She has no medical problems and is otherwise healthy but she refuses to get up and walk to the bathroom . I have to clean her up everyday and I can’t handle it anymore , I s effecting my heath and my stress level is so high , I’m afraid I will have a stroke . The only thing wrong with my 72 year old mother is she has severe depression but she refuses to take her medication and or listen to me . I don’t know what to do because she won’t listen to me and I have teenagers in the house and it’s effecting my 14 year old daughter .
I was a homecare worker for 25 years and have seen this dynamic play out many times even with senriors who had actual dementia diagnoses. The senior will mess themselves when they are perfectly able to use the toilet or a portable commode unassisted. I've seen clients hold it until certain people like a daughter, granddaughter, or DIL came in. Then they'd let it go in their pants all over the place. One particular client I had would refuse to be toileted by me. She lived with her son and DIL (who she hated). About an hour or so before my shift ended, the place would stink so bad. She's fart up a storm. I knew she had to go, but she refused to use the toilet even with assistance. The second her DIL walked in the door from work, the client would let it go all over herself and the furniture. I wouldn't even be out of the driveway yet. Her DIL told me.
Her DIL used to beg and plead with her to let me help her to the toilet. She always refused. So, I'm going to tell you exactly what I told the DIL. When she messes herself, you leave her sitting in it until her son gets home. Make him clean her up. She did this. The client was so mortified to be sitting in her mess when her son got home, she stopped playing that little power-trip game with her DIL. She starting letting me bring her to the toilet every day.
Your mother is most likely playing at a little power-trip game with you or wants you and everyone else to think she's worse off than she actually is because she wants to be 'babied' or wants sympathy. Do not give her either.
Here's a little tip. Your place is going to stink bad if you refuse to clean her up. She will probably try to wait it out, so buy some disposable face masks. Then buy some essential oils. Put a little on a cotton ball in the face mask and this will help you cope with the stink until she washes up.
If she's physically capable of using the toilet and cleaning herself, the only way she will is if no one cleans her up. Sometimes with this kind of behavior when the person is capable, you have to break them like a wild horse.
Throwing yourself on your mother's burning funeral pyre at her age of 72 will be a decades long slow-burn. I would be very poor decision making and self-harming for you to take on this care, and it would help NO ONE.
Do the right thing and issue the woman an ultimatum. For her OWN good as well as yours and your daughters. I'm 68 and cannot imagine doing what your mother is doing!
In the meantime, as others have said, start making phone calls and appointments for facilities to move your mother to. Don't do this privately, do it in front of her so that she knows you mean it.
You are not only hurting yourself but also your children by continuing to have your mother live with you and that is certainly not fair to your children or yourself. You all deserve better.
If you don't put your big girl panties on soon and get your mother out or your family out, your children will hold that against you for the rest of their lives.
So time to get your mother out one way or another. And if money is an issue she'll have to apply for Medicaid.
Also, stop cleaning her up. She doesn’t have a diagnosis so she is an adult who can make her own decision to sit in her crap if she chooses that.
I would also say to the original poster that there are groups on Facebook for the "sandwich generation". People caring for their parents and their children or grandchildren at the same time. They are very helpful.
My cousin was 68 with ALZ and a UTI that was making her have very aggressive and combative behavior. Her poor son had her in a bear hug while his wife drove them to the ER. They put her in the psych wing for a month before she would comply with her meds but eventually she did and was discharged.
In the meantime does your Mom have the funds to pay for an aid to clean up after her? I wouldn't get her to agree to this -- you can tell her the aids are there to help you.
I wish you success in getting all the help (and permanent solution) you need to regain your life!
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