Hi everyone, I’m an only child without any other close or extended family caring for my mom since she broke her hip last spring. She has had several other medical issues to attend to since then. I would love to get some advice/perspective from only children caring for an aging parent. Thank you.
A friend of mine (only child with only elderly family left) would empathize greatly with you. Her mother and aunt had only her to rely on. Both lived across town from each other, both with macular degeneration (advanced). Grocery and doctor trips for both, cleaning their houses/doing laundry, paying their bills, providing "entertainment," etc.---and the aunt had multiple properties and was a true hoarder in all of them, including her home...so even once they both passed, the aunt's hoarder legacy lived on for quite some time.
I think the only way she got through those years was taking happy pills, but even then she always wanted to "run away! run away!" ( A nod to Monty Python there.)
After being on this form for almost 10 years, I have read about caregivers who have siblings and grown children but feel like they are an only child because no one would help. Equally as frustrating.
I always wished I had siblings/children to bounce ideas off of, but then I would read on the forum about those who have siblings and grown children who give out their opinions/arguments which exhaust the single caregiver even more, or cut off ties.
I remember when my Dad and I had a chat about caregiving. I reminded him that when his own Mother needed help, she had living in the same area two sons and their wives, and had a gaggle of grandchildren most of whom knew how to drive [my parents lived out of state]. And they all shared with the care of Dad's Mom who lived on her own until she reached 90, so that not one person was overwhelmed.