What are the odds of loved ones going down BITTER in nursing home?
Mother in law has been resigned to a nursing home now for 3 yrs. this JUNE. She was diagnosed with a partial mobile stroke of her left side, of partial use of her she is basically wheel chair bound and has a brain as sharp as could be and swear each day she gets smarter and smarter. No signs of dementia for this women. We sometimes wished she did. No affine on dementia individuals. As my mother passed of dementia. But with that since she and even before she being a long term widow was aging Bitter. We hoped she would remain, but having Irish and stubbornness in her she did not remarry. She has 3 children and one in Calif out of state, and my husband and I resign 2 hours from her nursing home. As keep in mind she insisted she stay in her hometown nursing home since her concerns were NO ONE WOULD VISIT HER. She was invited to our home town nursing home and her daughter’s nursing home 4 hrs. away. That was not an option for her. So since she has been admitted to the nursing home she is getting more and more demanding of both her daughter, and my husband, and or anyone coddle over her EVERY HOLIDAY and pisses and moans if she is not first on the list to visit. I am personally so tired of the behavior. She is growing old with Bitterness and always expected her children to tend to her at holidays. NOW the children which have their own lives feel bad for her as she grows old in the nursing home. But she always has the most friends, and daily visitors at the home. It is not like no one visits her. But with being restricted she feels the children owe her time there especially duing holidays or when she feels GLUMMY... She often blows up at the aids with her TIGER like disposition. How does one try to omit this behavior they really have comments that they wish the lord would call her sooner than later. But I really think she is one of the odds that will live a long time in the nursing home. As in reading usually residents will decline after 3 yrs. eventually. But for some reason even though she is restricted to the wheel chair for the most part she keeps getting smarter and more demanding of her children, even verbally abuses her daughter when she visits. It seems it is never good enough for her.
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You are not reaponsbile for enforcing other adults (including your children if adults) go visit MIL, especially not when they should eg holiday time.
Let that all go. MIL can feel however she feels. Her feelings are not instructions.
Unless there are strokes or severe dementias I find that people do not change a whole lot as they age. Those who have been mostly contented with the lives they lived (albeit with times of struggle which are common to us all) see to end somewhat contented, or at least resigned. My brother would mostly make jokes about the fact that he and others sat around in the gazebo talking about their ills, how bad the food is, and watching the ambulances and hearses coming and going. I've repeated a thousand times here that he told me it was a bit like being in the army; he didn't much like it but he made the best of him. And that was D. He made the best of everything he could for the most part. He felt he had a good and a lucky life; he saw a lot of changes as a gay man; he was contented.
My parents were much the same all their lives and to their deathes.
And I have know many who throughout life who had one complaint or gripe after another. That didn't change with aging.
Aging (at 82 I can attest to this) isn't a whole lot of fun. It is a downward trajectory that you can make "the best" of, but it is downward and full of losses and threats of losses. It doesn't do a whole lot for a sunny outlook.
So bitter? I guess it is a matter of what you expected life to be, as opposed to what life is. And whether or not it is "good enough" all things considered, or not. And that is likely do to both nature and nurture. We have our genes. We have our histories. We have our general outlook.
Once when seeing a shrink she told me that there are only two lines in the world and that you can divide everyone into one or another. The first line thinks they are responsible for everything, and especially for everything that went WRONG. The second line is full of people who have never considered themselves responsible for a single thing. I asked her which I should line up with and she said "Who knows, but I can tell you which line is easier to TREAT." Hee hee.
I think the odds are pretty good for someone to not be happy about being old in general . Some deal with it better than others.
Caregivers treat clients with consistently present families better as they increase the risk of an issue getting to a supervisor let alone the don as said family is right there. Family presence also drastically increases the issue of complaints being resolved as there’s an external interested party, ie the family, willing to push the facilities to do it.
So, in this case, I,think family should focus their attention on observing whether mom is clean, fed, and whatever else is involved in their standard of care. All of which can be accomplished without adhering to her demands of being first in every holiday.
You are right. Relationships and obligations do not end when someone is placed in a LTC facility. They change though. Putting in the weekly or monthly appearace for an hour then forcing yourself onto a guilt-trip is not the same as literally being the caregiver 24/7 to someone. Also, even though I know nursing home residents who get regular visitors are treated better than those who don't, it still makes me sick. Caregiving staff with any kind of work ethic treat all residents equally and don't slack off on the care needs of those who don't get visitors.
Reread the original post. Really, how many demands can Calister1's MIL make on her adult children from her wheelchair in the nursing home?
The OP seems to resent her MIL for still being alive. She doesn't have to see or even talk to her. Yet she's still complaining about her bitterness.
Multiple stokes. Confined to a wheelchair. Living in a nursing home for the past three years.
Yeah, I think anyone would be a little bitter. It would probably be better for everyone if Calister1 had no contact with her MIL. It's obvious from her post that she dislikes and resents her. So go no contact. It's not like the MIL is going to show up at her place and start making demands.
That said, mil needs a talking to.
People who are not actually responsible to caregive for their sick, elderly, demented, and debilitated family members but still complain about it do make me a bit bitter. They insult every person who has ever had to take on caregiving. They haven't had their homes taken over by the messes and hoards of their 'loved ones'. They didn't have to give up their jobs, families, and marriages to move into the elderly LO's house to become a care slave.
There will never be judgment from me when a family places someone in LTC because I know how it is. I've lived with or worked for it. The mess, the instigating, the verbal abuse, the lying, the berating, the gaslighting, the minimizing, the belittling, and the bullying. I would not wish that on anyone.
These people like the OP really have nothing to complain about. If she doesn't like her MIL's bitterness she doesn't have to be around it. The MIL lives in a LTC facility. The OP is not her caregiver. She doesn't like that her MIL is bitter though. Get over it. Get on with your life. Don't complain to people who actually are living in miserable caregiving situations.
My sisters and I do not visit on any major holiday. We are with our families and grandkids for every single holiday that we can. We have our children and grandchildren who are counting on us too and we are not about to miss Christmas with grandkids or any other holiday with our grandkids that we can be together. It's just not open for negotiation. And we refuse to feel guilty about it, We have been very supportive t and visit often and do not deserve any guilt trip about how we choose to spend our holidays.
Don't want to be verbally abused ? End the phone call or the visit. Or don't talk to her on the phone or visit in person if she can't control herself.
Don't want to listen to her complain? You don't have to. The nursing home is her caregiver, not you.
Don't like her being demanding? Don't listen. You have that option because she's in a nursing home. So does everyone else in the family.
She's a stroke patient who is paralyzed, in a wheelchair and living in a nursing home. That certainly explains the bitterness. I'm sure you'd be plenty bitter if you were in her situation. So would anyone else.
You really have no reason to even be on this forum because you aren't a caregiver. You are a care-complainer. If you don't want to deal with your MIL in the nursing home, you really don't have to.
She was angry and bitter all her life. At her EOL, she demanded that he kids take care of her. And they did. My DH literally walked away from his job the day his sister called him and said "I can't do this, I need help". So my DH retired that day and left a job that he loved, that gave him purpose and meaning.
Over a YEAR passes and the Kids (74, 72 and 68) are coddling and babysitting this hateful, angry woman. She had a manipulative streak in her that I never understood. All 3 were on edge and upset the entire time she was in Hospice.
Of course she had extracted from her kids the age old "Don't you ever put me in a home!" promise and they were able to keep her home until the very end. My DH's OB was having heart problems and said he could no longer care for her. This facilitated the kids decisions to move her to an ALF. She was evaluated there and they were told she was MUCH worse than initially thought and would have to be moved to the locked down MC part of the ALF. She died within a week. AND she thought she was home at the ALF, and that she had been in a home the whole year she was in her house.
She was never happy. She was angry and bitter and my poor DH is still kind of shell-shocked after that year of care.
She had visitors every single day for years. She hated everybody, fired almost every aide that came to her home. She hit people, screamed at them and just was a total pill.
She made her bed. Her behavior as she aged was simply a more intense version of who she really was. That's not unusual.
My DH was burned out caring for her. After she passed, he was so relieved, and so guilty about being so relieved.
You can't change your MIL. She is what she is. She's too old and set in her ways to change, and if she's a Narcissist on top of all that--she doesn't WANT to change.
I 'divorced' my MIL 4 years prior to her death. Hadn't seen her in over 4 years when she died. She was absolutely horrible to me and for my own mental health's sake, I simply refused to see her. My DH is just now kind of forgiving me for not 'helping' with her. (Even though he did not lift a finger to help me with either of my parents--and I took FT care of his dad when he was in Hospice!!)
Just roll with it and accept she is who she is.
I know that the Hospice co gave my MIL Ativan and Xanax all day long so she stayed malleable. Sounds kind of rotten, but nobody could deal with her when she started raging.
Maybe the judicious use of some calming meds would help your MIL?
At any rate--good luck.
I saw my mother on holidays in assisted living . I could not take my mother home for the day because she would have refused to leave my home and go back to assisted living .
The rest of us celebrated the holiday together on another day that worked for all of us.
Elders who have had strokes do not get smarter and smarter with the passage of time, I'm afraid, but continue to deteriorate since most have MORE strokes as time goes by. Don't be so sure your poor MIL isn't suffering from dementia now. Speak to her doctor about antidepressants at least, since living ones life in a wheelchair is no fun.
I think the elderly forget what its like to have a job, home and family to care for. It takes up 16 hrs a day. The rest is sleeping. And do you go because she demands it? I want people to come because they want to, not because they have to. Her children need to sit down and tell her that she cannot expect people to be at her beck and call. Sorry, but their lives come first.