Mental Decline & Dependency/Coping With Aging Loved Ones

Walter--

It isn't always easy being indispensible. My sympathies to Mrs. Walter.

Will you be bringing your mother and your aunt presents? Or do they want you dancing attendance, full time, with presents all the time?

Dont say anything. Phone in sick.

Well, actually they just want me to be "here" - not really in fact, but that I'll be with them if needed.

Quite funny - they don't call me often, keep mostly everything unpleasent as a secret (which doesn't make it easier for us).

But when I'm away, it just the time before I leave - when my wife's there, all is as usual.
Same the other way around.

My mom is slipping to another level. She is becoming a bit more confused, and her memory is just about gone. I find that it is becoming more and more of a chore for me to visit her. She askes the same questions, over and over again. I find my patience slipping.

One of the problems for me may be that my husband is going thru prostate cancer treatment, and is having all manner of difficulties with it. He is very short tempered, understandably so. I attempt to "go with the flow", but I find that very difficult. I do my best to play "cheerleader", but my enthusiasm is wearing thin.

I never could sit through a "double header"!

oof, that's a tough load, Phoenix. My thoughts are with you and your husband. You can only split yourself in so many directions. Do what you can, and let go of the rest. Guilt can become a direction of its own.

Walter, enjoy your trip. My regards to Mrs. Walter for holding down the fort during your absence.

Mental decline and dependency
That's a miserable double whammy, Phoenix, but you will manage. It's totally amazing how much one can handle.

I remember when my mother was in a nursing home and my husband had just undergone an emergency quadruple bypass - she kept phoning me to get her out of there, no matter how often I asked her not to call, so he could rest. (We had to keep the phone functioning for business purposes.) We had an answering machine, but she wouldn't leave messages, just kept hanging up and calling right back again. And if I did answer, that was no good, either...

I'm a great believer in prayer; I find that help does come when needed, though maybe not in the expected form. At the very least, praying can provide a mental breathing space. If prayer isn't your thing, five minutes meditation can help, too.

I know about the repetitious questions - all I can do there, is pretend to Bob (and myself) that each time is the first.

Anyway, you know our thoughts are with you.

Tomkitten- Prayer is definitely not "my thing", but I think that you are right about meditation. It does clear the mind, and calm a person. I think that I will try it. I haven't meditated in a dog's age!

Walter--

Hold your dominion--and enjoy your time away.


Phoenix--

You have my sympathy for both your mother and your husband.

Personally, I'm not the hand-holding type. I'd love to find a system where you could hold hands between 10:30 and 11:15 on Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings and 2:15 to 3:00 on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday afternoons.

Sunday, of course, the substitute would take over.

On the other hand, viewed with grim perspective, hand-holding can be a heroic activity.

Hold your dominion.

Thanks, it's hard though.

Mental decline and dependency
Noddy - I like your approach to hand-holding. It could work out rather nicely, I think, because instead of worrying about each thing as it happens, you just postpone all the worrying till the scheduled hours, and relax a bit the rest of the time.

Walter--

You have to keep your emotional reserves in solvent condition. A change is as good as a rest and your time in London should give you both.

Tomkitten--

One of my family traditions is to look at the person coping with the crisis and announce, "I'll take over pointless worrying between X and Y, every day. You use that time to do something for yourself."

Then you pointlessly worry during the time you've promised, preferably while scrubbing something.

I had to help both of my parents & my wifes parents struggle thru their final years. I did the things that were required for the simple reason that I felt it was my duty. In the final few weeks of her life, I was going to the hospice right after work to visit my mother. Watching her frustrations & her steady decline was for me soul destroying. But I couldn't leave her in a form of limbo.
But it's a 2 way street & the traffic is heavy. Eight & a 1/2 years ago I was told I had Parkinson's Disease. Nowadays everything takes a lot longer to get done
The worst aspect for the elderly is having a serious/chronic illness & being reliant on others to get you safely thru the next 24 hours. Your time is no longer your own, you've lost your mobility & with it your independance. You want a drink, a cigarette, a piece of cake ? Who you going to ask ? You are gratefull for the help but what about deeper needs. Helping you dress, feeding & washing yourself, use the toilet. I'm not at that stage, yet. I dread getting there tho. I wouldn't wish me on anyone at such a time.
If I do reach the stage where I'm no longer compus mentis, then I'll gladly glide away listening to a couple of my favorite songs & heading for nice a long snooze

Mental decline and dependency
Things have now reached the stage where an hour after dinner Bob asks if we've eaten yet. . .

Mental decline and dependency
BTW - someone told me the other day that Short/Medium/Long in relation to men's pants refers to the rise, i.e. from the crotch to the waist. This doesn't seem quite right, does it?

Tomkitten--

At least he's enjoying your cooking.

Mr. Noddy is capable of occasional fits of offended paranoia when he can't recognize a meal.

I gave him a lovely piece of cod--he looked quickly at the plate and complained bitterly that there were too many potatoes and not enough protein--and I'd done this on purpose!

Mental decline and dependency
Actually, I don't do the cooking - we live in a retirement community, and they do the cooking.

We have a new chef; he's Italian and you can guess which national cooking style we are now getting. I'd be happier if he would stop mixing cheese into every dish (or nearly). Meat is one thing; cheese is another, and we don't really need all that protein, not to mention fats. (Plus which it's a religion thing, not mixing meat and dairy, but that's not their affair.)

Most people who move here gain about 10 pounds in the first year or so, and it's easy to see why: when you don't do the cooking yourself, you tend to relax and gobble! Or at least, I do. But luckily, I am not one of the plumper people. Bob is, though, partly because he eats for eating - I'm sure it's part of his mental decline; he doesn't remember it in the morning - and partly because he doesn't get much exercise.

We usually get in about 20 minutes on a treadmill or other good machine every day, and our apartment is rather long so that I use up a lot of calories just getting from the bedroom to the front door. Also, the corridors are long and we are about as far from the dining room and other public areas as possible. But this isn't for him, especially now that even with his walker he is very slow and shaky and frail.

Tomkitten--

His world seems to be growing smaller and smaller and eating is one of his greatest pleasures. Were mealtimes particularly happy gatherings in his childhood?

Mental decline and dependency
Gee, Noddy, I really don't know. He comes from a very small town called Szentendre. Eating at other people's houses wasn't something that people did except at holidays, like Passover. A family ate together and that was that.

On the other hand, his brother was 10 years older and had a completely different timetable. Bob went to high school in Budapest, so he had a pretty early commute to school; his brother by that time was working as a lawyer with their father. So breakfast wasn't a together meal, and Bob couldn't go home for lunch because it was too far.

Evening dinner was a different story. All four ate together every evening, although I suspect that, being a grown man by the time Bob was in high school, George probably had evening arrangements elsewhere from time to time.

I guess that was pretty much the story throughout our generation. I know my parents, my sister, and myself had breakfast together and dinner as well. We went to friends' houses after school, but had to be home by five-ish.

Anyway, you may have a point; Bob's family seem to have been good friends with each other, as far as I can make out, so dinner must have usually been a pleasant time.

Tomkitten--

I find it helpful to divert my mind to try to fathom the "why" of a behavior. Sometimes this works. On the other hand I have no reason why Mr. Noddy chose to have a small snit about grated carrots in his salad today.

Forward!

Hold your dominion.

Mental decline and dependency
Well, trying to guess what mysterious reason caused the remark/outbreak/brhavior of the moment may be useful, but at this point I'm just trying to keep from asking "why?" - Bob never knows, and I'm sure it hurts him that he can't fugre it out.