I’m not sure I can help my mom

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, there are services that can take her to an appointment.Has she signed a medical release so you can speak with Drs? If so, you could face time into session or see if you can set up a 5 minute debrief with a nurse. you can also pay extra for a nurse instead of an aide to take her to appointment.

The biggest mistake I made was sacrifice my health to please an aging, angry and explosive mother. It wasn't fair to my children or spouse either.

Is she on meds for outbursts and anxiety? If not, that may make it hard to keep anyone willing to work for her.

Yes. She is on meds. Frankly, she’s always been a screamer so it’s not just the dementia. She’s only screamed at me once in two years and that is pretty good. Her eyes glaze over and she seems to be having an out of body experience and doesn’t appear to know what she is saying or recall it later.

My therapist thought she was borderline as in a personality disorder.

I got her to a psych and meds are amazing!

She is usually ok unless my sister upsets her. My sister upsets and causes anxiety for everyone in the family…they might have the same mental illness.

After reading all of your posts, I am not going to participate in this knee surgery.

My mother had PT a while ago and said it helped and then said it did not. She probably stopped doing the exercises and this is why her knees hurt.

I can’t imagine her in rehab actually doing anything like exercise, which she claims to dislike.

I am going to take a post above to heart. I’m not letting a dementia patient ruin my health and life any more than she has already.

Not the person you are responding to, but sounds like my mom right down the glazed look in her eye when she loses it and hurls an anger bomb and not sticking with PT. Do you have a geriatric social worker or case manger checking on her who can coordinate services? My mother has always been a screamer too, but when she was younger she had some self-awareness and remorse. With aging decline she lost that and the abusive behavior got worse and worse. The problem with that is some will lose the ability to care about your welfare. The motherhood instinct sometimes declines or vanishes so they can eat you alive without remorse. My mother may have always been difficult, but she definitely used to care about my wellbeing and had the mothering instincts. With age and dementia she was livid at me for getting a needed surgery that could have been a cancer situation of avoided too long. She did not care about my health at all and was calling me at the hospital with orders. Once released she wanted me to do x, y and z. It was eye opening. I was no longer human to her, but simply a servant to meet her needs.

It's great your mom was willing to get meds. That is huge. Hopefully she will stay on them. A friend of mine and I both had the issue of our moms taking themselves off meds and going back on without following doctor's orders which created really bad behavior, side effects and withdrawal. Definitely detach and let professionals take over. Treat her as challenging client. Stay professional and polite, but make an excuse to get off the phone when she gets challenging and assign her to other team members (hired professionals as much as possible.)

I’m not the OP but wanted to point out that I think it’s interesting you mom stopped caring about your well-being. Mine has too. I had to switch my work week to four tens so I could be off on Fridays to take her to appointments, run errands for her and visit with her, which means I don’t get off work until 5:30 during the work days and can’t see my mom until after 6pm (she eats dinner at 4:30). Doesn’t phase her that I’ve had to make any accommodations for her and she doesn’t care that I’ve burned through my pretty healthy stash of sick leave to take care of her. I live to serve her (in her mind). The selfishness is like nothing I’ve ever seen.