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Whining because... my patience is wearing thin with my Mom's selective refusal to speak at a normal, audible volume. I truly believe she thinks being soft spoken is alluring and feminine. I have explained to her countless times that this is inconsiderate to make people have to bend down to her, in her wheelchair, and ask her to repeat stuff. When we are riding in the car, for example, she speaks clearly and audibly, but in certain situations, she makes people work so hard to hear her that they avoid her. It is one of her many complaints about her ALF, that everyone there is deaf and she can't converse with anybody. The truth is, she's annoyingly soft spoken by choice. Her hearing has been checked, there is no reason for this behaviour. She is not impressing anybody with her "daintiness" and I have given up explaining the consequences of this behaviour to her. I have told her I can't reply if I can't hear her and find it getting easier, sadly, to just ignore her, but when I get home after a day with her I'm crabby as h*ll.
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KW, my aunt was always trying to be a grand lady and spoke softly too, it was something that annoyed us all occasionally, even the younger relatives that could hear well. As she got older her voice got softer and softer until she was really just moving her lips. It was very unfortunate as my mom couldn't see or hear her so by the end we just stopped visiting, something I still regret.
I have since discovered that Parkinson's can cause this. I'm not sure if my aunt ever got that diagnosis, but I do remember her mentioning tests years before.
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Yogagirl, hope Mom is ok and no fractures! Darn tile floors.

kwyattearp - your Mom reminds my of my MIL, who lived with us for several years. She was a very old school Southern woman, born and raised in the hills and had very distinctive ways about her, and her pronounciation of certain words could lead to some interesting situations. Like the time she had phlebitis in her leg and the doctor told her to rest and elevate it. So she perched herself in a rocker with a footstool all night - which was fine, until my daughter's slumber party guests started arriving, and she announced - loudly - to every parent that walked in the door, "Sorry I can't get up, I got the flee-bitis on my leg!"

I told my then-husband, "She's GOT to stop that....people are going to think we have fleas!" (Flee-bitis, as in "fleas are bitin' my leg!")
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Oh man!

2 diffe
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Oh didn't mean to send...

2 different HHA from same agency 1 comes 2 times a wk other 1 time.?

Well the 1 timer was constantly late, on average 20 to 30 minutes. This went on for well ver a year. Mind you my Mom is her first client of the day.. So I ratted her out!

So now she tells agency that my Mom has become weaker and she is having trouble lifting her legs in tub from shower chair.. No *hit Einstein she's 94 with dementia... Do you think she'll get better?

I explained she just had increase of anxiety med and it kicks in around shower time..

*itch is just trying to get out of coming here at 8am..
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Assand, maybe time for a different aide? Would your mother fuss? My mom has got to a point where she doesn't seem to care who comes and goes, she doesn't really remember them anyway!

Our psw is a sweet little old lady, literally. I know for a fact she is over 70 and she is petite. My mom's care is becoming more physical as she won't really help herself during transfers any more, so I am thinking we will soon need someone more physically capable. I hate to change as our last aide had mom on the floor more than once even though she was younger, sometimes common sense counts for more than strength.
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Her 2 day HHA will take the 3rd day.. She let them know...

As like any business they are going through changes and employees are jumping ship... They want them to work every other weekend instead of 1 every 6 wks..

It's affiliated with a hospital and you know how it is, got to keep ceo's happy with their FAT paychecks..
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Cwillie, You probably know this, but others may not.
If a patient is going to fall, it can be more dangerous for the both of you to try and stop the fall. If they are going down, they should be carefully helped to the floor without grabbing their arms or using your own strength to prevent the fall. Slowly ease them to the floor as they fall into you. Even though you both may end up on the floor, no one is hurt. Then you can start from there.
It would be nice to have a big strong, strapping caregiver sweep up the elderly before the fall, but that would be rare, and may cost extra.
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R.I.C.E. ! If I had remembered that and done all of that when I broke my ankle last year, maybe it wouldn't still hurt, Totally forgot the COMPRESSION. When I dis have it x-rayed Nov. 3rd, they found a break on the same ankle on the other side of the bone. Then, still in pain, they found a fractured clavicle about two weeks later (from the same fall). This year it's dx. as osteopenia, rx'd Calcium. Sounds to me like the real dx. should be incompetent m.d., so I have basically given up going for help.
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My wine moment today is because DH brought a propane torch in to the living room proceeded to light it then waved it around trying to heat up some copper wire so it would bend easily. "Hello, I am on oxygen here". Not to mention the fire hazard.
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Oh, gosh, Veronica. I would have had a heart attack right then and there.
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Whine of every other week, continued, I keep getting little tiny bills for $8.03 or $4.11 for doctor or lab tests, from mom's surgery, hospital, and SNF where she died just before July 4th, 2015. I can't believe it is worth it to them to even send out these small bills, and process the payments. It's so annoying they keep trickling in. I would have thought they could consolidate them somehow, but I guess she saw a number of specialists over the 5 or 6 weeks, and in the pre-surgery tests. Oh well, at least she had really pretty good insurance plus Medicare. I sure as heck would not get only an $8.03 bill after a specialist visit . So I guess I should not whine.
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Malloryg8r, Reply: My mother passed in July, 2015 and had great insurance. Please write off this balance. Sighed, , Mallory
Yes, put sighed instead of signed!
This is ucr practice to write off these small balances.
UCR is usual, customary, and reasonable in the medical field.
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V, and another man is in the doghouse! So happy he did not kill you off yet.

My hubby just got out of the doghouse when he finally repaired the bathroom sink, after about 10 months, or last summer it was I had no sink since way back then.
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Geez, Veronica, your story kinda makes me want to start swearing! What was he NOT thinking?

But I understand, I live in that sort-of, kind-of fear mine will be doing something with the electrical if I don't watch him carefully.

Hope you are okay, and he still has all his parts, right?
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Hi all! Another disappearing act. Mom is ok. However she still is having sleeping problems in her brand new bed. She is sleeping all the time. That makes her feel weak when I try to get her out. Easter Sunday she was very excited because she guilt tripped me into taking her down to her old church an hour away. It is also a liturgical church and I am born again, more free wheeling style so going to church with her is like torture and she knows it. She was not sleeping the night before but she insisted that she was okay to go. She got dressed and my husband made us a special Easter breakfast and off we went. We were there 20 min. And she said she felt sick and wanted to lie down. Since she spent every day working here before she got sick she went into her old office and laid down on the couch. After ten minutes I said that we might as well drive home so she could lay down in her new bed and if she was ill the sooner we started the long ride the better. She tried to argue that she wanted to get communion but I told her that there was a sermon and a baptism. That she had to wait for before communion and the Lord would certainly forgive her if she went home. Well, I got her home and back in bed and she just hasn't been the same since.she cancelled a dentist appointment this week and is sleeping most of the day and night. Even when we watch tv together in the evening, she will fall asleep in her chair and I will have to wake her to go to bed. When she walks from room to room she is very weak and winded and complains. She has no fever and no other symptoms that I can identify. She still eats fine. I have started to make sure she gets Ensure or Boost everyday, but I don't know if I could get her to the doctor if I thought I needed to. My step brother and his wife were here for an hour today and while she was with them she had energy to talk and was animated, but she did not want to walk. When she came to the table for dinner and when she went to her room to go to bed, she was slow and weak.
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Gershun, don't let anyone pressure you into stifling your grief. Everyone has different reactions to the passing of loved ones because they have different relationships and different ways with dealing with feelings. My husband stuffs his feelings and it has been 15 years since his Mom passed and longer for his dad. He still cannot talk about them without the tears coming.
Golly, it took me a year to grieve for my dog!
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Stacey, thanks for asking about my knee. The cortisone helped a little, so I am hoping I will have better results with the gel shoots. I also had an epidural about a week and a half after the cortisone shot in the knee. The epidural was for the same side sciatica pain. That gave me a raging headache for two days and improved pain quite a bit.went from an 8 to a 5.
Then on top of that, my hubby broke a big toe or the top of his foot when his motorcycle dropped on his foot when he took a turn to fast to avoid a palm tree out here. And we all know how poorly men react to injury or illness. I want to run away.
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Veronica, sorry, I know your story wasn't funny. As I was reading it, I didn't understand why hubby was using a propane torch to heat some wires. Since I don't know how a propane torch looks, I was thinking he was overkilling it. I completely forgot that you're on oxygen. When I read your last sentences, I cracked up and was laughing so hard.

Ahem... mom was on the oxygen machine for years. The first 2 years, not once, did Dad and I understand what that "No Smoking/Flames" icon was for. I just assumed it meant "No Smoking" in the vicinity. So, every time we had a power outage, we would only hook up the oxygen machine and the suction machine with the lampstand on the extension cord hooked up from the generator. Dad and I would light matches in the livingroom with mom there, and light up all these candles all over the livingroom. One day, as I was staring at the oxygen machine and the No Flames sign, I had a lightbulb moment! OMGoodness! We could have blown up with all that lighting of the candles with matches and then keeping the candles around dad, mom, TV, drawers, etc... It seems, Dad and I are like your hubby in not understanding about the oxygen.
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Oops.. the lampstand came in later when we got a bigger generator. Our first generator was a smaller one and it could only handle the machines. Even with that, the suction machine wasn't up to full load when suctioning mom. It sounded like it was about to die.
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I am hoping everyone is feeling better soon. I long for the days when I didn't ache and could sleep well.

I have been feeling out of sorts and the grief section on AC seems to deal more with hospice issues than grief issues. I was on the dysfunction thread,(the dysfunction in my life is in laws), but seem to have been obviously frozen out by the few people that dominate that thread. Maybe since the dysfunction is in-laws I shouldn't even be on there. Oh well. It brings back that old feeling of feeling unwanted at times. Maybe I am just overly sensitive with everything that has happened these last 2 years and Mom passing away. I am also dealing with so much stuff alone. I don't want to make my husband do too much with cleaning out Mom's home because of his heart condition so I do it alone most of the time with blurred vision. I worry about my husband's health. Sometimes I wonder if things will ever get better. Wonder if the weather will ever get nicer too. Thanks for letting me vent....now I will try to get on with things. I hope everyone has a better day. Sometimes it seems like every day is "April Fools".
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Tacy, I guess that is the next April Fool joke on us...snow. How many baseball opening day games will get snowed out, I wonder.
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I just wrote a long post and lost it when I couldn't' log in with Firefox , I'm now on IE, which I hate.

Katie, sorry you are feeling frozen out on the dysfunction thread. I think that a lot of us read and sympathize with what others write there but don't feel as though we qualify enough to jump in. Most of the posters there share a long history and know each other's back stories so it sometimes seems like reading someone's private mail, I'm sure that you aren't being shunned deliberately!

Tacy, predictions for squalls and possibly heavy snow this weekend here too, ugh!

Shara, I wish I had known enough to push harder for a reason behind my mom's sudden decline 5 years ago. I just accepted that her body had grown tired and we were approaching the end and today we still seem to be in limbo. 5 years is a long time to be dying, I wonder how different things would be today if we had gotten treatment for the underlying cause then.
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Send, yes he still has all his parts. He just does not think beyond what he is focusing on at the time.
Actually the oxygen from the concentrator is not as dangerous as the liquid stuff in the tanks but still hazardous. I do take mine off before I put more wood on the fire!!!!
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Katie i don't think for one moment people who seem to have hijacked a certain threads are deliberately shutting you out. it is just that certain threads seem to take on characteristics of their own and may provide a little levity in someone's day. As someone else said over time you get to know more of people's own back stories rather than the things that brought them to the forum in the first place. It is like any friendship it takes time to get to know someone and build up trust. Many people will private message each other or obtain emails( which you can do through the admins) along as both parties agree. If is just good to talk about things other than our loved ones misadventures all the time. I think if we did not do that the forum would degenerate into a "Dear Abbey" of the medical world and no new member would want to stay. You just have to listen to the conversation for a while, chime in if you have specific information or just words of sympathy.
End of life is a hard world to be in and each one thinks that their problem is unique and should be at the top of everyones list but of course your own pain comes first.
There is a lot of love, hope and prayer as I found out when I was ill in the Fall, and people really do care.
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Sharadale, I know the pain you are feeling watching your mother. Talk to her doctor about either getting hospice to come in or taking her to the ER for admission to the hospital. They can run tests to see if something specific is wrong. Have you tested her for a UTI? My mother gets weak when she has a UTI. AZO makes some strips that you can buy at drug stores or stores like Kmart or Wal-Mart. If your mother can give you a urine sample, you can test it yourself.

I never know what to do when my mother goes through spells of being worse. I wonder if she is reaching the end or if I should try harder. The thing is that we don't know. We don't have a lab or test equipment around us, so we have to depend on others to let us know something. I hope your mother is feeling better soon.
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Katie, I consider the long threads in AC to be chat threads. Sometimes I post in the Dysfunction thread, and sometimes I post here in the Whine thread. I don't really think anyone will respond much, because the threads have evolved from their original purposes. Sometimes I get a line or two back from the people who still read the thread, but it's not personal, I know. I know it's okay to post there, but I also know that the thread doesn't have many people reading all the posts in it.
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Katie - I am so sorry you feel that way. Cwiliie, veronica and Jessie have told it like it is. There is nothing personal about people not getting the feedback they would like. I know you posted about your in-laws and have a couple of times. You seemed to be firm that you were not going to accept your dysfunctional mil's invitation having not had one for the years before your mum died. I wasn't sure what response you were looking for. I totally support you and suspect that her motives are not good - very self centered, But no one is freezing you out. Maybe those of us in dysfunctional families show our own dysfunctions on that thread by being self absorbed. I try to balance things out when I post - as cwillie said - trying to include everyone - but I have my bad days too as we all do. When glad first came in she firmly let us know she needed attention and got it. Not everyone can do that - I couldn't. I do know that grieving hits us hard and for a long time. It is a heavy burden to bear and we need all the support we can get. (((((((hugs)))))))
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Katie, I would like to share that it is not personal even though I have felt slighted on the thread. I do think some of it is we get caught up in another persons issues that others get untintentally overlooked. My writing can give the impression that I am an in your face confronter. It is actually the opposite. It takes a lot to anger me and I try very hard to be tactful even with someone Iam very anger with. I do not stir up trouble, I do stay away from it if possible. I did yell at a young co worker recently because she was out of control and having a tantrum. The buzz at work for a few days was Wow, Sharyn actually git mad and yelled at her. She is always very patient. I had had enough of her carrying on that day being unreasonable. Please accept my apologzies for not always responding.
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No need to apologize . I don't really expect a response on my comments all the time, but just felt like I was invisible most of the time, or like I was butting in. I don't want to butt in or seem like I demand a response every time. Maybe since my Mom is gone I should not be here at all, but I have learned so much and being on here got me through all those scary months of 24/7 caring and worrying. Now it seems like I am going through anger, post traumatic stress, extreme sadness, super sensitivity to being not wanted, It is not like I expected I would feel. The post caregiving is definitely a rough time as well which I didn't really anticipate.
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