital visit, multiple times. I think some people are more prone to it than others, but sepsis is one of the main causes of death for the elderly. your body just doesn't work that well.

*takes notes on UTI-insanity connection*

having the 86 y.o. father in law is working out OK these days, really. no crises to report, thankfully.

Tonight I saw a doctor who told me that the UTI insanity can last 6 months.... :-(

My mom passed away on Monday afternoon, slowly and (one hopes) without too much pain or distress, at the age of 92. My last visit with her was six days earlier and even then she was nearly silent, eyes closed, spending her final reserves of energy. I held her hand for two hours, moistened her mouth a few times, sat and thought intensively about her, mostly silently, because I knew that if I spoke aloud it would only agitate and exhaust her because she could not hear well enough to understand my words.

It was difficult to see her in that state, knowing she was so very near death, but creeping toward it at a snail's pace, not yet released from the struggle. otoh, it felt wonderful to be there and share my love with her one more time, knowing it might be the last opportunity and pouring my heart into it.

Now she is released from her thoroughly worn out and used up body. It helps to know that the work of her spirit is still doing its good work in the world, through her many gifts of that spirit given to others, including me. Those gifts feel tremendously alive still.

Today my sister has assigned me to write her obituary. Since she outlived almost all her contemporaries, so that it will be possible to contact personally everyone who matters, we've agreed that I may keep it relatively brief.

<3

I'm sorry for your loss, Aimless. From the warm and eloquent way you write about her departure I can only conclude you'd be perfect to write a loving obituary. Sending good thoughts.

(the 'thoroughly worn out and used up body' part rings awfully familiar... I fear I will have to use those words sooner rather than later for my own mother..)

love to you Aimless. Your post is crushingly beautiful.

Best to you sir. A hard burden, but she is free of hers.

RIP aimless's mom -- she was clearly loved <3

sorry to hear that, Aimless