My "whine moment today." What's yours?

Hope I know where you are coming from. I think from what I've read on this site that its very common for one sibling to do it all. I guess its a case of why do I need to do anything when I know its already being done. That doesn't make it right but for me personally I couldn't live with myself if I was that way.

No casseroles were brought when my Mom died. In fact after a couple of days it seems like everyone went on with their lives. Easy for them since thats what they did when my Mom was alive.

I am so veer thankful for our hospice folks. ..all of them. They feel more like family than my family

CM...you'd think by now i would get the idea that its pretty normal to be feeling tired, aggravated, etc...and don't get me wrong, i love Mama with all my heart. .but the confinement and feeling abandoned by everyone is just so hurtful. I keep thinking i should have long since been over that but it sneaks back in and bites me in the fanny. I guess it's just still such disbelief that the siblings Mama and Daddy were so good to would just abandon her. ..and yet knowing when the time comes everybody will be here with their casseroles and condolences. ..i am fearful of what i may do with those casseroles. I often think how disappointed in all of them my sweet Daddy would be. .butt then i remember i am doing this because i love them and respect them so much.

Hope, the tiredness seeps into your bones: it's the night after night of interrupted sleep and never being properly, deeply rested. I remember once coming to having fallen asleep while I was actually giving my mother her hot bedtime drink - it was the look of mild surprise on her face, over the straw that she still had clamped in her mouth, that got to me. And yes you are definitely long overdue a break.

Moving...not mooching...aaarg

I am ashamed to say this but i think i must just be lazy. I am already exhausted by 10:00am each day even though i get up with a nice list of projects it seems once i get mama settled i am just ready to take a nap myself. Yesterday i used the hoist to put her in the geri chair for a bit and there her bed was with those soft clean cool sheets and that lovely music playing. I thought. .i think I'll just relax one minute. ..bad move. ...if i stop mooching for over 10 seconds i feel like I'm a goner. I have never been a lazy person. .i am usually the one who is still going long after others have quit. Boy had that changed. Mama spends the day grinding her teeth and it goes right through my head. I have to say that while i feel guilty i am about ready to take me a respite break. I have not done it since last august and i think it is past time

Can you even get into a truck FF? Do you think if you stood by the door long enough SO would just forget and drive off?

CM did you just laugh and tell ex SO "Now you know how I feel tonight"
Why didn't he just call the cable company. That's probably what he will have to do anyway. Poor baby he will have to suffer probably not in silence if he is anything like my hubby. Does he have any heavy duty pain meds left from his surgery

Since I can't drive due to a broken right shoulder [serious pain] sig other needs to drive me... its been over three weeks, so he should know by now I am limited on what I can do as I am right handed ...

why on earth do I need to tell him just about every time I need help in opening and closing the passenger side door of the truck? He just heads to the driver side, gets in and starts the vehicle with me standing outside.... [sigh].... believe me, if I could open the door myself I would if I felt I wouldn't fall out trying to close the door :P.

I was looking for an email in my husband's emails and found a Parkinson's joke from someone who's been wonderful with him. I'll admit to be a bit sensitive on this, but still am dumbfounded that people think it's ok to pass on jokes about things like AD and PD.

We don't often know why things work out the way they do, but I believe there is a reason God wants us here until she is ready to take us....it may not be apparent for years to come why we are here, but we must be needed for something or someone someday. In the meantime...we can take it one day at a time and just keep doing the best we can with what we are given.
Not a whine today but I am just thrilled with the fantastic nurse and health aide that hospice has sent us. I am so grateful to have found these wonderful people.

Gershun, I'm so sorry. Yes, i think all we can do is move on and believe that what we did or are doing made a positive difference for our parents. What you said, about wishing you could go first. .i have said that many many times times. My Mama is still here physically but often it hits me that she will never be the way she used to be and that is killing me. I in some ways already gone anyway. My life now is nothing like what it was four short years ago. Time passes way too fast doesn't it. Hugs to you. .i do understand. Truly

hope I wonder sometimes how I will go on without my Mom. But what is the alternative?

You know this might sound pathetic but I know you are all non-judgemental people so here goes. When my Dad died when I was a little girl I took it real hard and ever since then I prayed every night that I would die before my Mom did. Well here I am and my Mom is gone so God obviously has other plans for me.

I guess what I am getting at is we are all doing our part to make our Moms and Dad's life easier in their final days and maybe that was God's purpose for my life. I don't know. But whatever his reasons are for not answering my prayer I guess I'll have to trust that and move on.

Downhill, not rittenhouse..good grief...stinking auto correct..ugh

Jeanette, dear one, my heart just breaks for you. And as I mentioned in my pm to you. .I think you have to just take it one step at a time. ..one day at a time seems too much I think right now. Mama is on a Rittenhouse turn. ..again. ..what I have seen a few mention here, and what I am working on, as hard as it sounds to say it, is going ahead and writing the obit now, while I am able to think a little bit. I know if I wait I will forget important things I want said. ..if I said all id like to say to some folks thru could not pit it in the paper.

I'm sitting out on the deck because it seems the only place I can breathe. It's also the only place I feel normal. It is so confusing. ..this all stuff. ..I want her here, but she looks so sad. .most of the time. I try not to make her feel like I must have her stay because she has been such a fine and dignified lady. .butt how do you go on without them.

My laptop but the dust a few weeks ago and I can't seem to figure this new phone out. I'm not sure im in the forum I'm trying to post in but just peeping in from the deck from which I feel like throwing myself over head first. I can't seen to see others posts so I hope yall are doing well. I think my mind is gone. ..totally gone

CM, beanie babies? Children's hospital or give to police for children in trauma. They have teddy drives here for kids in accidents etc. most of them have no real value...since the sibs didn't take or WAIT a care box for absent brother?

You are all such a wonderful source of support and comfort after a long day. Sometimes I'm too exhausted to write, but when I read what you share I stop feeling so sorry for myself. I got that Alzheimers diagnosis for mother that I so wanted and the Dr told her directly that she is not to drive. She took took the news very well and even told the Dr she doesn't really like driving. I was elated!!! Well... no sooner than we left and got in the car, she said with great word finding difficulty, "My memory is Is the same as everyone and I don't drive very far." I felt frustrated and angry, but said nothing. It took all my courage to steal her keys. She was frantically trying to find them when we arrived home at her front door. She even fell down racing around to look for the keys. Fortunately, she wasn't hurt. I felt terrible! The next morning she called me on the phone and had no memory at all of the Dr visit. When I repeated his instructions to her, she said she must not have been there. This experience exhausted me and even made me depressed. Dad isn't much better, so now I have both of them. The future is scary. I got some rest and exercise and feel better today.

I just don't know where to start with how deeply inside the dog house exSO has got himself. I was hauling the wardrobe myself because he has done his back. Which I am duly sorry about, I'm sure it is very uncomfortable. However. He did his back bending unwisely in his son's garden, where he was fixing a telecoms cable that he himself had severed a week previously through overenthusiastic weeding. His son lives in the Far East and rents out his London property, a nice little earner but not one that prevents him from economising by using his kindly but incompetent father as a free facilities maintenance service. So exSO drove the 240 mile round trip and returned hobbling, worrying about what the tenants were going to say when they found they had no internet or telephone, in disgrace with his son and to me pretty tight-lipped about the amount of help that meant I was going to get with the furniture. Headed for the bath tub and was further incapacitated by his inability to find the muscle strain relief bath salts, cunningly concealed on the shelf in the box marked "muscle strain relief bath salts."

It's not men, Captain, it's just him.

You're quite right, Veronica, except it was Crown Derby and sister has walked off with it. My nice china is located at various student halls of residence round the country - don't know why I didn't learn not to lend it to children, or waste my breath reminding them that I did want it back and they weren't to forget to pack it - as is my full-length mirror that I am told was last sighted boarding a van for Nottingham but not to worry "Sals" was definitely going to return it after the long vac. Four years ago. And the good sherry is long gone, we're down to Ye Olde Cuttthroatte and none too much of that left in ye olde ship's decanter, either.

It's all going down in my Book of Grudge, don't you worry.

I would love a walled garden, sadly it's on the list of projects I didn't get round to - also they get quite snippy about planning permission round here, unless you're building an anaerobic digester in which case the Council falls on your neck. By coincidence, the one I hankered after as a model was attached to a boys' boarding house at my old school, a fourteenth to fifteenth century amalgam complete with espalier fruit trees and knot garden beds, lovingly maintained by the House Master who taught maths and - I was later told - was famous as well for his collection of homosexual pornography though I am happy to say that I never heard any reports of anything worse at the time, unless you count rather cruel satire. His passing away was reported on Facebook the other day, and I'm thinking of going to his funeral. If only to make sure I'm not the only one who's not there to make sure he's dead. May he rest in peace, I owe him if nothing else a clear grasp of inflation and the money supply.

Progress today: got rid of a double bed, two boxes of bric-a-brac and a chest of drawers I've always detested to a local charity, plus three bags of warm clothes to the Salvation Army. On the downside, having moved the wardrobe, I got into the cupboard behind it and now have a menagerie of Beanie Babies and cuddly penguins dotted forlornly around the room, looking reproachful. Why couldn't my mother collect First Editions like anyone else?

CM did not know you knew so many Anglo Saxon words!
Can you put the wardrobe in the dining room add some shelves and put your Royal Dalton with the hand painted violets in there. Don't forget the silver tea set and the stiffly starched tablecloths with the hand crocheted lace edging. That should look pretty impressive when you are showing the house. Maybe ex SO can stand by it with the doors open and serenade the buyers with "The Saints...........Oh don't forget the crystal decanter with the best sherry in it invitingly displayed with a couple of glasses. Keep the ex's paws off the sherry well till he has cooked dinner. See I can totally visualize your house. We had an old farmhouse with bricks dating back to 1700, even had a carriage house and a couple of stalls. is your garden walled. It was always my dream to have one of those, although my in laws had one in Cornwall.

texarkana, I was worried about you since I hadn't seen you posting in a while... figured you had your hands full with Mom, and you being an only child with no children [like me] there is no one to pass on the torch.... then I wasn't sure if the church ladies had taken you hostage. Sounds like as of a few hours ago everything has settled down. Whew.

Actually, things are quiet now. This last ER visit I had to call the paramedics and because her room is so cluttered,the way she wants it, they could barely get her out of her bed and onto the stretcher. This was a wake up call indeed. I had been telling her that if she still wanted to stay in my home that her bed would have to be replaced with a hospital bed and most of her furniture and breakables removed from her room as there is simply no room for another person to be in there to help her.In a way this last episode has really been an eye opener for her. So I now have the hospital bed in place, and guess what ,she actually likes it as now she can easily get in and out of bed safely and with less phsycial effort. I also was completely honest about my cardiac status instead of hiding things from her and this has really put her behavior more in line with acceptable behavior.I have to say since this last hospitalization she has been getting with the program .

Not whining but swearing, loudly - have spent hours dismantling a mahogany Edwardian wardrobe and laboriously manoeuvring bits of it upstairs, only to find that I had committed the schoolboy error of measuring its width incorrectly and the bastard thing won't go in my bedroom. Not any which way, unless you count diagonally across the room which would be a little eccentric even by my home décor standards. My hands are in shreds, my legs are wobbly and now there's nothing for it but to take it all downstairs again. And decide where it's going to live. Looks like Son might be getting his heirloom early...

CM..I agree!

Tex, has your Mom been evaluated by a neurologist for her behavior and what might be causing outbursts of this type?

My whine today is that I haven't received any new notifications from Agingcare when there are new posts for about 3 days now....yet I see there have been dozens of new posts. Hmmmmm...

Tex sounds like Mom should not be coming home but guess she would fight that tooth and nail. Can you plead not being able to manage her anymore and just refuse. Can they at least send her for rehab or psych eval. You already crashed and burnt in Jan it's time to call it quits. Does she have the money to at least pay for a few months N/H. I do remember from your previous posts the general background and how beastly she has been towards you plus hubby's health problems. She is too heavy for you to handle, so do a quick think about the possibilities/probabilities if she does come home. By the way I would not worry too much about the cancer, typically at her age as you probably know it will be slow growing. It is the psychotic behavior that would concern me the most.

Mom has had a social worker visit today and still has OT and PT to go yet today. She's going to be one tired pup tonight!

Well, the social worker just left. No, we can't get up to 20 hours of respite or in home assistance, because Mom is not nursing home qualified - she would need to be unable to get around the house without help, and she can still do that, so no help for us. The local commission on aging may be able to provide up to 2-3 hours per week of respite care on a donation basis, so I can at least go out and get groceries. Sure took a lot of air out of my balloon to learn she doesn't qualify for any other help. Oh well. Guess it's back to square one.

Not really a whine. Haven't posted in a long time,don't know where to start. First,I am so sorry about your mom JB, I have been reading the posts and tried to keep up with what is going on with everyone.Please take good care of yourself JB,I would look at yourself as someone that has PTSD after what you have been thru the past few years and just recently.My news, where to start,well I finally went back to my therapist in Jan. because I thought my head was going to explode,I actually looked forward to the possibility of being locked up for a 3 day psych eval, I saw it as an escape plan.However, things improved but by Feb.rush mom to the ER for pneumonia and not only did she had that but the chest CT showed a ping pong ball tumor in her Left breast and lymph node involvement,all the ER docs were sure it was CA and this was without even a biopsy yet.Well a lumpectomy was done with 27 lymph nodes removed and she is in Stage IIb breast cancer,now while all this is going on mother is a hysterical mess,she is reading books on the apocalypse,watching religious show obsessively,writing bible scripture pertaining to the end times, really happy stuff.The day we were in the oncologist's office and he told her what her chances and outcome with treatment for this cancer she went beserk, it was a scene man! I had an exam gown in my hand and she suddenly stood up and grabbed it out of my and and lunged for a sitting stool with wheels that promptly fell out from under her and busted her butt on the floor. On top of this as she fell she reached out and grabbed my shirt and literally ripped me off my feet,came down hard on my right knee and my shirt was pulled across my neck where I had had neck surgery a few months ago.Took the MD and 2 of his employees to get her up off the floor, then to xray which fortunately showed nothing broken but she had a beauty of a bruise for a while.MD decided after that to only go with Herceptin as it had fewere side effects than actual chemo drugs,she is also on the daily estrogen pill.Our last ER visit was this May when she had a sever muscle spasm lower back,was screaming bloody murder, I can't believe that the neighbors didn't call the police,I didn't know what was going on, I knew she didn't fall, she said she had been exercising and the best PT can figure she overextended a tendon in the pelvic area,anyway had to call 911 because could not get her out of the bed and she was SCREAMING! nonstop ,horrible day.Got her to the ER,she had to wait in the ambulance for 40 minutes because just as her ambulance pulled up ,2 patients already in the ER coded,so there was no room to put her so both paramedica had to stay with her because there was not room or nurse to turn her over to.The ER we have to use is overcrowded, they try really hard but they have had to absorb a larger population without the hospital infrastructure keepin up.I basically was putting her on and off the bp and cleaning her up the whole 12 hrs. we were in the ER until she got admitted.And yes, I used her money to hire private duty sitters to stay with her.so I could go home and sleep, I no longer can drive at night,getting older my self.Brief hx on mom, Narcissistic,sever scoliosis and chronic pain from osteoarthritis,on now 300 mg Morphine a day, no she doesn't sleep all the time, in fact my friend that is a paid shopping companion is taking her shopping today and out to eat,meanwhile I am exhausted,neck hurts, thinking of all the business matters of moms that I have to attend to,well they are just going to have to wait today.I hope to start posting again.I got so many helpful suggestions in the past from you guys and have implemented some that have made the present better than the past.Hope to hear from you guys and start giving my 2 cents worth of "just my opinion".

Katie!!!

:-O

[thinks: "off with her head..!"]

We had one physical therapist that never thought before she opened her mouth...one time my Mom was talking about the Queen of England and this stupid woman said..."oh yes the Queen...she is an old hag too"......Too??? In addition to whom?? Did she mean my Mom? I told her boss and she never came back! She said a bunch of other things and questioned my Mom's right to her health benefits etc. Her boss was appalled. This person pretty much had previously told me she hated her physical therapy job, so that may explain some of the behavior. Unreal the fools we must often deal with.

Susan I empathize with you. When my Mom was on her death bed the doctor on duty on the ward she was in was so extremely insensitive he had me in tears.

My husband is an aircraft flight engineer and they have to renew their "Human Factors training' regularly. If they have to do that you would think medical staff would to. At the very least their bedside manner.