Caring For Aging Parents Support Group
Caring for aging parents can be a difficul time as we become the caretakers for our parents. This broad responsibility can encompass such services as assisted living, adult day care, long term care, nursing homes, hospice care, and in-home care. Whether you have just started caring for your parents or just need a place to talk, we're here.
After reading a few of these posts, I feel like such an idiot. My parents still live on their own...Dad does real well. Mom is declining quicker. Mom had a mild stroke which affected her eyesight and open heart surgery last year. She is in constant pain due to osteoporosis and fractures in her back. Dad has become her caregiver. She cannot be left alone. He also has Parkinson's but isn't too bad. The real problem for my sister and I is that we try to help and also give suggestions to make things easier for them. They don't seem to want our advice until things have reached a crisis point...then they want our help. They have no faith in doctors and will suffer rather than find out what's wrong. I dread when the telephone rings expecting it to be something horrible. Like I said before, these problems seem so trivial compared to what others are going through...but it still causes a lot of stress. I guess my question is...How do you get parents who have always been independent and active to listen to their kids and take action NOW to make their remaining years a little more comfortable?
I remember when my mother, who was widowed and lived alone, started her looooong slide into Alzheimer's. I asked her doctor how I would know it was time to step in and take over. "You'll just know," was his answer.
I checked in on her every day, and soon I saw she was bouncing checks, so I took over her bill-paying. Then I saw that she was letting food go bad in the refrigerator, so I started doing her food shopping. I still wondered when it would be time.
One day she went downtown to deposit a check and forgot her way home. At 4am an angel of a woman brought her home in a taxi. Within an hour she was living with my husband and me.
And just this month my mother-in-law, who at 90 had been functioning beautifully, had a mini-stroke. That was the signal that it was time for her to move in with her daughter. My husband and sister-in-law brought her directly home from the hospital, and I know she'll be spoiled rotten :-)
There's little you can do, as you said, until some sort of crisis hits. That's when they realize they need help. Just keep praying and checking on them!
In my own family, my brother, (the only male and the youngest, 40) has come to stay with my mother (not because he wants to care for her but because the economy has forced him to do so.) He now wants to control my mother's every move and she is completely lucid. She is 75 and on dialysis, sometimes forgetful or easily distracted but otherwise completely in command. Yet, he seems to think he has to order her around because she doesn't make the decisions he wants her to make. Sounds crazy, yes. It's created a ton of problems within the family because we have to constantly step in to tell him to lay off, especially when he has nothing to do with her care. I'm actually the one that takes care of everything, along with her health aide.
The long story short is that my mother constanly gripes to me about how she's sick of my brother trying to control her instead of accepting she's going to continue to make her own decisions because she can and alwyas has. She knows I'll back her on this along with gently nudging her in the right direction about her medical care. She definitely fights me on going to the doctors (and she's on dialysis!!) but she's slowly learned that she can only let but so much go before it becomes a crisis. It took a lot of lengthy hospital stays before that sunk in. Most of them weren't her fault but a result of her various conditions and bad doctors but she knows now that's how easily she can land in the hospital so she speaks up sooner. It took a while, though.
So hang in there, love them no matter what and take care of yourself first. I didn't do that, became sick and will try to not let that happen ever again.
Perhaps hearing advice directly from the doctor, who often has more authority, would help them be more accepting of what they should do.
Then I think about my life and realize that when my brother suggests to me that I change my life now so it will be easier for him if he has to take care of me, I too get irritated by it and am not changing. I would guess most people are this way.
Our parents are independent adults and are living their life, not looking forward to problems, just like the rest of us.
The most I did was have a lot of conversations and notes on what they had for wills, who their lawyer was, who their insurance was with, what medications they took, etc. -prepare as much as I could while they could tell me.
Good luck.