I live with my mom and pay all the bills out of her money. I pay all the normal bills that everyone pays. And that leaves very little money each month.
I'm so tired right now. Here's my day yesterday: Wake up at 7am, get myself ready while my mom sleeps, walks the dog, makes breakfast. Wakes my mom up, feed us. Get my mom ready and dressed. Now, she is unable to move her legs or roll over in the bed. She's 5'9 230 lbs. So imagine the work. The rolling back and forth to get clothes on. The leg lifts. Then putting a hoyer lift sling underneath her. Getting all her medication prepared. Putting her into the wheelchair. Getting her looking sharp. It's now 10am. I do some last minute things. We wait for a transportation service to come pick us up to take her to her appointment. We get home at about 1:30 from her doctors appointment. I transfer her back into bed, where I redress her. Clean her up because of a bowel movement. Make her lunch. Make sure she's nice and comfortable. Then I go out. I have to run to the post office, bank and store. I come back at 3PM. She's had another bowel movement. I clean her up. Take the dog out again. Come back and try to rest for a minute. I get up start making dinner, meanwhile running back and forth into my mom's room all day to see if she needs anything. We eat dinner. I browse on the internet for a while. She says she wants to go to bed, so I get her ready for sleeping. Give her her medications. Position her in bed. Then she tells me to go rest. 3am rolls around my mom starts banging on her table and crying out. I run in there and she's screaming about how she wants cable cancelled because nothing is ever on it.
Couldn't this topic wait until the next day? Why she chooses 3am to start making these claims. I am so frustrated and tired. I just leave. I go sit outside so I can brace myself for this. It's so cold outside though, so I only sit out there for 5 minutes. I go back in and dial Spectrum cable because she's going on about how she wants to cancel them. When she gets like this, I just let her do her thing. I dial, press the buttons to get to the right department and hand her the phone. I leave the room. I go back later to find out that she couldn't remember our address so she couldn't talk to the guy.
I don't know if my mom has dementia. She's 74 years old. And I'm told that this is young for the things she's going through. The thing is, her and her sister are the oldest living relatives. Most people in her family died in their 40s and 50s. I honestly do not think my mom has dementia, but I could be wrong! I don't know. The only reason I don't think she has dementia is that she talks very lucidly about things that I don't even remember. The only thing is, she does have issues remembering phone numbers now. She does not dial phone numbers anymore - I do that. I think it's just a decline in memory do to being bedridden and her illnesses that she has had. But again, I could be absolutely wrong. Even her reasoning for wanting to cancel cable makes sense. But the way she goes about it... banging on the table about it at 3am instead of just telling me tomorrow that she would like to cancel the cable?
But what I want to know is this: my mom is very agitated that she has barely any money left. Today I have to go pick up a $119 prescription. I even go over the expenses with her sometimes and she doesn't want to accept it. She can't pay the bills personally, she can't see that I pay the bills online. All of the online bill pay stuff is foreign to her. But going through each bill that comes in the house with her is just time consuming.
BTW, I have just mailed off for her birth certificate (which I can't find for her), so she can get a California ID, so then she can get into a Medical program which would offer EVERYTHING she/we need - including respite care. But that process is going to take a while. So, in the meantime, I just want some peace.
Hugs! You sound worn out!
Have you considered placing her in a facility? You have a lot to contend with.