Frustrated with aging single parent

[Anonymous]

Long story….tldr she’s driving me batshit insane by refusing medical help and has run her health into a gutter and I now I need to leave home/kids and go help right the ship . And I’m selfishly mad and resentful because the timing is nothing short of predominant (to quote the office)

I live here and have a handful of young kids.

My mom lives about 1000 miles away. She is 80, single and I am her only child. There are other family members that live near her with various levels of interaction. Frankly they would see her more but she spends a lot of time avoiding and ignoring people. In her younger years she would avoid situations that were not planned out (ie if someone dropped by unannounced she would not answer the door). In her older years this has progressed to not making or avoiding plans at all and therefore seeing people less often.

She does not see doctors or dentists. She does zero preventative health care or screenings. She does not have a primary care physician. She never has. This has been the case for as long as I can remember. In the last 10+ years it has been a source of arguments and frustrations with her avoiding me/the topic when she is sick or this subject arises. She does get vaccinations like Covid or the flu as she sees fit from the pharmacy.

Now we get to this summer.
Day 1 - 6 - she does not answer my phone calls/rarely returns my texts. Turns out she is sick with a “stomach bug” her words”. It’s pretty typical for her to ignore and avoid me when she is sick due to the practice of avoiding conversations about medical care.
Day 7 she seems fine, attends dinner with people I know
Day 8 no shows at a birthday party. Does not call or text to let people know. Minutes before sending someone over she answers the phone and says she has food poisoning from dinner the night before. I’m also told that she delivered the birthday gift the night before, was she planning on missing? Why did she pre deliver the birthday gift if she was going to the party before she had food poisoning?
Day 8-10 she is presumably recovering from food poisoning but continues to be distant. I assume it’s the 1-2 hit from two illnesses back to back.
Day 11 I receive a very early morning text from her that she has tested positive for Covid and cannot attend the family vacation that is starting in 4 days. Shit. I try to talk to her on the phone but she is short on details. Did she have Covid last week? No that was different. Was the “food poisoning” really Covid? Or was it the stomach bug? She refuses antivirals. Refuses telehealth. Arguing is pointless.
Day 12-15 she seems to be doing fine. No better no worse. Glad she is resting.
Day 16-22 I am with kids on vacation. She is still avoiding me or is she too sick to talk? Or is she bummed she’s missing the vacation? Cell phone reception is spotty at best. I reach out everyday and she isn’t terribly responsive but says she’s doing better.
Day 23 I am notified by a neighbor that an ambulance was at her house. Doctor’s running tests. Worried it’s heart failure. She’s too weak to talk on the phone. She is not ambulatory. She has overall body weakness. She has metabolic acidosis. She is in ICU tonight.

SELFISHLY I knew that her neglecting her health would end up with some crisis like this. I’m pissed off that this could have been POTENTIALLY avoided with some routine care or going to see a doctor at anyone of the preceding days. Numerous people offered to take her.

I know there will be many people who tell me to think of her and not myself. I have spent ten years trying to get her to live with us, live near us, see a doctor, monitor her blood pressure, follow up on the heart murmur that was detected when I wrangled her into cataract surgery five years ago when she couldn’t see anything. But she neglected all of her health and now it’s blown up. Kids are starting school soon and I have all the shit you have to do the days before school starts. Will they be fine with dad juggling work and their stuff? Yes, they will live. But it doesn’t have to be like this! So now I need to drop all this and go deal with this mess. And I am resentful. And I’m mad that even when we fix this, ASSUMING we can get her healthy again, she will go right back to her old ways until this happens again.

I am mad that she denied medical help over and over and over and over. I anm mad that she lies and avoids everyone in her attempts to keep people ant bay so she can let her health decline in hiding. And I am going to lose my mind when she goes right back to doing it again. And yes, i am mad that it makes me look like a shitty kid for not helping. When I have tried to help and she won’t let me. I bought her a blood pressure cuff for at home use and she fing packed in her suitcase and gave it back to me because she wouldn’t even monitor it at home.

[Anonymous]

I'm so sorry, my dear OP.

Please prepare for the worse. I know your vent is your anxiety talking. Nothing is your fault. You cannot help someone who refuses help. And all things considered... sometimes going of a reasonably short illness is better than lingering and suffering from a degenerative disease.

I have a story for you. My aunt was an anti-vaxxer and didn't believe in medical care. She died of Covid, a few days into her illness, after refusing to go to the hospital. It led to my mother accusing her husband of not forcing her into an ambulance, and generally neglecting her. Which, technically, might have been true, but I know my aunt. She did not want to be helped. My mother knows this too, deep down.

I hope your mother recovers this time, but please consider what I said. It will apply to the next illness.

[Anonymous]

If she doesn’t use this as a Come to Jesus moment, then she isn’t going to change. So focus on what you can control or influence. For you, I would recommend:

Things in your control. Acknowledging your feelings without judging yourself. Define boundaries if you haven’t already. Do some scenario planning (if she gets sick again, do you go back next week? Next month? If she refuses your help when you get there, what do you do?)

Influencing local resources. Can you schedule regular dates with those friends to server as advanced warning system? Can you find someone (PCP, Home health provider) to be on call for next time?

Self care. Make sure you’re getting enough rest, nutrition, time to yourself, and time with your own kids.

[Anonymous]

You have to accept that she is basically a lost cause (sorry!)
This is coming from someone whose mother was the same: stubborn and avoidant. She almost literally rotted in bed, to her death. Some things are just out of our control.
Let it go, your main goal is to stay sane for your kids’ sake.

[Anonymous]

This sounds very similar to my experience with my mother, and I totally understand where you're coming from.

I learned that at some point, you have to let go of trying to fix the situation and allow them do what they're going to do. You can't do more for them than they are willing to do for themselves.

Agree with others that setting boundaries and planning what you would want to do in future scenarios are good steps to focus on. This will happen again. You don't necessarily need to jump and run each time.

And remember to take care of yourself and your family. It sucks, there's no way around it but through.

[Anonymous]

Can’t you just not go? Or if you do go, lay down the law and say something like, “if you’re not willing to get care/establish preventive routine medical care, I’m no longer going to come for emergencies that could have prevented.”? Then it’s on her

[Anonymous]

Your mom seems pretty social for someone who you describe as ‘avoidant’

Yes refusing medical care is dumb but nothing in your description suggests that medical care could have prevented whatever the issue is. Maybe it could, maybe it couldn’t.

I totally get being anxious and upset about the timing and it sucks but it sounds like your mom was trying not to burden you presumably bc you would be upset. Which you are. Maybe just go and deal and be mad and sad without blaming what was likely the affects of any virus on an older person on your poor mom

[Anonymous]

She is 80 and doesn’t want medical care. So, she will die sooner. That is a totally rational choice. And if you don’t want to help her because it is too difficult for you, that is also a rational choice. You certainly don’t have to try to call her every day from vacation.

[Anonymous]

This was my mil. She died suddenly last year in a situation like this. But it really was not sudden. She was so stubborn she would not get help. It sucks to live with after they go.

[Anonymous]

Is she cognitively decent-normal memory loss and not dementia? If so, she gets free will including making terrible choices.

I know you are stressed and I have been in her shoes x100, but you are also pathologizing some things that aren't a big deal. Plenty of people don't like it when someone just stops by their home without calling first. She may be more introverted and with age it becomes more pronounced, but she does see people so she certainly isn't isolated.

You seem very concerned people will think you are are bad daughter and you call yourself "selfish" maybe because you've been manipulated with that word before or because you are afraid people will call you that so you use first. You care, you want to do the right thing, but you have to respect her crazy wishes if she is not cognitively impaired enough to be deemed incompetent.

You can also have boundaries. If she dies because she refused to check out a health issue, she died on her terms. I had to learn to accept that myself. Having been through this for over a decade with parents/inlaws I am not sure doing backflips to keep them alive against their will at the expense of your own health is the better option.

I can tell you what the end of life looked like for one of my parents after we dealt with constant emergencies and convincing him to take him meds, and running ourselves ragged. He could not walk, talk, feed himself or obviously use the bathroom and he was moaning despite having good pain meds. AND...my mother tried to refuse hospice so he could just be miserable eternally because she convinced herself it was the right think in case there was a chance of a miracle. Prior to all that his decline was misery for him for years.

The question becomes if you want to throw around selfish, is it selfish to push someone to live a life of misery for many years or selfish to allow them to die much younger on their own terms.

[Anonymous]

My dad went to doctors all the freaking time and he still ended up in the ICU. He died there.

I’m not sure you can blame that trip on her. I would just try to enjoy her more. When I stopped badgering my dad, we had a lot more fun. Drop the line you aren’t caring or helpful. You are. Give her some grace. You’ll both be happier.

[Anonymous]

A saving grace is Medicare.
Medicare will require a discharge plan before she can leave hospital.
Hospital will get social workers involved. Care or placing in facility will get arranged.
The thing is for you NOT to get involved or get assumed into discharge plan. Be a broken record: no I cannot stay with her I must care for my children. No I cannot take her into my home. No I cannot coordinate her home care.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:She is 80 and doesn’t want medical care. So, she will die sooner. That is a totally rational choice. And if you don’t want to help her because it is too difficult for you, that is also a rational choice. You certainly don’t have to try to call her every day from vacation.

I agree with this.

[Anonymous]

She’s 80 years old. We’ve all got to die of something. I don’t intend to do much in the way of medical intervention past 75.

[Anonymous]

Wait till you are 73 or 74. If in good shape you might feel differently about 75 as a cutoff.

OP, be aware she may lie about "help" and tell hospital you are staying with her or she will live with you, in irder to get discharged. If it comes up, just look blank and say you have no idea why she would say that. Say she must be imagining things.