Dad has health issues that weren't managed by his caregiver and she placed him in a Alzheimer's facility, basically hoping he might die quickly. I felt the need to help, along with my sister. So we got him out of that horrible place and I got him back to my home. My husband was all for it. While staying with us, dad was experiencing critically low sodium episodes landing in the hospital. All my time and energy has been with him. My husband and 2 kids feel my absence isn't worth it. Has caused fights and them all ganging up against me. They feel that my dad has lived his life and I should join the living (my husband's words). Even though I am angry at the caregiver for the neglect, abandonment, and leaving my dad traumatized; my energy is in making sure to get dad well and show him he still is loved and has life left. My dad never got along with my husband and the kids think he is a crazy old man, since they saw him when he had his sodium crisis (he was drinking water excessively, breaking things and trying to get out a window). I tried to explain to the kids that grandpa wasn't well for a long time before we got him and that the doctors found out it was a chemical imbalance. It left the kids traumatized and unable to see beyond that. Since then, my dad gets visiting passes while he is still getting rehabilitation in a facility and I bring him to my house to out. My dad said to them all he was sorry for everything he did and that he couldn't control it during that episode. I am not here to convince my husband and kids. I believe in honesty and being true to one's self. I am torn, I feel a life is a life, young and old. I might lose my marriage and kids over this. How do you decide on something like this?
You're letting your anger and resentment against that person destroy your relationship with your husband and children. Is that worth it, just to prove a point?
Why did your dad never get along with your husband? That shows your father had issues long before this sodium imbalance crisis, that he couldn't graciously accept your husband into the family. If he had spent his previous years as a kind and loving grandfather, your children wouldn't be thinking of him as a "crazy old man" just because of a temporary issue.
"My energy is in making sure to get dad well." Your dad is in a rehab facility. They have the expertise to get him well. It is their job. Let them do it.
You don't care that your children are traumatized and in fear of losing their mother, and your dad doesn't either? You're willing to give up your husband and children for this?
Being placed in a facility, hospital, and rehab does not mean someone has been abandoned to "die quickly." It means they need care beyond someone's ability to provide at home. Wake up. Support your father, but let the medical people do their jobs, and you do YOUR primary job, which is to be a present and caring mother for your children, and, by extension. present and focused in the household, which for now at least includes your husband. You can make daily phone calls and facetime with your father, but don't neglect and abandon your own family just because you can't accept the reality that your father has serious needs and that whoever was his caregiver before you appointed yourself to the role recognized this.
My view is that you've abandoned your children and marriage for your father. Your children are traumatized now. As I was my whole childhood watching the happenings of my grandmother and mother in what was supposed to be my safe place but wasn't. Trauma doesn't just magically disappear because we wish it away, but manifests itself in many different ways throughout life. One way, for me, was to be unable and unwilling to have a good relationship or friendship with my mother throughout the years. She died at 95, I was 65, and all I felt was relief.
If you abandon your children and husband's wishes to care for a demented father in their home, you are a bad mother and wife. If you don't care about that, press on.
It's not fair to say the OP is abandoning her husband and children for her father and every person's situation isn't yours. The OP clearly loves her father and wants to do right by him. Her husband was agreeable with him moving into their home. They tried having him (the father) with them and it didn't work out. No one is to blame here and another living arrangement must be made for him.
I want to know why the caregiver had the legal right to get the guy placed. Also, why none of his family including the OP, noticed the father's serious neglect and decline.
Quite literally, PurpleSky, the decision may not be yours to make. Your husband can all on his own go out and get himself a divorce attorney or a family law attorney to represent himself and his children to get a defined separation agreement and then file for a divorce and set the terms of custody and living arrangement.
Unless I missed it, NOWHERE in your post is your children’s ages mentioned. Nothing as to how parenting is done. Personally I find that so beyond strange.
However, you do say they are “ganging up against me”. So you’ve positioned yourself as a martyr. imo Martyrdom is just not a good look for you should hubs file for a separation or divorce. A pit bullie of a divorce atty will likely be able to get hubs interim custody of the kids till legal is finalized and any joint property and assets are dealt with. If your kids are minors and you ever EVER had them do nursing /hygiene /oversight duties for grandpa, a pit bullie of a divorce atty will use that to show you are unfit to ever EVER be the custodial primary parent. If the kids say “they are traumatized” as you posted, if that comes out in the separation/divorce hearing process, tends to be supervised visits for the noncustodial parent.
Please pls Realize that you are closing in your world with whatall you are doing with your Dad. Hubs world is getting larger. Lots of folks for him to reach out to. & lots of these will be single parents looking for companionship. Just sayin’….
If low sodium was truly causing his symptoms and it wasn't some form of cognitive decline, I'd be very surprised. But let's just say for the moment that low sodium was the problem. You will soon find out, but I can assure you as a long-time family caregiver for my parents, another relative, and now my husband, if your dad has cognitive decline from any kind of dementia, there is no getting better. It is not temporary. It cannot be fixed.
If you're hellbent on taking dad into your home and caring for him yourself, be ready for husband and kids to run for the nearest exit. A dementia patient in the home is a good way to destroy a family. Read some posts on this site about that situation by posters who have been through it. Read some more by the countless miserable others who are still in the situation and can't get out.
With my husband, our family had left the home long ago. But as I think over the caregiving difficulties I experienced as his dementia advanced, I wonder what would have driven the kids away if they'd still lived with us. Maybe when he didn't know what his poop was and carried it around the house? Maybe his purposeful urinating on the table, the couch, the baseboards, in shoes? Maybe the kids feeling uncomfortable with bringing friends over because they'd then witness this behavior? Maybe the loud screaming when I tried to get DH in the shower, with him sounding like I was torturing him? Maybe the 14" long butcher knife he hid under the couch cover? Or the spectacle of him trying to cut the shrubs with our vacuum cleaner? How much of this sort of thing could your family take?
Honesty and being true to yourself means seeing things as they are, not as you wish them to be. I hope dad ends up in a place where he will have 24/7 care by professional trained caregivers, but that's up to you, isn't it?
I don't think PurpleSky knows what it could become!
Have a family metting and let them know that your father is not going to continue living with you, that a lot of your time is going to be spent helping him recover to whatever level of health he can and also giving him whatever quality of life you can. This means that your husband and kids (depending on their ages) will have to start pulling their own weight and helping out at home. You will not have a hot meal on the table every night, drive them wherever they need to go, and do all the housework and shopping. They will have to help. So will your husband. This is the cost of your father being moved out of the house.
I have one question though. This caregiver who failed to manage your father's conditions an neglected him. Did no one ever visit him and see his decline? How was the caregiver able to put him in a care facility? Are they his spouse or POA?
And the fact that you have yet to learn that sadly speaks volumes about you, and your messed up views.
I feel sorry for your husband and children as they are being forced to endure a sickly older man in their own home that is supposed to be their safe place and sanctuary. And instead you've allowed it to turn into a nursing facility for a man whose care is beyond your scope of knowledge.
Whoever is your dads POA should now start looking for the appropriate facility for your dad to live in where you can get back to just being his loving daughter and start putting your family first once again. They deserve that much don't you think?
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