If you knew then what you know now, would you still be a caregiver to your parents?

I wasn't a caregiver for my parents, I have been caregiver for both my in-laws, an uncle, a grandparent, helped with several others and now I care for Pops, my spouse. Yes, I would do it again. I'd do it much better due to lessons I have learned, but I'd still do it. I didn't care-give because I had to, I did it because I chose to.

I’ve cared for my dad, brother, MIL and grandmother in law but they didn’t live with me. That is easier. It is the full time caregiving to mom that is too hard, physically, financially and emotionally.

Absolutely, 10000% yes. Without hesitation I would do this all again with and for my mom. It is the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. It has taken over my life and I have no real life left, but I know with certainty I am doing the right thing. This has made me a better person and has afforded me memories with my mom that I never would have had otherwise.

My mom and I were always very close and I have kind of taken care of her for many years before she was diagnosed with Dementia. After my dad passed away she leaned on me for advice and support even before I moved her in with me over 10 years ago. Because of these things my situation might be different. My mom and I had already established our role reversal of sorts prior to her becoming completely dependent on me.

As long as I am able to do it, she will be in my home and I have not one regret.

People will never truly understand it unless they do it themselves, right? I know I didn’t have a clue how hard it was going to be.

I was not a caregiver for either of my parents. they both died when I was very young. But I did watch my Dad care for his Mother in Law with great caring and compassion. My Grandma was an amazing woman she was in her 90's when she died. She taught herself how to speak again after having half her jaw and half her tongue removed due to cancer. Physical therapy, Speech therapy and Occupational therapy were not a "thing" then. Lost her daughter, my Mom and her other daughter 7 days apart. Through it all she cared for my sister, me and helped my Dad, helped with the household work as much as she could.
It would have been an honor for me to care for her more than I did as a 10 year old.
I did sort of care for my Dad, again as much as a 10 year old could. I put lotion on his chest and back after Cobalt treatments for the cancer. And watched him slowly waste away.
Would I have wanted the chance to care for my Mom, my Dad my Grandma you bet. But I think what I witnessed as a child shaped the type of caregiver that I became.

Never. I stupidly never saw this as a possibility. Thinking back , why would I? All I know , is this situation is bad, even with help. Aides coming in twice a week to bathe her. 24/7 with dementia is what some one on Dr Oz called domestic terrorism. My husband, daughter and myself are not able to combat demented behaviors every single hour of every day, but currently that’s what we are doing. Not combat, but deal with, and reassure. My mother is third on a waiting list for memory care. I know this is absolutely necessary.

For my mother, yes I would. I am from that generation.but I would have acted sooner. And hoped I had a different sibling and family.
But yes.

Absolutely not. My dad was horrible to have with me 24/7, around my kids, etc. Negative, lazy, narcissistic. No mental issues, just physical disability but still had some mobility. If there was any way I could have kept him out of my house, I would have done that but my hands were tied. It was either my house or the street. Literally. Now that he's in a facility again, and no longer in contact he's doing better for himself since he's forced to do for himself, and I no longer have to live with constant fear and anxiety.

Such an interesting question, and everyone's experiences are different.

If I could do it all over again. I would have asked my mother (and her lawyer) to separate the financial aspects from the healthcare aspects, and agreed to take charge and responsibility for all of the financial, tax, insurance and bill paying things, and tried to have my mother convince my sister (only have one sibling) to handle the medical/healthcare aspects. Why? Because between the two of us, I'm the one with the business/financial/legal background, but never been married, never had kids, not even a pet, and I am more brain-oriented than emotionally oriented.....and my sister, even though she is divorced, is the more nurturing one, with a son and always had a pet. And, it''s not as if I made this up. For my whole life, my mother always said, to me and my sister, and friends and relatives, that I lead with my head, and my sister leads with her heart.

As it turned out, I am responsible, from the documents, for everything. And, I have lost jobs because I had to be on-call for emergencies and leave work, way too often, and my sister has been able to keep her same job for 8 years and save money, while I am going to be broke in 2 years from not being able to work reliably, and now being basically unemployable because of the long gap in employment.

So, yeah. I would do it differently.

Here is the second part of your question which was not asked.

As OPPOSED TO WHAT OTHER AVENUE?

Ward of the state? Good luck. There have been so many people, whom, for what ever reason, have done. And the state is fed up.

I actually had to investigate due to a sibling.

Every case is different. Every illness is different. Some caregivers have siblings to help, some caregivers are on their own to do everything. And let's not forget the age of the caregiver.

I probably could have managed much better taking care of my parents [they were under their own roof, and I was under my own roof] but they needed logistical help, if I was still in my 40's or 50's. But I was over 65 and that wasn't easy. I use to say "who would picked me up if I fell?".

Looking back I should have set boundaries, and stopped saying "yes" out of guilt. The stress had a major toll on my health. I even told my parents that they were going to outlive me.

NeedHelpWithMom, you are so right about parents not wanting their child to give them advice. We are just the "kids" and what do we know :P I had to use plenty of "therapeutic fibs" to get my parents to do things that were important. Example, their Will was older than dirt, so I told Dad that the way the Will was written the Gov would get half the assets. Even thought I knew that wasn't true, it did get Dad's attention and he had me set up an appt with an Elder Law Attorney. Whew.

My parents had saved up for those rainy days and it was storming out there. Oh why couldn't they have sold their house and moved into Independent Living? That way Mom would have had weekly housekeeping and weekly linen service. Meals in the main dining room. Transportation to church, grocery stores, etc. And being around people closer to their own generation. What was the huge draw staying in that house of theirs? All it was doing was stressing me and their neighbors out big time. Neighbors would be running over to pick Dad up any time he fell at the mailbox or when he was doing yard work.... [sigh]

Absolutely. No question about it. I would be so happy to know what I know now, when it all first started. That would be helpful. But I absolutely would do it again.

If I knew in 2014 after my dad passed away what I know now, I would have insisted that my mother go into AL. Then my dad's money would have went for her care and not my brother's drug habit. She would not have to file bankruptcy and I would be free. Like some many others, our relationship is damage and I think at this point there is no fixing it. I would never had taken on this role of caregiver.

I knew my mother favored my brother over me, but I never knew 1) that it was this bad and 2) that she would give to him no matter what he says or does to her. She would literally put herself living on the street just to give him money. She just can't say no to him ever! Oh how both of them hate me sooo!

I would just had done a lot of things differently. It is hard living and caring for a person who never cared for you.

If I had known then *everything* that I know now, having been on that learning curve, then yes. Probably. But only because armed with all that information I would have made a much better job of it, better for my mother, better for me, less damaging to other relationships.

But would I go through those years again? Would I recommend our choices to anyone else? ROFL! - No.

I am jealous of people whose parents live far away: "Oh, mom lives in another state and I visit her once a year." If I would have known then what I know now, I would have not stayed in this town and gotten dragged down by having my parents live down the street from me. It's been a sh*t show and only gets worse every year. By the time this is over, they will have been a dark cloud over my head from my 40s through my 60s.

No, I would not. The load I carry has always been a light one. To this day my mother and I are very close. She only trusted me with her finances and later on I had to take the reigns of her medical care as well. My brothers were unable to help because of two things. One is they all have jobs that they cannot afford to lose and two is that their income is not enough to help towards the cost of Mom's care. We all live below the poverty line at varying levels.

No, I wouldn't. When my mom came to live with me and my two children (12 and 17), she wasn't driving anymore but other than that, we thought she was fairly stable. It wasn't long before we started noticing things like her forgetting to turn off lights, appliances, or faucets, not being able to handle her own paperwork/mail, constant health issues, and finally the wandering and auditory hallucinations. Her personality also changed and she became combative over small issues. She'd call my brother and sister as well as friends and other family members and tell them how she hated living with us and we were "mean" to her. While I was going through it, I gave it my best shot and tried to support her in every way I could, but nothing I did was good enough. We lived like that for 5 years and my kids, although they love their grandma and did a lot for her, couldn't take much more. I can say honestly that it's much better being her daughter again than being her caregiver - it just wasn't possible to be both.

My brother opted to take both mother and daddy in when dad's health deteriorated to the 24/7 stage of care.

He passed 15 years ago. Mother is still there, after 22 years.

Brother has stated over and over it was the single worst decision he ever made. I have been, off and on, a PT caregiver and I agree. They had the money to buy a small condo and mother has a LTC policy, she could have been living independently all these years. Brother has raised a family of 5 kids with mother there....it just has not been good. His wife does not even speak to mother.

I do feel for mother, she knows she made a bad decision, but what can she do now? I voted 'no' to bringing her and dad to brother's but it wasn't my call.

No, I wouldn't do it again. I don't get on with my mother, haven't since I was about 4 and she made growing up hell. But I still stupidly decided to have an annex built so she would have some support - little realising she wouldn't be left for even one night (she lived on her own for 25 years before moving in), or that one would be in the house the whole time because she would make such a fuss and start the guilt trip if one wanted or even needed to go out, never mind socialise. Effect on marriage and health is not good for husband or myself. We haven't even seen his disabled sister in 4 years because we cannot get a night away without her imposing on neighbours we don't even know ourselves. Its a nightmare, and because we don't get on I am beginning to care less and less and to be less and less tolerant of her just wandering into our house, expecting everything dropped to fit with any plans she has or things she needs doing NOW, thinking we want to hear her whining about long term health issues, to be honest I hate her being here and I hate her control over our lives. This isn't what I planned for my retirement and I have health issues of my own as so many of us do - being pensioners looking after older pensioners. She gets confused, illogical cannot reason, thinks people steal from her, lies (but then she has done that all her life), has falls, but then when she wants something or is with someone in a white coat sanity and ability returns for ten minutes and we get told she is capable of fully independent living, She should be in a home, I just can't get her to go into one.

yup

No, definately would do things altogether differently! My FIL came to live with us, just as we got our last child (of 4) independant and out on her own at 21, and only days after we had buried my own Mother and My Dad and MIL all in the previous 14 months, we just were not thinking clearly, still suffering extreme grief, which I never got to properly address.

FIL living with us X 13 continued through his natural decline into old age, and we should have forced him into Independant Senior living right from the get go. The Toll it took on our family, our marriage, was just too much especially those last years until his last major illness (Cancer) and his death on Hospice care, us caring for him, dying in our home.

We still and Always would have been there supporting him along the way, but we definately did him and ourselves a diservice by not encouraging him to stay active and amongst his peers, and which would have alowed us to have better boundries and more control over our own lives. Live and learn, I wish I had found this forum 15 years ago!

I suppose I would because I thought it was the right thing to do. I would do it very differently though. I would set limits early on and insist on outside help. I don't know if it would have worked lol. The damage to our already fragile relationship was extreme.

Yes but....
1. I would insist on having them fit into my life rather than focus on them living out the rest of their days.
2. I would not move closer to them but rather have moved them closer to me and insisted they use their money to set themselves up in a home where they could age in place.
3. I would have established healthy boundaries from the start and avoided the caregiver burnout and compassion fatigue that compromised my health and mental wellbeing.

I actually had this conversation with my nephew after my mom passed. My answer would be absolutely yes, because I would be better at it!

This may sound presumptuous, but I think most of things would have done things differently! Live and learn, tho. Heck, I did things last month that I would have done differently today!!! Much less over the last years. I've kinda given up on doing this 'right'. And just do the best thing that seems right at the time and hope for the best.

Absolutely would do it again. Mom can’t help what is happening to her, it frightens her, and I want to be there to reassure her and help her. I’m ok with my life not being easy or what I had planned for myself. Neither is Mom’s life what she expected or easy for her. She is sick and that makes me very sad for her.

I had a hospice caregiver tell me, it seems to hit the smart ones very hard. That has stayed with me. Our mom's circle of friends has included a chemist, a physicist, an author of many books. An astronaut. All gone to various forms of ALZ, vascular dementia. Mixed. Gah.

Does it make it any less awful or painful for those not in that circle? No.

This is just awful. And I don't wish on worst enemy. You guys who are carrying the mantle of responsibility are in my heart. Strength to us all.

I went thru this. I am an only child and have no one to help me in my situation. My Mom moved in with us last year due to an illness, she is 85. I COMPLETELY agree with you, it is damaging to a marriage, relationship BUT on the flipside once you get thru the adjustment period I feel it is a blessing that you are all together as a family. You are caring for your parent in the most loving and nurturing way in lieu of a facililty with a bunch of strangers she cannot relate to. I would rather have my family with me til they leave this earth to know they left with family around them who loved them til the end.

That is just my personal opinion, everyone has their own situation to deal with. I send you love, hugs and prayers to make the best decision :)

Hi
Without question is look after my mother. Life is hard you make the best of it. Best wishes too all.

No absolutely not. My 93 year old mum has lived with me for over 2 years and whilst she is thriving I am not. I have given up my life for her and it has affected my health and well being terribly. I am so very unhappy and would never have taken her in had I known how awful it would be.