AGING PARENTS

My mom and grandma live together with mom's "girlfriend", and I moved to be closer to them and my terminally ill Dad (they were separated). Grandma is sharp as a tack and well into her 90s. Of course I love Grandma, but mom is making seeing Grandma a miserable experience.

Like I said elsewhere she is getting into that old people thing of being passive-aggressive. I know I called her a "fascist" I didn't mean it, it's that her emotional state is kind of fascist.

It's her stupid family. She wasn't raised by her own mother, she was raised by her abusive and creepy grandmother and aunt and it really shows in how she deals with stuff like death and adult responsibilities.

If anything difficult happens in her life - death or whatever - she just escapes mentally. Her mom's family had a lot of money and stuff was handled for her all her life!! She doesn't understand why other people don't have it as easy. Because of her family, she feels she has a lot of power and I can't ever suspect her of having mental problems EVER.

My mom gave up driving last month. Kinda shocked, but pleased that she came to the decision herself. She's 88 and is in reasonably good health for her age - despite the piles of crap that she's hoarded (ongoing issue for her entire life). Sister is gone for several weeks so I'm on mom duty... it's extra frustrating because her hearing is so bad that she leaves the televisions on with the sound maxed-out and she can't hear the phone.

Vexing problem of the moment... Her sense of time and calendar dates are slipping, so making plans becomes a comedy of errors ("stop by this week" *does so* "what are you doing here, I said to come by next week") ad infinitum ad nauseum

wow, that sounds like a serious challenge. i'm sorry. i have this thread bookmarked and it popped up just as my parents arrived yesterday for their first visit in 3 years. they are aging. my mom is in great shape (in spite of some health issues this year) but my dad keeps looking and acting less like himself, which is thrown into stark relief when we look at old pictures together.

hmph.

I am going to visit my parents this weekend and I think that I'm actually going to have to ask them point blank what they want me to do for them if they ever get dementia or need care etc. My mom is in bad shape and her memory is already slipping and my biggest fear is that my dad dies first (though this is prob unlikely you never know) and I'm left to make decisions for/about her. I want to know now and while I know she's not going to want to talk about this I'm going to make them because I'm an only child and they have no other relatives here to help and I can't handle the stress and weight of this alone without knowing what they want.

Just to share my own personal woes on this thread --

My father nearly died last week; he collapsed on his way to the bathroom in the middle of the night. The ambulance came and got him to a hospital and it turned out he had two massive ulcers in his stomach and large intestine. This comes about 6 weeks after a surgery to biopsy a growth in his spinal cord.

Yesterday morning, recovering from the emergency surgery to stitch up the ulcers, he had a major heart attack and is in the hospital with a breathing tube, heavily sedated etc. On our way up to Rhode Island yesterday our van broke down on the Triboro Bridge -- shocks gave out and started to rub against the front tires, causing lots of burnt rubber smoke. We got it towed back to your neighborhood (luckily we weren't halfway through connecticut) and it's going to be repaired this afternoon, $800 later. I'm incredibly worried about my dad. The doctors are not sure how to treat him; they can't give him the usual blood thinners and medications because of the ulcers and recent surgery. I wish so badly I was there. And now I'm worried about the drive up, even though the car is getting fixed, I have a strong distrust of automobiles... Just don't know what to do. It's bad when my aunt is telling me to go straight to the hospital and bring his 'paperwork' (read: living will.)

So scared :\

I'm sorry to hear all of that.

me too. suerte, ian.

Oh, Ian. I'm sorry.

Aw man... Hoping for the best

the latest news is that he's off the respirator and able to talk a bit, though he is very disoriented and doesn't know where he is... so that's great news. the doctor was surprised at how much he's improved since last night when things were a bit more up in the air.

our car didn't get repaired until after 5:30, and not wanting to drive in rush hour, we are going up tomorrow morning.. thanks everyone for your kindness.

Safe travel, sweetie.

Urgh ENBB, reading your posts here and on other threads - I have the feeling that we're on the same boat.
I'm an only child, living 4 hours away from my parents, with my father at a very advanced stage of Parkinson's and my mother seriously diminished by years of alcoholism (with late-blooming epilepsy added to the mix). My dad has been the justification for getting home-help but in my mind the caretaker's role is also to watch over my mom and alert me when things get real bad. I've been freaking out for the last two years at what will happen if/when my dad passes away and I cannot justify to my mom keeping a caretaker at home.

that rather mad space where you seem cut off from the concerns of normal life, unable to relax for a minute, and living a kind of nightmare existence that no-one else around you realises.

There is a fine line between being a responsible child of an aging parent and being a child who feels responsible for his aging parents in the same way a parent is responsible for their child. If you feel like a disaster of some sort is perpetually imminent in your parents' lives, then they need both more and less from you than your being on perpetual panicky standby.

Hovering nearby in anxiety just exhausts you and accomplishes very little. They need your assistance to form a plan to get more help in their daily lives. If they refuse this assistance, either you must honor that refusal and trust them to steer themselves, or if they have become legally incompetant to be responsible for themselves, then you must bite the bullet and seek the authority of a conservator or guardian, so at least you can move them away from the brink or perpetual disaster.

I know this x1000 times easier to say than to do. I just would like to plant the seed of this thought so you can consider it.

Yeah you're totally right. Knowing deep down that this endless anxiety has zero value to them is one of the most frustrating parts. I basically feel I'm on the border between the two scenarios you describe - ie. my mother is too lucid/young/healthy to be completely assisted or put in a home or under my legal guard - and yet alcoholism makes her accident prone and unable to care for my dad and her household. They've got several hours of help every day but even that is starting to seem not enough.
I know that I should stop aimlessly panicking and start making concrete plans but my general response to the anxiety is to try as hard as I can to put in my head in the sand and try no to think about it. So yeah, obviously not a winning strategy

Alcoholism really complicates that picture. You have a damned tough row to hoe. But you can't realistically save people from themselves.

baaderonixx - Yeah, it does sound similar although thankfully my dad is still in pretty good health but you never know and that's what scares me. I've tried to talk to them about it before but my mom flat out refuses to do so because she likes to ignore her mortality but that's just fucking selfish and I'm sick of worrying about this so I'm going to bring it up when I'm down there next weekend. He is her caretaker right now and I just have no idea what I'd do if something happened to him. I'm sure as hell not moving to Florida that's for sure.

"The last two-three years of my life have been a long panic attack basically, always concerned what may be happening at my parent's house at any given minute, always refusing to relax or to go on trips because I always feel like i'm on standby mode and might need to rush to my parent's home at any time."

If my dad weren't around and in good shape I'm sure this would be me too. That said, if my phone ever rings and I see it's them calling at a time I'm not expecting I go into extreme panic mode. Also, Christmas this year was so awful that I wound up extending my visit to go with my mom to the dr to see about her meds/drinking but sadly, it didn't really do much. At least I felt better for trying.

Oh baad, I'm sorry you're dealing with this. It's really stressful and yours sounds like a particularly tough situation right now.

geez ian, hang in there man.

I'm spending my Christmas break cleaning out my mother's hoarder house. She's 89 and after being very active for most of her life, her body has quit out on her and she's depressed, but meeting it with competing levels of rage and denial. She's flat-out refused all help for years and can be quite alienating about it. Her balance is very unsteady, but she can't use a walker in the house because there's too much trash. My sister brings her food, but she won't let anyone in the house. Hoarding has been an issue in her entire life - it's the reason why my parents broke up. When given the choice between her house full of newspapers and unopened mail or her family, she chose the pile. Now there are consequences.

Ten days ago she began (lust like the commercial) falling down and not getting up. She knows she can't call 911 because emergency services will report just how much of a fire hazard things are in there. Each fall has been progressively worse... The next day, my sister found her fallen over on a pile of unopened magazine. Apparently she had been there overnight without any clothes on and had, well, vacated herself on top of things. The day after that, she fell again and became hypothermic. So after a stay in the hospital and time away from the horrifying conditions in her house she's in outpatient assisted living and impatiently wanting to go home. Only she can't, because it's a shambles. About the only plus side to having to having to Make A Decision about assisted living/nursing homes during Christmas break is that there are so many of them in Orange County.

So we're finally cleaning the house. Desperately want to rant about the weird shit I'm finding, but I don't anything ending up on Reddit right now. The photos I took of the "high water mark" before we began emptying things out have been powerfully radioactive. I think my aunt had a nervous breakdown and I haven't heard back from the last person I sent them too.

his Christmas I've broken out of my current state of "existential depression fortified by all-new economic anxiety" has been interrupted by

oh man

oops... meant to finish with

"At least this Christmas I've broken out of my current state of "existential depression fortified by all-new economic anxiety" with this."

ugh, i'm sorry, that must be really stressful. :-/

oh wow C that's so awful. I hope you get thru it with plenty of support.

Aw, jeez, I'm so sorry you're dealing with this right now. Well, at all, really. Hope that she is able to get the help she requires, and that you are able to cope with it all.

My sister and I went on a whirlwind tour of four different assisted living places yesterday. The outpatient place where my mom is put us in touch with a woman who works as a real estate agent for (what the preferred term is) assisted living facilities. Whatever stereotypes you're imagining after reading that describes the day. If I was a douchey indie film screenwriter, a repeating theme would be:

ASSISTED LIVING FACILITY AGENT has programmed the addresses of dozens 
of facilities in the satellite navigation system of her Mercedes SUV and scrolls 
through them with the expertise of a veteran video gamer.

Oddly enough the one we went with is the one that felt most like a well appointed desert Indian casino. Guess that's what the Greatest Generation goes for now. The facilities were all new and the staff simply seemed like they gave a shit about the residents. Blurted out "it looks just like The Village from The Prisoner" several times during the day.

I know what you mean - we went through a similar search three years ago, right before the holidays, for Mr. Jaq's mom. If there had been a more casino themed one available, it would have been a perfect fit. As it is now, he takes her out every other Sunday to one. She was just moved into the "memory care" unit though, and has trouble remembering how the slot machines work. It's a challenging time, and my thoughts are with you.

I'm so sorry man, that's so rough. It's such a hard decision to make. I foresee that we'll be facing similar tough decisions in the coming year/s with my father in law as his dementia worsens. There's a small, quiet part of me that hopes that he shuffles off before such a decision has to be made.

It's so hard to bear witness to that level of helplessness...I really sympathize.

So last weekend, my mother unplugged the monitor and tried to use the bathroom by herself (this is still at the first outpatient place). She fell and hurt her back pretty badly, so assisted living is now completely out of the question. Go directly to Memory Care, do not pass Go, etc. The doctor's report gets directly to the point... "dementia, memory loss, wandering & fall risk." I drove her to the new facility on Monday in her own car, but she couldn't recognize it and kept forgetting after I reminded her. Since then she has been just horrible to the staff who have been nothing but patient. I got a message this morning that she had been screaming so loudly at everyone that she developed chest pains and had to be readmitted back to the hospital.

I had been thinking to myself "ok, maybe after 90 days (a totally arbitrary number) things will become predicable again." Now I'm not sure at all.

Thanks for all the kind words. Need to unload somewhere and it might as well be here.

In the meantime, I'm dealing with two floors of this.

http://quartzcity.net/ilx/momshouse.jpg

The front door to the house is back there somewhere. I bought a giant 150 count box of 13 gallon trash bags at Home Depot and have filled half of them (75 - I counted) with unopened mail, magazines, and newspapers. That's just from the living room.

I think I'm now an expert in dealing with aging parent hoarders - feel free to ask questions!

Oh, ET, I am so sorry it's going down this way. Just wishing you strength to cope with it!

(feeling kinda guilty tho coz that room is really only a year or so away from my living room. Eep!)

oh jesus. sorry elvis and best to u

Damn. Sending best.

et, you will get through, i'm so sorry to hear of the circumstances. stay strong. don't forget to take care of yourself.

Oh Elvis. I'm so sorry.

This is the tough stuff of life, sorry you are going through it.

I recently learned that hoarding disorder is now classified as a distinct disorder (as opposed to a form of obsessive compulsive disorder) in the new DSM-V. One of my profs at BU does hoarding research--apparently it is very difficult to treat. I'm so sorry that you have a massive cleanup on your hands on top of your mom's move. What a good child you are, you should be proud and take all due credit for what you are doing on your mom's behalf. Best wishes during this difficult time, to you and all of the other ilxors dealing with aging parent issues.

And to ENBB and everyone else trying to engage their family in end-of-life planning, you might find this helpful? This is how I'm pushing my spouse to structure a convo with his parents:

http://www.engagewithgrace.org/

Click on "download the one slide"

quincie, thanks for that link - knowing it's too late to have this conversation with my MIL makes it seem possible to approach it with my mother, and to think about what I would want for myself.

Elvis, oh man - take care of yourself as you deal with all this, take full advantage of any and all resources you can. It can feel invasive to contract out a cleanup, but remember the possibility is there if it becomes just too much.

It can feel invasive to contract out a cleanup, but remember the possibility is there if it becomes just too much

My sister and I have considered this, but there's some treasure mixed in with the trash so everything needs to be looked at. An example...

A great uncle had a career straight out of a Biggles adventure story. When World War One started, he left Canada for England, learned how to fly, and joined up with the pre-RAF Royal Flying Corps in 1915. He was a reconnaissance pilot, was pals with King Albert I of Belgium, took part in the first aerial survey of Africa, and somehow survived it all. Would have loved to have met him, but he passed before I was born.

One long-standing mystery was whatever happened to his war medals (a Distinguished Flying Cross, a cigarette case presented to him by King Albert, etc.) My mother eventually convinced herself that one of her sisters took them when the old family house was cleaned out but she was always questioning herself about it.

Well I found them. Stuffed in a plastic supermarket grocery bag, Underneath a pile of squalid newspapers with a chair over them. The only thing missing was a "Beware Of The Leopard" sign.

wow

Seriously wow

I recently learned that hoarding disorder is now classified as a distinct disorder (as opposed to a form of obsessive compulsive disorder) in the new DSM-V. One of my profs at BU does hoarding research--apparently it is very difficult to treat.

Does your prof have any articles or books out? Would love to read anything on hoarding that's not at a reality show level. I'm especially curious about neuropsych/genetic connections. My mother's father was a big hoarder, my brother is a hoarder, while an aunt is an obsessive neat freak.

BTW, while I'm not a physical hoarder - I do have 8TB of hard drives full of mp3s, scanned comics, etc.

Finding some amazingly Really Weird Shit too. My favorite so far is a fake pewter (but probably aluminum) peacock free-standing flower vase. Apparently you're supposed to put the flowers in its butt. It's aggressively hideous.

Black humor helps immeasurably through all this.

By the way, if anyone here is facing these kinds of issues with your parents. PLEASE do everything you can to have power of attorney, bank accounts, etc. squared away. I don't know what we would be doing now if that wasn't taken care of.

On the lighter side, I found this. Yes, I'm a member of the Wacky Packages generation.

http://pbs.twimg.com/media/BdFq8W8CAAA4B0a.jpg

I wish you the best ET, I empathize with your situation, and I recommend a book called Stuff by Steketee/Frost. It was very compassionately written and totally not stupid. It changed my relationship with my mom after she read it.

The Steketee/Frost book is great. Recommend it to anyone dealing with this.

One more crazy treasure-in-the-trash story, but I'm doing this at risk of class warfare.

My mother's interests can be summarized like this: cars, football, skiing, ice skating, and the British Royal Family, but cars are definitely #1 on the list. She was pretty active in vintage car clubs, and 2013 was the first time she missed going to the vintage races and concours up in Monterey. The Little Old Lady from Pasadena? That's her.

About two years ago she voluntarily chose to stop driving. This was a HUGE decision and one I never ever expected her to make on her own. She was just way too independent to admit that her eyesight and hearing was failing on her.

The Little Old Lady From Pasadena might have driven a shiny red Super Stock Dodge, but my mom drove these:

http://farm2.staticflickr.com/1108/1372811681_7a0fca804c.jpg

http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4078/4741094340_6637e8fa83.jpg

When she stopped driving, the key to the A-M vanished in the house somewhere. I offered to help look for the key, but she completely refused (with increasing levels of fury and anger as her health worsened). Getting a new key from the dealer was out of the question ("I'm not paying for a new goddamn key - it's in the house somewhere!") so there it sat for a year.

I eventually found the key at the bottom of a box filled with letters (date range 1968 - 2009) and thousands of those pre-printed return address labels that you sometimes get unsolicited in the mail.

P.S. to the story... When I took her to the nursing home on Monday night, I took her in the A-M - patiently explaining "don't worry, I'm taking care of the cars. I found the key. etc. etc." She didn't recognize the car at all. Sure, she might have occasionally called me by my brother's name and she's been repeating her words for awhile, but this was my first hand "she's not coming back" moment. A couple hours later, I found out that Benjamin Curtis passed. Fucking hell.

P.P.S. What's getting me through this is cooking (the meals at Casa Drone are spectacular and my baking skills are now off the charts), binge watching X-Files on Netflix, and good old-fashioned California Medical Weed. One day at a time as they say.

Indeed. And yeah...not coming up for the Concours must have seemed so strange.

To an earlier point:

By the way, if anyone here is facing these kinds of issues with your parents. PLEASE do everything you can to have power of attorney, bank accounts, etc. squared away. I don't know what we would be doing now if that wasn't taken care of.

Thankfully -- very thankfully -- my parents have been extremely good about this, and I have all paperwork to hand if necessary. We just spent a little time as well during the holidays updating access to safe deposit boxes too. As time progresses we'll see what more needs to happen, but they've been very proactive, and if anything my sis and I wait on them. And so time continues, for now.

When my grandma died, my parents and my dad's brother and his wife spent months clearing out what was a fair amount of stuff from her house, and much like ET mentions, there were hidden treasures among...not trash per se (it never got that cluttered), but a lot of unnecessary things. They said the experience made them aware of how to keep things as simple as possible in terms of what was kept at the house -- it's almost been two decades since grandma's and the process has always been one of a careful paring down of possessions and necessities -- and seeing a story like ET's make me feel very fortunate.

ET, we're dealing with something not dissimilar. my wife's mom has alzheimer's (70 years old) and is getting progressively worse (yesterday she thought i was her father) and her eyesight is also terrible. in addition to that, my wife's dad (83 years old) is a mid-level hoarder (almost in a "sweep everything under the rug" way; the living room is deceptively clean but the bedrooms and his office are stacked with old newspapers, magazines, etc, the garage is worse than that, real earthquake hazard rooms.) he refuses to throw pretty much anything away and the kitchen and dining tables are stacked with papers that have to be shuffled aside so we can eat.

worse still is that he was never social and has really no friends, and she has one good friend. plus he leaves her alone for 90 min every day when he goes to temple. and he won't stop. we're just in the process of trying to get their finances in order as best we can AND getting someone into the house to help while working our jobs and raising a two year old.

Mom has mostly not been duped by scams because she often asks me to look at things first or googles then first.

Then yesterday, has dresses for sale on Poshmart, and gets an email formatted so poorly it was obviously fake, saying her dress sold and they needed her banking info.

Nevermind the fact that the website itself showed no sale on it, and the site tells you never to give your bank info to buyers, she clicked on the link, proceeded to give these people all of her banking info, and only realized it was a scam when they asked her for $200 to verify her account.

Now she has to cancel her debit card AND get a new checking account number. I really hope this is not a sign of a mental decline because she's never been foolish like that before. And if she gets cleaned out, it'll impact us both.

And to report it, just now, she juxtaposed two digits and called a scam impersonator instead of her bank.

Praying she's just brain farting today because I really don't have the energy to become her POA agent

Yeah my mom fell for a scam a year back that started with a fake iPhone alert, proceeded to have her call a phone number and told her she need identity fraud protection, and then in this case asked my mom to drive to a convenience store with a bitcoin atm to make a deposit.

Fortunately we caught her before the last part.

But I think it wasn't cognitive impairment here as much as confusion followed by shame. And the scammers knew how to prey on the shame.

trying to explain to my mother why she can't just cash a check made out to my deceased father in her own bank account is like explaining tax codes to kindergartners. i gave up after a half hour.

My project continues: After months of effort by everyone — especially my dad, who made packing up their house basically a full-time job for about four months — I have successfully moved my parents' stuff down to a rental house about a mile from me. Step 2 is actually moving them. I'm going to fly up next weekend and drive back down with both of them. This will be ... interesting. My sister is also moving here, which is great. But it also means I'm suddenly going to be living in the same city with most of my immediate family, after not even living in the same state with any of them for most of the last 30 years. Huh.

The move won't be complete until they buy a house here, which they can't do until they sell their current house in western NY. A lot of change for people who are turning 78 and 80 this year.

wild amount of work - glad your folks have you and your sister, but wow that sounds like a huge undertaking. my only advice is - leave breathing time for you. but it's a good thing you're doing!