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.
From your post it seems like you weren't very engaged with him for a long while, hence the caregiver not contacting your or your sister about his condition. Or, he didn't want the caregiver to contact you. It can become complicated.
Do not bring your Dad back to your house. The most you can do is get him settled into a good AL (or whatever level of care he needs). You can go visit him there and you won't need to be his entertainment committee. Almost no senior "loves" being in a facility. If you and your sister are not his PoA then you will be limited as to how much of his affairs you can manage. Don't pay for any of his care as this would not be fair to your family.
It's good that your Dad acknowledged how his issues disrupted your family life, but your Dad needs to not expect you to give up your #1 priority over his needs.
Are you his PoA? If not, will he assign you (and/or your sister)? You can help him get into a good facility (that accepts Medicaid) on private pay (if he can afford it) and then when he is close to running out of money you help him apply. He can stay in that facility once he applies as long as the Medicaid in that state pays for the level of care he needs.
I would ask your family to have a little more patience until you and your sister can help your Dad with a more permanent care solution. Hopefully your Dad will be reasonable in understanding you can (and should) only do so much because your family is your main priority.
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?
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?
Now what? Will your husband take over your father's care? When my Dad needed more care than the paid 3-shifts of caregivers at home could give, he moved into a senior facility. He loved that place as he was around people of his own generation.
Check out the senior facilities that offer "memory care", take a tour, have a lunch there. Bring your Dad with you, and see how he reacts. I know when I pulled up to a care facility my Dad said "where can I sign up" as he loved the Victorian style of the building.
Thank you for this eye opening detail.
You said it yourself - "a life is a life, young and old." Thus, why do anything that will damage your children's lives? They deserve to have a happy life. They deserve to have a happy childhood.
And not live in fear of someone they see as a "crazy old man."
Your father needs a facility, with trained professionals so that you and your family will be safe and can continue living your lives.
Not everything in life is perfect. And you can't make it perfect because you want it to be. You will be exhausted, and you and your family's life will not be the same if you become his 24 hour Caregiver.
There are good quality facilities that can assist him. You can research and find a nice one that is reasonably close to your family.
You feel you might lose your marriage and kids over this.
A memory care facility is the best place for your father to get the care and treatment he needs. If the last one was a horrible place, find a better one.
You are more valuable to your dad and to your family at home if you visit him regularly in a care facility, as a daughter, not as a full-time caregiver.
You are not trained in this, and it is going to get more difficult! He will have more "crazy" episodes as a result of dementia. Are you prepared to change diapers and help him get out of bed and stay by his side all day long when he requires 24 hour supervision?
Putting your father in the safety of a good care home is not abandoning him. It is not neglecting him. It is giving him the professional care that he needs. Your father may play on your emotions, as he sees that you are torn. Every elder who is becoming vulnerable wants the easiest solution (for them) and wants the least possible change or upheaval in their lifestyle. But you have a husband and children to consider. You are important to them, and your father's presence in your home is creating a bad environment for everyone. If you continue taking care of your dad full time, you will soon see that it was not worth losing your family over. Being his full time caregiver is too much for you. Admit it, accept it, and find another solution.
Honestly, your father has lived his life. While we do not know the entire scope of the family dynamics, it does seems like you want you husband and kids to conform to your way of thinking so the you don't have to make a difficult decision. Are you hoping for an easy way to choose both and all to be happy? Sorry but by your post it will not happen in a rainbow and unicorn scenario.
Is your father still diagnosed with dementia/Alz. or was the sodium imbalance cause for a mis-diagnosis? If still diagnosed with dementia or Alzheimer's you can not care for him in your home. That is an immediate disaster because he is not welcomed by husband and kids and his condition will only get worse. Why would you put everyone in that situation? Find a facility that will provide the care he needs and visit as a loving daughter.
Take care of your Dad by getting him placed in a nice facility. He will do better with a 24 hr. staff of professionals who are trained to deal with Dad's problems. Unless you plan on being an unpaid servant, and/or possibly divorced without custody of your children.
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.
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!
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’….
And after putting your father first and your marriage second what will you be left with? Hopefully your husband is understanding but not many of us humans are saints.
I'm also curious how old your kids are. You don't mention that. If they are underage and still live at home, as their mother your primary responsibility is to them.
Put how your family feels to the side for a moment. What will happen when Dad leaves the gas on all night long, and the house explodes? Or he leaves the kettle or the pot on the burner and there is a fire? Or he puts metal into the microwave? Or sees someone outside he thinks is trying to kill him and goes out to confront him but it's the mailman? When he leaves in the middle of the night wearing nothing but a scarf and gets lost? How about turning on the water and letting it run until there is structural damage to the floor?
There is a reason that there are specialized places for people who have these problems. Yes, your dad has lived his life, but he can also continue to live the rest of his life in a safe place where people who are professionals know what to do to keep him safe and maybe even happy.
You're not abandoning him. You can still visit him and keep your family as well. Dad belongs someplace safe, please honor him by returning him to that place, and honor your family as well. This is not choosing between one or the other, it's just readjusting how you see the situation. You are not seeing it clearly. And you cannot make him get well, or get better. There is no chance he will ever get better. The trajectory now is downwards, and that is the sad fact of this disease.
What you can do is help him to experience life in the present, in his world, safely.
You are probably spending more time and energy than he or your kids thought you would.
I can sorta understand this from both sides.
Now you have to find a happy middle ground.
1. Is dad a Veteran?
If so the VA may be of some help. Check with your local Veterans Assistance Commission and they can help determine his eligibility for any programs the VA may have. It could be a little help or a LOT.
2. Have you checked with your local Senior Service Center to see if he may qualify for any programs they may have?
3. Is there an Adult Day Program near that you could get him involved in? Getting out of the house for 6 hours or so a few days a week can help both of you a lot.
4. Hire caregivers that can help. Dad pays for the caregivers you do not. But having caregivers can take much of the burden off your shoulders. I again repeat...YOU do not pay for caregivers. The house that dad was in..if he is the owner that can be sold to pay for his care. That should provide assets to pay for his care. And YOU should be getting paid for the caregiving services you are doing as well as he should be paying his portion of ALL household expenses. If he were to do that it might be a little easier for your husband to tolerate your dad being there.
I do have to ask this...and I maybe should have asked it before I got started.
You say your dad's "caregiver" placed him in a facility.
Who was his caregiver and how were they able to place him? Were or are they POA? Are you or your sister POA?
Has your dad been diagnosed with some form of dementia?
Why did your dad not move in with your sister?
If none of these suggestions work out and you can not find a happy solution to this that leaves....
You continuing on in this manner and this is not good for your marriage or relationship with your kids.
Deciding that you may have to place dad in a facility that can manage his care.
From Purple Sky, the OP, to SamTheMgr: “We have not found out who or how the caregiver (my sister) got the dementia diagnosis”
So it was her sister that placed their father into a facility.
Since the Sister inherits Dad's house, she obviously has a vested interest in her Dad's healthcare situation. So the OP decides to rescue her Dad, "...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." WE??
I'm totally confused what is really going on at this point.
So what happened to her Evil Sister, who inherits Dad's house? Dad remains in Rehab, for his "sodium" problem? What happened to the Alzheimer's diagnosis?
Now OP is dumping her husband and kids to babysit her demented Dad?
She has a mess on her hands, her family is pissed, and she isn't inheriting Dad's house (or portion of). Dad cries that his other "Evil Caregiver" daughter put him in a facility and left him? Dad can't change or redo his Estate Plan, since he has Alzheimer's now. That already is traumatizing enough.
OP needs to realize that Dad can't change his life or Estate Plans now. She will not inherit. OP will sacrifice her own future, her husband and kids to "help poor neglected and traumatized Dad?" Yet "traumatized" Dad is willing to live in a home he is clearly not welcome in?
OP wants advice? A bird in the hand is worth 2 in the bush. She should put Dad into a "nicer" facility and get back to her own legal and moral responsibility of her husband and kids. She made vows to her husband, not her Dad.
All this drama while Sister got out of being a Caregiver Slave, so patiently waits to inherit a house. I wonder why the OP was left out of that bonus? Or why the Sister didn't take Dad back? Or why Sister didn't tell the OP how she got Dad's diagnosis? Sounds like a made for TV movie at this point.