He was recently left paralyzed from the neck down and it’s been really hard on us both. My son requires 24/7 assistance. I feed him, clean him, change catheters if needed, I have to perform suction because he still has a trachea tube on his throat. He constantly calls 911 on me stating that I’m holding him against he’s will because he tells me to put him in the wheelchair and leave him on his own. If I’m his caregiver and mother at the same time, what am I supposed to do? Let him go knowing he runs a risk of something happening to him? I lost my job because I was always late for him. He is constantly disrespectful but my main concern is him wanting me to leave him on his own. The reason I fear this is because before the accident he had a bit of an addiction that was starting to resurface. I afraid he’ll find someone on the street and convince them to give him drugs. I’m extremely worried. I also don’t want to be the one responsible if anything happens to him, but I have a little 9-year-old girl too and I don’t want her to grow up thinking its ok to be that way.
Most of all, have you thought about how this situation will affect your young daughter? Can you care for her as much as you did her brother at her age?
Can she have friends round to play, or get picked up if she goes to theirs? Or do her brother's care needs take priority?
Please think about this and answer truthfully, to yourself, adding more questions that may be particular to your family.
DON'T ask your daughter how she feels or if she minds you not being there because you're looking after her brother; that would be putting the responsibility onto her shoulders, which are far too little, too young, to have that weight placed on them. Instead, try and look at it from her perspective and think about how she is still a little girl who needs her mum.
You cannot stop your adult son from obtaining drugs if he is determined to do so. (Although, I don't understand how he could wander down the street if he is paralysed from the neck down, even in a wheelchair.) All adults should have the right to make choices for themselves, even when they are bad choices. Without autonomy, there is no life - good or bad.
You would not feel like you were enabling him in his potentially bad choices if he were no longer in your home, where it seems that he doesn't even want to be.
I expect that he wouldn't want to be in a care facility either. He just doesn't want to be in the unfortunate position he is in. But there's nothing he, nor you, can do about that.
You can do something, though, to ensure that your daughter has a decent childhood.
I would tell my kid that he has choices but, being disrespectful and calling the cops on me all the time will result in placement and no doubt about it. He needs you but, your 9 year old needs you more. So sorry that you are being faced with a difficult decision of protecting one child from the other.
Just curious, how did he become paralyzed?
The next was how could she possibly lift him and place him in a wheelchair?
I posted the real story of a resident probably in the same situation as your son but older. He went from going outside to smoke even being in bed to bedbound in his room.
He "gave up" and eventually died.
He'll need lots of encouragement to go on if a NH is his fate.
Talk to social services to see what can be done, he is an adult so you are neither responsible for him nor have any control over what he does.
There is no such thing as a bit of addiction, once an addict, always an addict, it is just a matter of whether he is using or not.
Take care of you and your young child. Best wishes.
P.S. you need to look at this as your son being an adult. Not you as a family unit. He as an adult on his own, should be able to get more. Make those you talk to aware that you need to work. Services he gets are on his income yours should not be counted. He needs care that IMO, you should not be doing. I personally would not have brought him home unless I had a lot of money to pay others to do his care.
Requesting removal of duplicate post.