Mental Decline & Dependency/Coping With Aging Loved Ones

A friend sent me this link because of what I am dealing with concerning my mother. She is 78, widowed for 14 years and in good health, but she has lost her judgement completely.
She has fallen victim to scammers of all sorts, in person , through the mail and on the phone. She has always had plenty of money for lviing expenses and whatever else she wanted to do, but almost $100,00 later she does not any longer.
I went to her town last week and took her bank acount away from her, hired an attorney to get guradianship over her affairs, and took over paying her bills etc. She was at least two months behind, but I thinks I have caught them up now, at least the ones I know of from 300 miles away.
When I get legal guardianship, I will move her to an assisted living facility. She can no longer afford and is able to manage the repsonsiblity of living in her home of 40 years.
I know many people my age-I was just 60- are dealing with the same trouble. I will read your comments with interest, as this is new ground for me.

Babyboomer--

Welcome to A2K.

Is your mother cooperating with you? Or is she convinced that her financial situation is not her fault and could happen to anyone?

Boomer, there is very little that I detest more than those demons who prey on the elderly. They are monsters without doubt. What you have done regarding your mom's bank account is proper and wise. I hope when my time comes, I will have someone like you to do the same.

My wife's parents lived with us until they passed away, and my wife took care of all of their needs - including managing of their money. She took them to church, medical appointments, social gatherings at friends and organizations, and she had a job to boot.

Mental decline
Bob is no now longer a trustee, and is, of course, not at all happy about the change. But it had to be. He couldn't possibly handle the checkbook, make appointments, deal with doctors, understand complex documents, and so on. Making any kind of decision has become beyond him now, and there are days when he gets up in the morning and has to ask what to do next - i.e. get dressed, sit down to breakfast...

I'm not happy about the change, either, but there was no choice. None at all. Our lawyer, our doctor, and the geriatric social worker I've been dealing with, all see it as the best - read "only" - way.

As for the scams that target the elderly, Bob never answers the phone, and he can't read printed matter, so he's pretty safe there. But people who run these scams should be hung, drawn, and quartered. At least.

Believe me, I'm not suggesting that people who scam the elderly are performing a necessary task or warped because of forces beyond their control.

Still, one of the reasons so many of the elderly are available to be scammed is that they are ignored by their own families. Scammers go out of their way to be pleasant people--and present people.

Many old people are very, very lonely.

Tomkitten, I remember my wife working on her parent's medicare paperwork; it was a nightmare. I'm not sure how older seniors can manage those without assistance from somebody else. Her folks spoke a few words of English, but they could not read nor write English.

Thank you all for comisurating with my mothers situation. She is not cooperating, and doing all she can to thwart my efforts to help her. She cannot realize anything is wrong.

I have been able to take over her bank account, but nothing else in her financial portfolio until I get the court-appointed Guardianship. I have filled out the forms, posted the required bond and now I wait on the attorney to do whatever needs doing.

Manwhile, I hate for the phone to ring as it is some tirade against me. SHe told me today that she had disowed my brothers and I and we were dead to her. So sad.

I, too, hope there is a special place in Hades for those cruel, greedy scammers. Thansk for listening. It helps!

Babyboomer--


Your mother would rather think that she spawned a group of ungrateful children than admit to you to to herself that her mind is failing.

Of course, when you are spending time and love trying to protect her, the raging phone calls are doubly hurtful.

Has your mother always had trouble accepting her own mistakes? Or is this a new development?

Noddy, People change in old age; my father-in-law was one of the sweetest man I have ever met in my life, but he told his daughter, my wife, that she was trying to kill him with poison in the food that she prepared. Of her parent's four children, my wife was their favorite. It's not that they treated them differently, but it didn't take a rocket scientist to see the difference.

I've been through that wringer too. Hang in there...

C.I.--

Because of my husband's mental decline, I am well aware of personality changes in aging loved ones.

Boomer, Noddy's suggestion that your mom refuses to acknowledge her failing mind is, I think, very important. It's my observation that when people begin to fail, they struggle mightily to hang onto their autonomy. We can't blame them. If you agree, do you think you could arrange to take control of her money--for HER sake--yet provide her with enough discretionary income to create for her the impression of autonomy?

JL and Noddy and Babyboomer -

I had to go for conservatorship for my mother and it was the saddest thing in the world. She had what is now clear as classic alzheimer's, though that wasn't a word banty'd about back in the late sixties, early seventies.

She did become paranoid. She hid cash under carpets and couldn't pay her bills. Her dining room table was filled with piles of paper, not unlike, shudder, my own back table.

If the parent is at least sometimes "paranoid", and both my mother and aunt swung between those and their old selves, for a time, it can be for even the most well meaning child a journey to the end of time.

The court process of conservatorship was painful for me, and I've done it twice with plenty of reasons and incredible pain, for my parents and for me. I didn't go there with my aunt, but probably should have. I was young - even though I'd been through it before - and overwhelmed.


To riff on the horrors, my aunt, secure in the idea that I smoked 'mariajuana' (she smelled it on my clothes, and, ironically, I hadn't smoked grass back then, yet) and had an abortion and begged my mother for money for it (I didn't, I'd asked my mother for $50.00 to help with my rent, and she went to Father Mahoney at St. Martin's to get consolation) - built me into an evil niece.

When I visited my aunt, she loved me, and, over the time, tried to give me her silver and fur (and so on). I'd always said no, we could use her silver when I visited....

As it happened, she was buddies with her neighbor. You guessed it, the neighbor took my aunt, whom I'm sure read the riot act of my sins and supposed ones, to an attorney, my aunt... who always hated attorneys.

Well, I won't go on, it only gets worse. The trouble with all this was I actually loved my aunt.

I guess I should add there were a lot of years between us, as my mother was 40 at my birth, and my aunt older, that more meaningful, I think, back then, re comprehension of different generations. Or maybe not.

Well, all that is personal to me.. but hysteria and paranoia and fear and depression can come in waves, for the loved one and you... and as we become older too.



all this by way of saying 'conservatorship is hard'. And good luck.

Hmm. So, how can I help?

Document. Sad to say, document.

Babyboomer, I agree with all who have supported what you are trying to do to help your mother.

My cousin went through a similar experience with her father and one of my best friends had to take care of her mother after her mom got Alzheimer's. Often, as people grow older and especially as they develop Alzheimer's, they start distrusting the very people who are trying their best to help. As JLNobody said, they will try everything in their power to hide their declining mental abilities, sometimes telling their friends that their children are abusing them. It can become a nightmare.

My uncle was so charismatic that my cousin had an awful time getting anyone to take her seriously when she tried to get guardianship. He finally had to be taken to the state hospital because of completely erratic behavior. A psychiatrist spent two hours with him and after that time, came out shaking his head, telling my cousin that her dad was one of the very best at hiding his disability. With his charm and innate intelligence, he could throw up all sorts of covers to explain his behavior.

If you and your mother have had a good relationship, it will be especially hard to hear her ranting about how bad you are and how you are abusing her. I know how I felt seeing my uncle decline. His charisma, his incredible personality faded as he became a lost little old man. For that to happen to a parent is really beyond imagining.

You have my sincere empathy. Good luck.

Yes, Diane said -

if you and your mother have had a good relationship, it will be especially hard to hear her ranting about how bad you are and how you are abusing her. I know how I felt seeing my uncle decline. His charisma, his incredible personality faded as he became a lost little old man. For that to happen to a parent is really beyond imagining.




That became true for me twice.

You have pals here dealing with this too.

I guess the last, and perhaps most important and difficult, acts of love we can give our parents and their parents and siblings, is to put up with their "craziness" when they lose it. We probably will do the same some day. I hope that at that time we all have descendants like Baby Boomer, Diane and Osso.

Mother did quite well after the last eye operation - although she always ask why we had an appointment at the doctor's (when he looked for the progress - actually, I sometimes thaught, we only went there because our wanted to see his excellent work again :wink: ).

The start of November wasn't bad, too - nothing really like years before (days of the death,/All Saints Day usually were bad the last couple of years).

Now, however, she's very, very bad again with walking. Which means, she asking to go (go!) with us to this and that place, wants to be driven to our twon for shopping, wants ... well, everything what she really can't do in the actual situation.

Altrhough this is not new to us, it's n e r v i n g.

This afternoon, we got an invitation from the ladies in the house, a belated birthday afternoon-coffee.
Mrs Walter fully understood that I'll leave the café after having had my coffee and some waffles. (Age of those ladies is from 57 [mine] over ±80 to 92.)

My father who has dementia and my mother who has alzheimers live in their own little world, I can do nothing. I don't fret about it (yeah sometimes I do) but I have no influence. they are in their 80's and totally refuse to consider options. I continue to accept that I am not responsibile for their actions. I get one phone call about every 6 months asking why I don't communicate but they never respond to the communications I make towards them. I refuse to be their scapegoat.