Has anyone been so burned out from caregiving that you simply could not care when the person you were caring for died?

Please don't feel like you are alone, I feel the same way myself, almost like it will be a relief when my husband passes and I will have time to breathe! I hate feeling like this, but I'm so tired of all the drama.

I know exactly how you feel. I quit my job 4 yrs ago to care for my husband w/ PK & dementia, shortly after that I had to move my mom to assisted living. She also has dementia, I take care of all her needs as well. I think I have cried enough tears and truly feel that I have grieved the loss of both as they are now a product of this disease and not who they were. When they pass it will feel like a relief, not only for me but for them to finally escape this tortuous life that they are currently stuck in.

Gremlin, it seems like you have gone far over your limit to get to this place. Possibly a break from situation for several days might charge your batteries. Is there someone who could step in to give you a much needed break? Burnout is awful, especially in these situations, but acting on the burnout by taking a breather is good for you and your loved one. Is there anyone else that can step in to help?

I wish the best. Everyday will be challenging for you to pull yourself through. As far as I know, there is no instruction kit as a caregiver. If you go through as a caregiver twice, it won’t be anything like first. It’s good to hear others in similar situations how they’re dealing with or dealt with after given theirs . Try to focus on your future and test yourself. If you think you achieved your goal then your going in right direction.
I wish the best for you and hope you send back wishes to others in difficult situations.

I think all family caregivers have had these feelings at some point during the 24x7 care of someone who constantly compains, demands, criticizes and is overall someone we don’t want to be around. I read that you tried to get her into a nursing home? Try a memory care facility. They are more used to residents with emotional issues. It doesn’t have to be Alzheimer’s. I was going to move my mom from AL to memory care even tho she didn’t have cognitive problems because the care level is higher but she passed before that could happen.
If you can get her into a care facility, you will get your life back and be may be able to get back some good interactions with your mom. My mom wasn’t a good mom - she provided everything I needed physically but not emotionally - no hugs, never saying she loved me, nothing I did was good enough. So when she started needing care, I treated her as I would any person in her condition- with compassion and patience but not as a loving daughter would because that wasn’t our relationship. Good luck and take care,
suzanne

I want to thank everyone here...I am in my 6.5 months of caring for my dementia mom at home who had physical disabilities since birth but only got worse in 1989 long before she was “officially” diagnosed in 10-2017. Caring for her single handed most of that time save a trip to the ER for a unknown brain tumor, and had 2.5 yrs of wondering if she was going to survive it and the surgery and bad recovery she injured. My mom is a negative type of person so her dementia makes her attitudes much worse. Let’s just say I am still doing this alone save about a month or two of home health care which has since stopped. I am tired, and Mom doesn’t really have the finances to get helpers. Thanks for helping me at 5 am while my anxiety/stress is high tonight to get much sleep maybe I can get 4 hours, since reading posts here my stress now is a bit lower. I believe I actually am afraid of my mom, to do anything, but status quo, but I know I will need to sooner rather than later with all she has. Plus my health and financial issues for my life after she is gone, need attention, but she just won’t get it, she just threatens to remove my name from our condo. Er make that HER condo. Anyway thank you, for sharing...

Hi, it sounds like you’re not only burnt out but also you’re been grieving for too long. Please take a break even just for a day. Take care.

My dad had a personality disorder or two, was alcoholic and later developed Alzheimer's. I didn't take care of him but tried to have a relationship with him all of my life with no luck. He was the most impossible person I've ever known and I became so sick of trying that I gave up a few years before he died. His second wife was very depressed taking care of him and had to put him in some sort of facility the last couple of years. I'm sure she was relieved when he died. I felt nothing at all.

I think you should feel your feelings without shame--they are guideposts. Take care.

Please realize that this is only natural. As a caregiver, you are always on call 24-7, cook, clean and care for someone who does not always seem to appreciate you. It is only human to feel the way you are feeling. Especially when the person becomes demanding and narcissistic. You simple can only take so much and realize that you could not care whether they live or die. My FIL moved in and then pretty much took over the house and our lives. It got to the point where we could not leave him alone, so we had no life. After 3 years, we realized that it was all getting to be too much, and that we had done as much as we could for him. We talked with him and decided the best for all involved was for him to go to a facility. Good luck, do not be so hard on yourself and look for help wherever you can get it.

It s not making you a worse person. It reminds you that you are human and it is natural.

Sometimes it does get to that point, especially when the one you are caring for does not have any quality of life, and it's dragging your life down so that you don't either. You begin to think "what is the point", but then you carry on because you do love them, and it's the Right Thing to do.

Be sure that you are reaching out to all of the possible resources you can to help you any way, friends, family churches and sources thru your local AREA'S AGENCY ON AGING.

My mother was always a negative, paranoid and overly dramatic woman. When she had dementia, all those things were magnified. She was in a facility for 4 years. There were times when I visited that she did so much whining and complaining and accusing me of doing “this” to her, I’d get up to leave. Then she’d burst into tears and beg me to stay. There were many skeletons that fell out of the family closet during her ramblings. She obsessed about everyone in the nursing home having sex with each other. Really obsessed.

When they called me from the facility and and told me she’d passed during the night, I did not go to see her, to “say good-bye”. My mother had left long ago. I was relieved that I didn’t have to listen to my mother the prude’s sex talk anymore and that I wouldn’t learn any more family secrets that I would have been better off never knowing.

That was about 18 months ago. I am starting to “thaw out” and remember the mom who loved and raised me. I shed tears when I remember how, the year my dad lost his job, that she sewed clothes for my Barbie because we couldn’t afford gifts and she didn’t want me to have nothing for Christmas. I know that when your mom does pass, the same thing will hold true for you.

Hi Gremlin. You've come to the right place to vent your frustration. I have felt the same way from time to time, especially after a rough day with Dad.

As others have said, it's not really that you don't CARE that they pass away, it will just be a sense of relief. What outsiders don't realize is just how PAINFUL it is to see this old, frail shell of a person you once knew suffer from day to day and still have to fill them with medicine that (WARNING: BAD COMMENT COMING) that sometimes seems to just prolong the suffering.

Feeling that way could be burnout, or it could just be your desire to end your LO's suffering ... and YOURS. Caregiving is a HUGE sacrifice and eats away at our well-being.

We are here for you. Trust me... if it wasn't for this forum, I would have gone completely Ape S*** a long time ago.

Yes, but then Mom had Dementia and it was so hard to watch her decline monthly. I had a hard time interacting with her. She could no longer carry on a conversation. She made no sense, her mind was jumping from one thing to another. I had done for my Mom practically my whole. I was the one doing the hands on. Patience I had little of. Her quality of life wasn't there. She could no longer read or socialize. The last five months of her life she sat in a wheelchair having no idea where she was. When she passed, I was relieved. She had gone home. She was a good Mom and thats what I try to remember. I try not to think of the frail, incognant little lady she had become.

Gremlin, are you feeling guilty thinking that you won't care? I have not gotten depressed, much less cried after my mom passed. I was relieved. It meant that the family dysfunction was beginning to fade back into the past. It meant that I could stop the constant worry. It meant, most of all, that mom was finally released from the wretched disease of Alzheimer's. It meant she was reunited with her parents that she worried about so often and friends and other loved ones that passed before her.

Mom passed June 2017. Mother's Day was a bit rough for me this year, that was more due to my children being scattered.

Yes, you are burned out. You probably will care when you have a chance to get over the whole thing. If you have to do what you are doing now, don’t make it worse by feeling bad about being burned out.