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You did a good job bringing mom back to good health. Now who is taking care of you?
Has she the financial resources to be placed in a NH or ALF? Then, do that. Get on with your life. If not, start calling these "family members" and saying "You guilted me into coming back to care for mother, she's fine and I'm on the verge of mental collapse." If that isn't effective to garner some help, (and don't expect much) try getting aides in a few times a week for a break.
Sounds like she is well along in some kind of dementia. Along the lines of caring for her, she also needs a psych evaluation.
You don't mention siblings--are there any? This isn't a burden to be borne alone.
Come back and let us know more of your situation. You'll get more help if you tell us all more.
Caregiving needs to be a family effort, but the family is very willing to put the burden on the back of one person, then go on with their lives. Some will help a little if you ask, but the caregiver shouldn't have to ask family for help. Wouldn't it be cool if family just showed up with a bag of yummy groceries or maybe a meal? Those days are gone if they ever existed.
I have 3 brothers and two stepbrothers. I am the only girl and the only one who lives nearby so it was expected that I would keep her although she was willing ton ALF. She was not suffering with dementia and I just couldn't put her inone of those places. Even if I put her there, I would be visiting at least once a day to make sure she was getting the treatment she needed. That is what I have done every time she has been in a hospital or facility. So now she is 92 and the new doctor says she doesn't have COPD and doesn't need oxygen! She has no other issues except reoccurring UTI's which I have cleared up with some very old advice from my sister-in-law who is a nurse practitioner.
But I still feel guilty if I think about going on vacation even for a long weekend.
I have one brother that calls regularly and gives me moral support and his wife is the nurse practioner. The rest of the family calls her occasionally but rarely calls me.
My husband has been awesome and he even suggested her coming here as soon as my stepfather passed. But he let's things like how loud she keeps her tv, and what a barker her little dog is, get on his nerves.
This week I noticed that one of her grandchildren was taking a vacation with her family less than two hours away and she didn't stop in. They live about 20 hours away and it hurt my feelings for me and my mother. I couldn't imagine being that close and not stopping to say hello.
My mother thanks me every day for taking care of her and we get along well. She knows what the deal is and she just shakes her head sometimes because she always took everyone in, even if they weren't blood relatives. It is going to cause many problems when she does pass away because she has built her suite onto our house, which gave her a lovely place to spend her time but also cost a sizable sum. She has also insisted in giving me the income from the sale of her house. It makes me feel a little guilty but I quit my job and given up privacy as well as quite a bit of freedom, to care for her. My husband reminds me that living in a nice ALFwould cost her more. He has a point there.
"now I'm stuck. ... I have no life at all"
That is only true if you decide to let it be true. What if tomorrow you walk under a ladder and trip over a black cat and wind up in the hospital and then rehab for 3 months? What would happen to Mother then? There really are other options for her than living under your care. And you are the one who gets to make the decision, or at least the decision that you can't continue to care for her.
I think you should start with a needs assessment for your mother. This can usually be arranged through your Area Agency for Aging or your county's Human Services department. The person who does the assessment is usually able to suggest some options for meeting those needs. For instance, living with you she might attend Adult Day Health Program, freeing you up during the day. Or having a companion or aide come in at designated times would also give you some respite.
Or, if your make it clear that you cannot continue being responsible for Mother's care, they may be able to suggest facilities that she could move to and get the care she needs. You could have your own life again, and still maintain a relationship with Mother by visiting often.
What is your mother's financial status? Might she qualify for Medicaid? Looking into that is the next thing I think you should do. Don't make any assumptions about what she can and cannot afford. Document all the assets she owns and the income she gets monthly. Take that information plus her needs assessment results to an attorney specializing in Elder Law (paying with Mom's funds.) Let the lawyer explain what financial options your mother has.
If you decide to go on as you are, you're stuck. Research the other options before you make any decisions. You're only stuck if you decide to be.
I hope it's not going to cause you any legal problems. (I'm not saying it should, as I think you deserve it all, but we often read on this site how disgruntled relatives make a fuss when they don't get what they think they deserve after the elder dies.)
Are you the only one who will inherit? Is there anything to inherit besides the proceeds from the sale of her house? I hope all that your mother has told you is in writing.
If Mom cannot budget for Assisted Living/Memory Care, which is around $6k per month depending on where you live, then have Mom sign up for Medicaid [which is different from Medicare]. Sounds like Mom could qualify for a nursing home due to her health issues. Medicaid would place a lien on Mom's house.
Will Mom be upset moving to a nursing home [better call it senior living]? Of course, she might even disown you. Tell her she will be around women her own age, thus have new friends. Yes, she will want to go home, but home is actually her childhood home.
Who has Power of Attorney? If you do, sell the house and use the equity for all of Mom's care.
Now you can once again go back to being her "daughter" instead of her "caregiver".
I also have an uncle I'll probably be looking after, but at least he bought long term care insurance instead of saving not one cent and expecting me to move him in and provide his care myself, like my mom apparently does. I am expecting a battle royal when she hears the plan may be more like qualifying her for Medicaid, but *she* chose to retire in her mid fifties and "play" for 20 years instead of saving for old age.
I wish I didn't feel so depressed and desperate. I wish I didn't hate this so much. I wish I had my support system back instead of having to play support system for everyone else. It doesn't help that three of my cousins have spouses with cancer, plus another cousin has it himself... my aunt that I'm closest to just got through cancer treatment and now has heart failure... I am just... exhausted from having to stay positive for other people and talk them down from/through things. Meanwhile I'm supposed to be doing some work on my own home based business, and it seems like every time I try to set aside some time to do that, there's another emergency and I'm expected to go "be there" for somebody. Nobody is there for me, other than my long suffering spouse, who I'm worried I'm driving away with my constant irritability and unhappiness over all this.
Honestly until I wrote this all out I didn't realize things had gotten quite this bad. It's time for me to find myself a therapist. Going to put that on the list for tomorrow, after I get back from handholding relatives through another cancer surgery....
(I also wonder...are you an only child?)
Unfortunately there aren't really that many other people around, who aren't ill with cancer or dealing with a spouse ill with cancer, I mean. I don't know why this string of calamities seems to have hit all at once, and what’s weird is in 3 of the 5 cases in our family right now it's the same kind of cancer (colon… in people who in some cases aren’t related by blood. Go figure). My grandparents originally had ten kids, but each of those kids had in most cases only one kid... or no kids... only two of them have more than one. In total there are four aunts with only three kids between them who can help (one of them being me, and one of the others has a spouse in chemo.) I do think some of my other cousins would help financially, perhaps, but none of them live in this area so hands-on care won’t be forthcoming.
I finally really set some boundaries with my mom that she is not to hold an expectation that she can call me any time and unload with how awful everything is...a lot of this is about herself and her fear of losing her own support system, as well as her fear of what’s going to happen to her going forward since she’s managed her money so poorly. She also really likes things her own way, which is going to be a problem when it comes to a discussion about moving into *my* house. (Currently mom doesn't live with me, but won't be able to stay in her home much longer perhaps thanks to said poor financial decisions. We may move her into an apartment but the metro we live in is now exponentially more expensive than it was when I bought my own home in what's now a "trendy" neighborhood, so options nearby may be prohibitively expensive.... hello, sitting in hours of traffic every day. Sigh. We probably have a few years before she can't drive, at which point I'll either have to move her in here or we'll have to look into Medicaid since she has no money for long term care and I *am not* going to exhaust my own retirement savings on her care, for a few reasons.) The other aunts are living with my cousins b/c they also don't have any savings. Two of them have houses we can tap into, at least, tho they're not worth very much and won't go far toward the 15+ years of nursing care that may lie ahead.
Earlier today was talking to mom about all this and got a lecture on how I "have to be more tolerant" because I've never “been old and sick/in chemo and don’t know how it feels.” Of course, what I'd like to say - and probably will say soon - is that she herself doesn't know how caretaking so many other people feels, since for most of her adult life we lived in another state, my dad’s sibs cared for his parents and she had nine siblings to take care of her own. Clue-less.
I've started asking friends for therapist referrals but I also have another complication- ADHD diagnosis, and some therapists insist you see someone who specializes in that b/c it can cause many of its own problems. I'm also intolerant of many of the meds used to treat it, even the ones they give little kids, which is another layer of difficulty - a lot of docs don't have many other practical suggestions if you can't take the meds.
Ah well. It certainly does help to vent here among other people who know how it is… part of what makes it so isolating, of course, is that other people IRL don’t “get it.” I don’t know anyone with nearly so many family obligations so I feel like my friends think I’m making excuses when I’m unavailable to do things with them… many of them have stopped asking.
I wonder if I might find a therapist who specializes in elder care. Maybe someone who might have some practical suggestions on what’s available in my area. I’m aware attorneys do that kind of thing, think I’ll look into that as well.
I'm hoping for more householding once Aunt D's husband dies...
All I know is she has this old 1960s house and social security. When she came home from rehab she was afforded nurses for three months and then they quit coming because that's all her insurance would cover.
I was recently given the news of my lymph counts are twice what they should be and was told there's nothing they can do. I feel fine, I think it's from stress. I'm not going
to die anytime soon but even if I do I'm fine with it because I don't want to spend all my remaining time in/out of labs etc.
The only way I can get her somewhere else is to sell her house and use that money along with her ss to fund other housing. Then I will have to relocate and hope I can get hired at the age of 59 somewhere. I am burned out already.
If Mom can apply for Medicaid and be accepted, maybe Medicaid can send over an Aide to watch your Mom while you have a chance to see life outside of the front door. All the way around, this isn't fair to you nor to your Mom.
As for Mom being racist and judging other people, that is somewhat of a generational thing, and in some areas of the country it is still alive and well :( My Mom was like that, so was my sig other's Mom. Even sexist, my Mom would see a woman sports reporter and snarl "what does she know about sports, she should be home having babies"... [sigh].... yet my Mom knew all of the football stats, the Quarterbacks, the Coaches, etc... go figure.
Most of the time we need to wait for a medical emergency before we can place our elder into some type of continuing care as rarely are any of us qualified to be skilled nursing home type caregivers. My Mom refused caregivers nor moving her and my Dad to senior living. Nope, never, not in your life, nada. My Mom had a serious fall thus spent her final months in long-term-care.
I’ve never seen a post on here from a Caregiver who’s said, “I love wiping behinds, struggling to give someone a bath in bed, being ordered around and just generally being treated like dirt!” We are the unsung heroes with thankless jobs who do distasteful things and put our own lives, health and needs on hold for someone we love while everyone else is turning a blind eye to what we’re doing. I have put off shoulder surgery for extremely painful shoulders because there is no one to care for my husband. I was a reasonably healthy person but now my mental and physical health is shot because of him. When he lays in bed all day and night and grunts and groans ( he’s not in pain) I’d like to jump up and slap him and tell him to knock it off. All our married life I’ve wondered if he truly loves me because there are a lot of things he’s done to prove otherwise. And now, when I’ve realized he does, it no longer matters.
I sincerely hope you’ve found some peace. Hugs!