notrydoyoda Posted January 2012
The Caregiver & Dysfunctional Families: How are you doing?
Follow
Share
Read More Close
33K Comments
Popular Questions
Related Questions
- How do I deal with an emotionally needy mother who wants all of my time and attention?
- I get so angry with my 88-year-old mom sometimes and find myself getting resentful to her and not treating her very good. How can I deal?
- How do I deal with being "cut" from the family?
- My sole mate is sole care taker of both parents. Where do I find help dealing with this?
Start a Discussion
Margeaux~My sis doesn't do 360's, she is however a Polly Anna. She views life through rose colored glasses. As a result it takes a little longer for her to grasp the truth!
So when I arrived, the caregiver had been there all day with mom. My mom suffers from these terrible allergies, and had this for a very long time now, way before ALZ.I
I suffer from the same allergies as my mom. For awhile now I've had to become a food detective of sorts for myself, as I'm trying to address this, if I don't it manifests as bad sinus condition. I've in the past tried alerting my sister to this fact. But she is not one to really follow what I'd consider a healthy eating plan. So what this means is, mom is at her mercy in terms of diet, and of the caregivers. My poor mother had very bad heartburn Saturday evening. She'd eaten some breakfast and a light snack in the afternoon. Before the caregiver left me in charge, she showed me what my sister apparently had bought so that this was to be mom's dinner; I'd just have to heat it up. When I saw what it was, it by no means is something a 91 yr. old woman w/consistent heartburn should eat period. It was completely acidic and had some strong chili sauce on it. Oy vey!! Well mom, slept pretty much into the evening. I started to prepare some millet with a stir fry of vegetables and some tuna. I figured this would be a much lighter dinner for her system to digest. Well it was 730, mom was still asleep, so I ate. She didn't wake up until 8:45, so I thought it would be best for her not to eat at that hour. Besides she was still having heartburn and wasn't hungry. She does take a product I won't mention by name that has aluminum in it, and seems to rely on these pills So right now Im having an issue about the quality of mom's eating. Everything she currently eats is like poison to her system. So when my sister returned and I tried engaging her in a conversation about this, her question to me was whether I'd given her those pills. I don't understand why some people don't address the root of what's happening instead of just reaching for a supposed cure product, that doesn't do that anyway. O.K. have a good evening all. Margeaux
Take care, Margeaux
She says one thing and will go on and on about it, etc., then she completely does a 360 and does something totally contradictory. She's always has had this quality of keeping one guessing what her next move is going to be, not to mention her secretive nature. YIKES=CONTROL! She too is trying to somehow capture something w/mom she's never going to receive emotionally speaking, the warm and fuzzy feeling. Especially not now w/mom's ALZ. But there again she thinks she can even control that outcome. Well, good for you that you worked through this and can see through the smoke and mirrors, we all know there's plenty to do, and who has the time and energy for these games! I wish you well w/sis, and the meeting with the attorney. Stay strong! Margeaux
I hope things are getting a bit better for you. Is your wife feeling a bit better also?
This is a lot that you've been dealing with. Hopefully, if your wife feels better, maybe this will also change the vibes a bit in your household. But yes, if you have some sunlight out your way, I forget if it was Cattails or Sharynmarie who suggested you sit out there. Do you have some good music you can put on. I find that many times this can change the whole mood. Well anyway, I just want to send you some good vibes in hopes that today is brighter for you and yours!
Love & light, Margeaux
-SS
-SS
Anyway, so if you both have ANY relationship with a sibling helping you through your elder care issues, be grateful and take what help you can get!!! :)
xo
-SS
Of course when she realized I had left and was not returning, the fit began. Unfortunately my sister can have quite a foul mouth and our 8 yr. old niece was in the other room. It was a nightmare for my brother and his family. They had to hide the phones since she kept trying to call people and tell them she was being held captive. My sister-in-law called and asked me to call our close cousins and let them know the situation It took a few days and some sedatives from a doctor, but I guess she calmed down. I had already scheduled my next break which would be a Bermuda cruise, and I knew my brother and his family could not withstand another episode like this.
My brother has decided that the best placement is still the one he originally wanted in Nov. 2011 - an assisted living facility. He says he can see that she is taking her toll on me, and I also believe that he knows that anytime I want to go away we will endure this lack of cooperation or beed to hire 24/7 caregivers for a week or 10 days at a time.
I feel sure that part of my internal flip-flopping is a close cousin who seems to think that this might not be the right placement. I think she rationally knows we have few choices and that no doubt she would have far more social interaction in ALF, yet an undertone exists as if she thinks we are going to lock her in there and forget her. I admit, there are times I feel JUST that way, but I know that I will etreat from the valley of hurt and visit her and take her out places.
Thank goodness my other close cousin with whom we have had a bit of a distance over the past few years over her interaction with her mother, our only remaining aunt, heartily endorses our decision. She is a far more dispassionate individual. Those of you in nursing will understand the persoanlity differences between these 2 nurse cousins when I tell you cousin A, the one who is concerned about our decision was a pediatric nurse and did home health care; cousin B is the nurse manager in an O.R. ("Just the facts" don't bother me with awake patients!)
I guess all we need now is a plan for the move in which is coming May 1. I've read on other boards that the best way will be for one contingent to move some of her personal belongings into her new room and the other to take her out for the day and just "happen" to wind up there.
She's been to the facility and it's lovely, actually far more than she can truly afford. She will not, however, make a statement one way or the other about her feelings on it. Sometimes my brother and I don't think she knows what's going on and then the next cousin A tells me that my sister has called and left a message on her machine that her brother and sister are going to put her in a place she doesn't want to be. Geez....even when she had full command of her senses she would never make a decision. It always allowed her to blame a poor outcome on someone else. The one whose advice she followed. WHEW!
I am glad you are feeling better, the flu can take a while to shake. It is good that you are giving your sister a break and I hope the time you spend with your mom is enjoyable. I am working the weekend, not off till Tuesday and it is going to be a hot weekend for us here in NorCal. Already using the a/c~too HOT at night for me, Lol! Enjoy your weekend♥!!
She was never the kind person, as I told you in the other post. She was real tight w/her money. This description you gave about your mom talking to people at church and in essence gaining their sympathy, my aunt did the very same thing w/the paid caregivers that my sister has had there. Cruella de Ville totally applied also over here! Your sister kind of sounds like my sister. My sister is in control, way more than I. My sister also is this take care of business type, which on the one hand is good and I try to be fair, so I do admire this in her. But the other side of this, is she over does everything, so such a controller. My sister also enjoys tons of drama, and I realize that when there is none, she goes around creating it.
Well, Sharynmarie when I wrote my post, I hope it didn't come off as if I was assuming some things here, but I do try to understand and honestly you are so caring and I get the definite feeling that your concerns are genuine. You are doing the right thing. But I'm sure you have your challenges w/your sister also.
Well, today I go relieve my sister for the weekend to take care of mom. Mom at least is pretty manageable with her ALZ. I haven't seen her in a couple of weeks since my husband had a flu bug, then I caught it and didn't want to go over there while I still felt contagious. My sister is getting out of town w/her beau, who is a very nice guy. I'm just hoping that her 22 yr. old daughter, who is the only one now living there w/mom and sister currently isn't there much. She's a PIA! She was raised very differently from my sister and me, in terms of helping out. Everything, and I mean everything is done for this primadona. My sister even pays her car payment. Oh well! But I'm looking forward to going to see mom. She just turned 91 two weeks ago. If she feels up to it, maybe I'll take her and her friend since childhood for breakfast. O.K., Sharynmarie, I wish you the best with the DL issue, and everything. Have a wonderful weekend. Love & light, Margeaux
Margeaux~I do believe I am in touch with the situation, it is my sis who still believes she can try to talk with mom and possibly reach a solution. I say we just have to act behind her back because she is never going to be happy with anything we do or say. My mom has on personality for people who are not family. The people she talks to at church probably think she is this poor little old lady who is not very informed so they tell her what she wants to hear which encourages her to trust them. We the family, tell her the truth and she becomes Cruella de Vil, Lol!! I would think if she removed us as having POA, we would have received a letter from her attorney. Mom is too cheap to spend the money to re-do it and she is not very informed on how to go about things because she lives her life as though it were the 1950's. Yes, I recent having to spend money out of my pocket to deal with my mother. She is the one who set up the living trust and placed my sis and me with DPOA. I dislike thinking or saying that we can be reimbursed through her estate in the end, that makes me feel like I am taking her money, but I am logical enough to know that it is owed to us.
SS, Margeaux~I believe I am removed enough from mom that I have no problem reporting to DMV. Sis feels that because is first on the POA and I am second that she should be the one to do this (Black and White thinking). At the May 2 appt. I will bring all this up with the attorney because my sis is just to black and white for me. I am doing all I can to keep our relationship in tact. I am going to have my sis give me the password for the on line account, not because I don't trust her, because she does not have a computer at home and she will have to establish it on her computer at work. Love to all of you and I appreciate the feedback, it helps so much having all of you to talk to. I hope everyone has a great weekend, I will keep you all posted as things unfold♥!!
But the other component that I'd like to mention here about the responsibility part, is responsibility for other peoples happiness. I for one have been involved lately with my own brother's prostate issue. He had surgery for this about 3 wks. ago now, and seems to be recuperating well. He was rather estranged from the rest of the three siblings, since he had in the past been the POA, of our mom and aunt.
But thee was so much mis-management, so POA was changed to my sister.
As a s result of this, of course there were these residual feelings felt by all of us that weren't too good. Anyway, now in his time of need via this health crisis, my sister (who is a controller), tried recruiting me, by trying to push all of the guilt buttons she feels she has at her disposal to do as she's done, which is bud in to my brother's life. My sister has been taking it upon herself to do things that really his wife should be doing. But, my brother and his wife don't communicate, it seems at all, although they live together. They have a very dysfunctional family, w/their four grown kids still living w/mommy & daddy. Anyway, my sister had been calling me, to give me updates before, during and after this surgery my brother just had. I immediately realized via these conversations that she was becoming way too involved in doctor's appointments w/my brother, and having sympathy for the fact that he has no moral support from his own wife, and not much either from his kids.
My sister just basically was over stepping her boundaries, and of course using the reason, of someone's got to do it, someone has to fix it, all of those things. She did almost recruit me in to that mess, on one occasion. But after I slept on it, I came to my senses and it made me angry! So I had to be oh so diplomatic w/sister on this front. But I did tell her I could be morally supportive, and I was by calling my brother throughout all of this. He lives kind of far from me. But I've also sent him articles about nutrition, and things that could help him become more aware about his condition. In these conversations with my sister it was a reminder about also creating my boundaries. I am the eldest in my family amongst all of the siblings. So I was the one at a very young age at the helm. I was constantly being emotionally dragged into many family issues, I came to realize much later as an adult, issues that were not even mine. I'm understanding now, that this is where we unfortunately start to get our boundaries with people very unclear. So recently, when my sister would try to push guilt buttons with me, I'd remind her, that although I really felt for my brother because of his health concerns, I did not feel the emotional responsibility to go there and try to figure his family situation out, neither with his wife, nor kids. They're a family, and as such that's for them to do their own work. It wasn't easy saying some of the things that I said to my sister, either I know I hit some nerves with her regarding her youngest daughter. But quite honestly, it felt good to stand up for myself. Anyway, I just wanted to share some of my feelings about this with some of you. Thank you to all, as you've helped me get here too. Let's remember that we cannot be responsible for no other person's happiness but our own. Love & light to all my friends, Margeaux
Margeaux
Izabella, thanks! Wow, you can almost remember when the guilt began as a child. Your memory is more precise than mine, but my mother raised me to be a fix it person for her too. She did not meet my emotional needs (which she even admitted to me as an adult and claimed she would do better with my children which she did not {her mother was the same way with her and she never bonded with any of us grand chidlren}) for I was to be more of an adult focused on her needs. This took place sometime following her divorce. I thought this might change years later when she got married again, but she continued to have a very possessive hold on me. She never became close to her step children whom she never really accepted and did not want me to become close with. In dealing with all of this in therapy, I did have some painful flashbacks of events and feelings from the part of my past that I have called the cloudy era when I hardly had remembered a thing about those years.
It took me a while to get free (no wonder that I did not get married until I was 31) and even when I thought that I was free, I discovered there was still some enmeshment there coupled with the anger that I had toward her for being so possessive of me and so intrusive into my life which I hardly had as a child or as a teenager with my own, separate identity. My wife had a similar background to mine but she grew up like that in the isolation of the county whereas I did get to move from a small town to a city. We have both had to deal with our 'mom issues' which I thought her's were more obvious than mine and it is no wonder that I ended up in a very conflictual relationship with her mom for she is too much like my own mom. However, my main point in saying that is as both of us have dealt with these things in therapy, we have come to feel closer to each other which is good. Also, our boys have felt better about their mom. She did go through a time where she related to our boys and even to me much like her mother did to her and her dad, but I reached a point where I had, had enough and began to set some boundaries with her and her mother for my sake and the sake of our boys. That was the start of her seeing that she needed to set some boundaries with her mother which became glaringly apparent when her mother started treating our boys like her mother did her. During that time, my wife also admitted how verbally abusive she had been to me and the boys during that phase when her mental health and struggle over being still so enmeshed with her mom when off the deep end so to speak.
Yes, the hurt inner child reacts like a child with such a parent and very often with anyone who reminds us in some way of said parent. I know that has been true in my life.
Holding on to anger toward a parent like that is like drinking poison thinking it will hurt them, but it hurts us as I have seen also. This is why my therapist had me to write a letter to my mother, read it aloud and then burn it in a trash can, after which we threw the ashes to the wind.
I slept in again today very late, but it is good to see the sunshine. I need to find something fun to do that will totally take my mind off of things which is one thing that I had in doing Tae Kwon Do with the boys for several years, but then I lost interest in it. It is still hard for me to relax even when I go bowling, I'm too hard on myself which I think comes from my dad being such a perfectionist dad in teaching me almost every sport in the book on visits which he had to fight in court to get the right to do because mom wanted him totally out of her life and mine for various reasons that were not rational. I even went through a phase as a child where I thought it was up to me to fix my parents broken marriage.
The inner child so to speak wants that relationship with our mother that we did not have and yet we are also angry at them which too often we don't want to face because that is not nice. At some point, we must grieve what we did not have and face what we will not get despite our best efforts to fix them which has never worked anyhow. Well, aren't I waxing autobiographical today.
I'm sorry that your sister is no longer the best friend that you once had. Your situation is very complex, and I hope you find a way out for your own sanity and your son's well being despite what might happen to others' "happy eggs".
Today is better than the last two days were. I do have to remind myself from time to time that I am on disability now and so why do I expect so much of myself still.
My fear is if I leave it and let my mom go to her house they will argue and my mom will want to leave and my sister will want her to.. my mom will call my other son to come back to my house before I return.. and I so dont want that to happen.. so Ive got to plan not only the what is but also the what if..
Cmag-- how are you?? Im sorry to hear about your struggles your are goin through.. Depression for any reason is one of the hardest battles I know.. I think when dealing with depression you cannot even take one day at a time.. It has to be taking one hr at a time.. and making each hr of each day count.. dont wake up each day and look at that day as a whole.. maybe for now by focusing only on filling each hr of each day with positive things it wont be so overwhelming.. and soon before you know it you would of made it through a day that was filled with all the things you use to do.. I also believe you cant be so hard on yourself cmag.. if you slip up one hr and decide to do nothing its ok!! Just begin the next hr differently and so on.. Its a fight I know when trying to pull ourselves out of a "hole".. thats why I think taking it slow is the best way.. You are a strong person and you have helped so many of us on here.. Use some of that strength you give to others on you!! You deserve it!! Thoughts and prayers are with you from all of us here!!