AGING PARENTS

May his memory be for a blessing

Amen to all of that!

My sincere condolences, curmudgeon.

Sorry to hear, curmudgeon.

Best wishes for you and your family, curmudgeon

I have sympathy for you. I hope you will be OK.

very sorry man. it's rough as hell

very sorry curmudgeon. it's a lovely obit. sounds like it would have been great to chat w/your dad about music or basketball or any number of topics.

Love to you, curmudgeon. Your father sounds like my kinda guy x

Thanks to all of you for the kind words

so sorry curmudgeon, thinking of you and yours x

My deepest condolences. Sending love and strength. He sounds like a wonderful Dad.

Sorry for your loss, curmudgeon

my condolences, curmudgeon. sending you strength to cope with your loss.

So sorry, curm

how can you tell how serious an ailment is when the person ailing can barely speak?

Dad fell the other day (as I mentioned in the other thread), and we finally have a wheelchair due this week. since then, yesterday, he has vaguely complained of pain around the sternum, but when asked has said it's not 'chest pain'. originally he said "2" when we asked on scale of 1-10, but last night seemed to be worse. might be related to fall - I've had muscle strains in that area before.

he has a PCP appointment next week anyway, but mom and I are thinking of taking him to another doc a few days earlier if it doesn't get better. we're wary of running to the ER every time he has anything wrong. could also be related to the hernia, perhaps?

we've tried framing questions he can reply "yes or no" to to get an idea of pain severity but the problem is that's us framing it and he also lies sometimes.

live-in nurse has to be around the corner, well obv not 'live-in' due to COVID, more like 24-hour nurse services.

i'm just mentally drained - I feel like any time I leave the house to do anything I'm always worried about what happens when I'm gone. I know i'm just one person and that's foolish but given this last year I'm superstitious as hell. every time I leave town I usually tell my brother and/or my best friend in case they can be 'on call' if something happens, though both have their own lives too.

My very elderly parents (93 & 83) in England have just been booked for their first Covid vaccine dose on Saturday.

that's fantastic! glad to hear that.

Thanks Neanderthal, and best of luck with your father.

Hope it goes well, Ward and Neanderthal.

Mom back in hospital for the second time in less than a month due to what is now being called a Klebsiella pneumoniae infection in her urinary tract.

She's immunocompromised, has a permanent ileostomy, probably drinks too much, and only takes baths rather than showers. Perfect storm... More worried about her being in hospital than getting over this infection, tbh.

how can you tell how serious an ailment is when the person ailing can barely speak?

^ This is the story of half of my life. All you can do is try. For pain, the best non-verbal clues are facial expressions and reflex actions. They don't lie.

Yea he winced last night as dead giveaway.

how can you tell how serious an ailment is when the person ailing can barely speak?

In hospice we used PAINAD: https://geriatricpain.org/assessment/cognitively-impaired/pain-assessment-advanced-dementia-painad-instructions

thanks!

^this turned out to be nothing. thanks again for link.

kinda feel like we're at a crossroads. my mother has plantar fasciitis in her foot that isn't improving, and a bad neck and back. I have a worsening back, though mine's better than my mother's. lifting dad from a sitting position if needed is easy, but the last time he fell, I hurt my back lifting him and it didn't feel well for days (it's back to normal now).

i'm not good w/ wet nurse type functions, but can help him onto and off of the toilet, and do just about everything else. but she doesn't let me - half the time I start doing things like helping my dad up, she tries to join and I have to shoo her away - "LET ME DO THIS!". not just because i don't want her hurting herself, but because it's a lot harder for me to help dad up if someone else is trying to grab hold of him as well.

we have Home Health Care coming starting again tomorrow, though I'm not sure what for (bathing? physical therapy?), and apparently we're looking into additional support, but I'm not sure what. but I don't know how long we can try to do it without more frequent nurse support or....assisted living. which is both expensive and also not something we want to do with our beloved paps.

one of you told me to take time for myself in another thread. Lord I'm tryyying. occasionally succeeding. but I just feel guilty any time I'm doing anything as simple as sitting on the couch watching tv.

people always ask where my brother is in all this, well, I've been lenient with him because a) he lives with his girlfriend, and b) works full-time and is about 20+ miles away, and c) works at a theme park so until they're fully vaxxed, kind of a risk. beginning to think I am going to ask him to try and show up once a week. the problem is....he gets mom stressed out, he tries to help but ultimately seems to want more to tell her how to do things rather than trying to help offer support with what she's alraedy doing. so I'd have to set ground rules because him getting her upset is a deal breaker. he doesn't do it on purpose, he's just....the type of needly person that sometimes frustrates his folks.

idk - I'm not MEGA stressed out about it or anything , just trying to think aloud.

sorry to hear. I think now is the time to be looking at your options though because I've known so many people struggle doing it themselves for far too long. Your brother should be contributing to this process too imo - if you start off with you researching and making all the decisions he'll carry on leaving it up to you I suspect.

yeah plus honestly he's just like that in general. i'm gonna talk to him this week and see what we maybe can work out.

we're getting some temporary help in the form of physical, speech, and occupational therapists coming by the house, as well as a nurse to come help bathe dad.

his vitals still are just fine. his oxygen's great, blood pressure is the lowest in the entire family. he also still laughs at dirty jokes.

looked at cost of assisted living. holy fuck....i do well but not well enough to afford that. so this bandaid solution will do for a while.

still, glad to have this help for my mother!

Not really the right thread I know, but does anyone know the likely prognosis for a 72-year-old female who might test positive for Covid? It's not great, is it?

it depends on a lot of factors, but somebody over 70 getting it isn't inherently a death sentence (though it's definitely a much higher risk than someone younger). My close friend's father, who isn't quite that age but is *close* had it and recovered.

I can't seem to find it anymore but I seem to recall the mortality rate for people in the above 70 age range being something like 10-15%, which is high and not good, but does show that the majority still 'survive'. obviously a narrow way of looking at it, as a larger portion get hospitalized and might have long-term effects. but it does mean there's some hope.

it's a shitty thing to have to worry about and I hope that this person does not have COVID :(

Thank you Neanderthal. I'm attempting to not worry until I need to worry!

My stepmom, who lives in AZ and who I haven't been worrying about because she's younger (72) and active (teaches aerobics at her community center), had some kind of accident that ended up with two broken wrists this week. My half-brother also told us she has undergone a very rapid cognitive decline, so during her recovery there will be evaluation for WTF is going on there.

Hi Neanderthal, Home Health Care can be great; I was surprised at the options, and your father's Medicare Advantage or MediGap etc. may also help w hiring one part-time person w training, like even a "sitter," designated as such by nursing agency, turned out to be experienced as hell, and even a crucial source of incremental help, a couple of times, though also young enough to sit up all night, allowing me and my sis some much-needed sleep--even if you have to pay out-of-pocket for such a person, would so be worth it, for yourself and your Dad (can think better w more sleep duhhhh). This was just 2-3 times a week at most, but even one night a week made a difference. Something to to think about even if your brother does clean up his act a bit.

And of course that's more affordable than Assisted Living.

thanks dow. i've started to look into some of these options, just to give my mother a break. I'm handling the extra load fine but I'm realizing it's starting to wear me down a bit so it'll help us all out.

good news is we have some Home Health coming over for speech, physical therapy, and bathing. last time, they ended the benefits rather quick. this time we're going to fight to keep them coming longer.

you aren't kidding about Assited Living. I shit when I saw the costs.

in-home care can be a huge help if you can swing it! my father inlaw had a helper i think they got through his medicaid somehow
she was amazing.

my fil was first-generation native Hawaiian, and the helper they hired for him was a middle-aged Tongan woman. Because his memory had regressed so much, seeing another brown person put him back in happy childhood memories & he responded so well to her, and she was so good with him, making sure he ate & was clean (and she was huge & could lift him which was awesome).

she took care of him until he really started deteriorating & needed fulltime care.

But it was a major source of relief for my inlaws, that they could interact with him on their own terms, without the exhausting heavylift of bathing or bathrooming and all that goes with the carer-side of dementia . being able to remove *that* part of the emotional/physical stress was huge. puts such a huge strain on the household, and alleviating it can make a huge difference in your day to day coping/interactions

i think mom applied for Medicaid on dad's behalf and they didn't approve it cos of Florida's stingy standards or somethin but I am gonna get on her to do it again.

Dad fell again shortly after I posted earlier. probably the least severe of all of them, he went down softly on the floor up against the couch, but it's just exhausting thinking if one of us leaves the room for a minute (which is legitimately what happened) he might lose balance. i had no trouble getting him up (I'm getting swole now thanks to this), but i realize i'm tired as fuck at the moment.

and i also know deep down that my bro will never give much more than he is doing now because he just can't. he freezes because he freaks at seeing his parents being vulnerable. eventually the come to jesus talk is gonna have to come because well, fine, but, I cna't do it all myself.

but if dad gets on Medicaid and we can afford more help to give us a break......it'll be a relief.

It's ok tho. i'm still here, i just gotta....find my pockets. this is such a reversal from the nomadic "hey let's book a flight to Chicago this weekend, I'mbored" lifestyle I was living not that long ago. but that could never have endured much longer anyway.

some days I step in and take over with helping dad cos mom just gets impatient and yells at him.

like...is that going to make a stroke patient suddenly do what you want? lol

but she's also mentally exhausted from the last two or three years so I cut her some slack.

apparently we have a meeting to see what we qualify for ongoing....had home therapy again for the last two months and it's gone well.

we had a room in a hotel for my dad's birthday with a handicapped bathroom. dad still managed to fall...on top of my mother.

both are ok.

we're looking into adult day care, Medicare will barely help with shit, already want to discharge him for his physical therapy. they hear he falls and it's like "cool, heard of a wheelchair"....we have a shitty one, because the insurance company and provider were bickering, but the one we have works ok. but the bathroom is so damn small as we didn't look at it before we moved in.....so the wheelchair doesn't fit and he has to use his case the rest of the way to it. though honestly he's always been fine doing that.

ran out to Walgreens at midnight to get bandages and neosporin and of course somehow at 11 pm the 2 lines were long as the cashiers were moving slow as shit, I was gone for 20 minutes and i only went across the street.

I actively hate my life now. but my brother now has like few free nights a week due to a new acting gig so yeah good luck getting more help from him. i showed him how to take dad to the bathroom yesterday and you'd have thought he was going through the Ludivico technique.

wanna get through one week without sobbing into my hands

Sorry you're having to deal with this by yourself, Neanderthal.

i'm a wee better this morning as my bro showed up and is helping again and a few of my friends were able to calm me down. that's my mother and I really need is relief.

thinking about paying for occasional private home health care but gotta price search and figure out when would be best. adult day care seems like reality.

he's 73 today. here's to many more.

def pursue medicaid; its not cheap but worth it, likely, if you can get the resources together to have an elder care lawyer do the application for you if they assess he can qualify

my mom has been on medicaid for a few years now, she is 70 -- shes in an "independent" living facility (similar to assisted living) which has been working out p good but she fell 3 days ago going to the bathroom at 2am and fractured her hip. she had 3 screws put in yesterday. i visited her in the hospital today (only the second time i have physically seen her since march 2020), she really battles a lot of anxiety and depression that interplay w her physical issues in a bad way but i am somewhat hopeful the rehab process could be good for her

Hey Neanderthal does your ilx webmail work?

hi quincie - it does!

Mother-in-law had a stroke two weeks ago and my wife flew out to Savannah to help and get a sense of her condition. Turns out she is more or less okay. Doc says she doesn’t need someone with her constantly, in fact MIL seemed happy when wife left. She appreciated that she came out in the middle of a pandemic, liked the company, but i’m sure she was tired of someone monitoring her life. We live in Houston, so wife totally missed out on the snowy apocalypse.

Now wife is musing about us moving to Savannah to help her mom. Our kids are happy here and are in good schools. We have friends and work with benefits here. Her mom doesn’t need constant help. And when her mom does need help, I say she should come to us instead of us uprooting our lives. But she maintains that she will never move here, and I say that is her choice. I really don’t want to make the kids move and I REALLY don’t want to live in Savannah.

Mum diagnosed with Parkinson’s. Where do we go from here, I wonder.

Sorry to hear, MatthewK. Fwiw, I've known a few people with Parkinson's, and many have lived fulfilling if sometimes difficult lives as things have progressed. May it be so for your mum, too.

Thank you, that’s my hope too. She’s intellectually very active so I’m hoping that will be unaffected at least.