AGING PARENTS

Ugh, Neanderthal, that sounds really hard. sending good feeling.

thinking about even 2 more months of this is enough for me to pull my hair out. even when COVID's over, I'm going to be afraid to go two inches from the house for ten minutes.

btw, I'm monopolizing this thread and I know it and I"m sorry so I'm unbookmarking for a bit because at this point it's what it is and I would rather let you all talk about your shit. i'm gonna keep working on the Medicaid application (yay the site is down for maintenance tonight!)

<3 to all caretakers

Welp down another aging parent.

Pleased with myself for aggressive advocacy to get FIL out of ICU to have peaceful, comfortable death in hospice.

Another advantage of hospice is that now my MIL will have regular follow up for bereavement support vs nothin' from hospital.

Oh quince. I'm sorry. Good looking out on the advocacy. <3

Thanks IO, he was 90 and perfectly happy to move on, absolutely hated hospitals so getting him out was a win.

Neanderthal (and anyone else), send me your zip and I can get you connected with free "help" (quality of said help varies tremendously) with Medicaid application.

Maybe I should offer a Zoom on Aging Parents 101? Anyway I have long thought about starting an ILX Pro Bono thread where people can offer up skillz, happy to contribute my strange little set.

I'm so sorry, quincie, but glad that you were able to get him out of the hospital and into a nice hospice unit.

my zip is 32792, and you can send to the email from earlier. thanks! I subbed an app but I guarantee they're going to have a bazillion follow-up questions and that I'll probably have to redo it.

plus side - i learned about every toilet adjustment/pee splash guard known to man today. i don't mind dad peeing on the floor so much, I mind mom screaming when he does it. I found 3 products that should help as I've spotted the 'problem'.

lol @ me being handy-man adjacent now.

i think a zoom 101 would be extremely useful & possibly help with the loneliness of dealing with aging parents esp for only children

co-sign

Oh yes I work with lots of onlys—that’s a special category for sure!

I would take that course, quincie.

also, sorry to hear, though glad he was able to come to rest in a more comfortable place.

esp for only children

*raises a paw*

Any advice on helping an elderly parent (in Montgomery County, MD) get an appointment for a COVID vaccination? My mother refuses to get Internet access. According to her the phone system for registration is useless and keeps referring callers to the web site. (When I did my preregistration in DC I had to enter a lot of personal information, and would prefer not to have to do this for my mother.)

If the stories I hear about Maryland are true, appointment slots drop at midnight and/or 6am, and if you don't grab one right then, you're SOL.

Does the county she lives in have an an Office for the Aging or something similar? Mine does and had a phone number to call for older people who had no internet access and needed help getting the vaccine.

Montgomery County Area Agency on Aging Information & Referral Helpline: 240-777-3000

^^^usually pretty helpful

This website is laughably designed, but I use it all the time to find Area Agencies on Aging. The Older Americans Act designates one for every area of the country: https://www.n4a.org/

Good to try, but the agencies vary widely in quantity and quality of the services they do or do not offer :(

My parents are not computer people and I used websites to see where vaccines were being delivered and got them on lots of waiting lists. Eventually one panned out. I put their phone numbers but my email address. This is in Texas, so things might be different where you are. I put them on about ten different lists at pharmacies and clinics.

So, I've posted elsewhere about my mom (age 69) and her recent diagnosis with brain cancer. She's at my sister's in Philly during the week getting her third of six weeks of 5x/week chemo and radiation, home on the weekends.

My dad (age 69) had prostate surgery Thursday and was supposed to be out the same day but got a pulmonary embolism and he is still in the hospital (and likely another week) with complications.

My wife and I are working remotely from their place over DSL internet, supposed to be caring for my Dad post-surgery, but right now caring for their 4 aging cats.

I was freaking out yesterday when I got bit by a tick and shit got intense with my dad. I think they now have treatment plan straightened out. But man the last 24 hours have been nuts.

Yikes. Sending absolute best. My dad had prostate surgery years back -- thankfully nowhere near as fraught a situation as your dad has but it still was a bit uneasy to go through. This, this is a whole other level I can't pretend to have faced.

Thank you, Ned. My parents are only 21 years older than me, have always seemed young, and were both in generally good health for their age. This has been an adjustment.

All the best to you and your folks PKBR, and to their respective care teams. I hope the next few weeks are easier all around.

My mom had to move directly to memory care in a different facility from where she had been living with very little notice. Fortunately my brother and sister were able to handle everything and it went fairly smoothly. It's evident now Mom is much further along in memory loss than any of us realized. She remembers nothing of her living situations from the past 6 years, isn't recognizing her collection of DVDs or figure out her TV, can't remember that she has been socializing with people every day. Speech and physical therapy are starting soon.

Step-mom is not wanting to consider not living in her house, is sure it's just a little memory glitch that caused her two broken wrists, is rampant on Facebook with random out of character sentimental memes and jigsaw puzzle apps. But cheerful and okay with not driving.

Mum doing pretty well with her L-dopa treatment, super happy with the specialist she is seeing for her Parkinsons

Thanks, Jaq. Best to you and your family dealing with your mom and step-mom's issues.

Wishing all ilxors strength and wisdom for the years ahead.

My sentiments exactly

things settling down on this front. oh, shit still hits the fan, but we're learning not to treat each instance like a big scary disaster.

i was not home last night, and dad tripped (his cane collided with something) and hit his head, and went to the ER. he's ok.

Medicaid application is underway, we've submitted everything they need, but the wait list is fairly long. we have an interview at the Center for Aging so we can get a waiver form in a few weeks.

Good luck, Neanderthal. I'm almost two weeks into being at my parents and probably two weeks more to go and I'm going a little nutty. You are not just a good poster, but a good son.

Dad came home this afternoon after 10 days in the hospital. He had never been overnight in a hospital. He hugged me and broke down sobbing when he walked in the house!

<3

somehow the main thing my mom knows about my life is that i need to renew my driver's license (not a pressing matter, as i don't own a car or otherwise drive)

in the last three months she has emailed me easily 20 times -- once three times in a single evening -- about how i need to get a 'REAL ID' as opposed to a regular license. twice she's mailed me physical clippings out of the newspaper about it. every time we speak on the phone it comes up at least twice, at which point i mention that she's brought it up now dozens of times. 'really?'

i guess it's better than hounding me about getting a job, but it's fucking unsettling

(also she is unknowingly sending all her emails out on her iPhone, through an icloud account she is unaware that she has and never checks, and wonders why people don't respond, but that's another story)

i'm going there next week and can probably fix a few things, but not everything

Good luck, mookie. Just try to enjoy the time you have to the extent that is an option.

well, the larger issue is that i'm a shitty child/person and simply don't want to deal with it

Obv I don't know the details, but not wanting to deal is a pretty normal reaction and doesn't make you a shitty person.

Just tell her you got the new license and it is a real id?

my mother got bit by my brother's girlfriend's dogs today on her arm. her luck has just been terrible.

in addition to feeling bad for her run of luck, the recurring fear I've had of mom being knocked out of commission due to an injury or something and leaving me the sole caretaker of BOTH of them ran through my head and freaked me out. granted, it's obviously not going to happen due to dog bites, but I'm realizing how precarious a sitch is with my brother basically only helping when I ask him.

can you ask more regularly to make it more part of his routine to help? Might be more work short term but helpful longer term?

I'm gonna have to honestly. But he's working 72 hours next week :/

and I hurt my back yesterday. both my mother and I try to spare each other work with nobody wanting to cede lol. but my back is in much better shape than her hands after a dog bite. (she's ok - no stitches, antibiotics, rest)

will be in a permanent state of heightened anxiety until we ever get approved for Medicaid and get waivers for home health services.

ironically, not because things keep happening, but because things have been quiet lately and there've been a few fall "close calls".

mom told me she's depressed. didn't have the heart to tell her that I am too, as she'd feel responsible (but of course that's ridiculous). both of us keep trying to take care of the other's emotional wellbeing.

Hang in there Neanderthal.

After 2 months of no incidents, he fell. Mom didn't let me know she was back with him from daycare so I wasn't outside to help. Going to ER

It's been only a year of this and I have little left. The psychological impact of this has me just ready to abandon any optimism I had left. Zero end in sight.

Just wanted to share this story, and it kinda fits here since Mom is 72, though she's totally independent and requires nothin' from nobody.

So the other day I'm on the phone with her and she says "By the way, tomorrow is [AUNT]'s birthday" and we continue with our conversation.

Here's the thing: [AUNT] is a TWIN.

Mom is ICE COLD when she wants to be.

Hahaha amazing.

Your mother's twin or another sibling?

Another sibling. Mom was the second born, the twins came after her, then two more sisters she's also not talking to.

I liked it better as Mom being passive-aggressive about her own birthday.

love it

PBKR's interpretation was what I thought at first.

Seemed more Mom-like.

The 'real' is colder though

Ahhhh... Nothing says summer break like spending the day picking up dried up cat vomit in my mother's squalid apartment.

Sitting here watching Gunsmoke w/ my aged p’s because their helper had heart palpitations/panic attack (because of Henri?) and left to go to her doctor in the city and the rest of my generation just was exposed to COVID.