Reply to Crisis, precarious new normal, repeat

Forum Index » Eldercare

Reply to "Crisis, precarious new normal, repeat"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Dealing with this now with my mom. In a span of 5 months, she sold the family home, moved to CCLC assisted living/nursing care then recovered enough to move to independent living. Now she’s in the hospital and will be released to assisted living for 30 days.

I’m supposed to help move her from the hospital back to Asst Living and I have used up all of my Family Medical Leave used to care for her prior to her first move. I had to tell my sibling that I can’t help.

Also, I’m enacting tough love. My mother refuses to take her prescription medicines (how she ended up in the hospital). This cycle of back and forth to the hospital has been ongoing for too long. I’m done.

[/quote]

This is the million dollar question: we can accept that elderly people of their right mind can make their own choices, even if they are terrible choices.  But when those terrible choices are made - against the advice of professionals and their children - what happens to the moral obligation of the child?  It is completely unreasonable for our parents to expect us to drop everything and rescue them from their bad choices, just to repeat the cycle.[/quote]

I have been thinking about this a lot myself as I deal with my own mother. At what point is the health of the caregivers taken into consideration?  At what point are our parent's decisions still considered "sound". Some cases are cut and dry but others - like my mom - is very good at pulling the wool over medical professional's eyes. And so the cycle continues. Meanwhile, every time the phone rings, or when I think I can actually get out of town for a long weekend - I find myself back in the hospital with her. The only thing I can really do is vow I won't do this for my kids. [/quote]

This is a very important question and sadly I let it get to the point I had my own health crisis. My body was signaling and i just kept ignoring and dealing with the mom horror show. I think a lot of doctors/case managers/providers/family members just assume certain women and some men will do backflips forever for the challenging elder and they just continue to take the easy route and support the elder and gaslight the one lucky enough to deal with emergencies. I finally had no choice but to say sorry I can do no more. The world didn't end. Sadly I had to explain my health issue, because professionals apparently need to judge those of us who finally set boundaries. Sure enough family and providers finally turned on mom and gave her the business for refusing to comply with meds and lashing out so much and for not following recommendations. Siblings still tried to get back the easy road of expecting me to do everything. Now they are finally pushing her to accept an appropriate residential.

Don't let this do in your health. Learn from me and set your boundaries and guard your right to have health. You should not need a major diagnosis to be able to say it's too much and to be firm and confident. Don't allow anyone to shame you, gaslight you and guiltrip. I have said this before. Some parents will gladly eat their young. Don't let them. It has been too many years of this. I wish I set my boundaries MUCH earlier. I have seen too often that too many good deeds get punished. Too many of my peers not only dealt with awful behavior and endless emergencies, but their own serious health issues or their teens went into crisis. Someone here said it is more important to be a good elder than a good child. Value your children's need to have health parents over your parent's needs to have their children be servants.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics