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Thread: Boomers Cleaning Up After Parents Thread - "But Someone Could Use That!"

  1. #176
    Quote Originally Posted by Painter View Post
    Reading stuff like this reminds me of how lucky I am. My mom just turned 89, lives on her own two house up from me, still drives, doesn't need a cane, wheelchair or walker. My brothers and I wanted her to move into a retirement community but she keeps putting us off. I don't know how you do it, but good on you. I guess when the situation is thrust upon you, you do what you have to do...
    My dad is not as well of as your mom. He never drove and needs a cane, but besides that, things are relatively well, compared to others. He lives close to me, so I can keep an eye on him. Alas he is a stubborn as... so any good advice is ignored. It might be better for him, to use a walker, but he refuses. This Friday he will get the first of a series of injections in his left eye, to improve his sight a bit. I hope it will help. He is not looking forward to it and me neither, but it's the best for his eye, so we have to live with it.

  2. #177
    Quote Originally Posted by Jerjo View Post
    Loony, how are things going with your mom?
    Sold my broken car for a decent price , a whopping $200, so I went to the dispensary and bought three joints. Then went to the liquor store and bought what I needed from there.

    Right now my broken sister is cleaning my mom's legs. She's got blisters galore because she won't sleep with her legs on the couch and she's malnourished, even though she's eating better than I am these days. I'm lucky to eat one meal a day as the stress of having a 82 year-old mom who's turned into a 4 year-old child is killing me. Literally. Not just dealing with her but I have to figure out my future and I have no clue what to do.

    I'm going to go smoke and watch idiot sports guys on tv to try and forget for a few minutes.

    Thanks for asking, Jerjo.

    Progatron, I feel for you and with you.

    She just told me she put the dog down. She's completely devastated and I can do nothing.

    One day you are la di da and the next, you have a sawzall up your anus.
    Last edited by TheLoony; 05-02-2019 at 07:40 PM.
    Carry On My Blood-Ejaculating Son - JKL2000

  3. #178
    Quote Originally Posted by TheLoony View Post
    Sold my broken car for a decent price , a whopping $200, so I went to the dispensary and bought three joints. Then went to the liquor store and bought what I needed from there.

    Right now my broken sister is cleaning my mom's legs. She's got blisters galore because she won't sleep with her legs on the couch and she's malnourished, even though she's eating better than I am these days. I'm lucky to eat one meal a day as the stress of having a 82 year-old mom who's turned into a 4 year-old child is killing me. Literally. Not just dealing with her but I have to figure out my future and I have no clue what to do.

    I'm going to go smoke and watch idiot sports guys on tv to try and forget for a few minutes.

    Thanks for asking, Jerjo.

    Progatron, I feel for you and with you.

    She just told me she put the dog down. She's completely devastated and I can do nothing.

    One day you are la di da and the next, you have a sawzall up your anus.
    Can you get your mother in hospice care. My mother is in hospice at the house and they will do pretty much anything I ask of them,and everything is free. I don't know if her dementia qualified her or because she has a bad heart valve that is supposedly only working at a 5% rate. She will be 92 in August and is off her blood pressure and heart rate medicine. I check her pressure,heart rate and oxygen saturation. As far as eating this morning I fixed her two eggs,shredded home fries and a slice of scrapple with orange juice. After she finished that two slices of raisin bread with butter and jelly and a cup of coffee, and she drank a cup of water with her vitamin and water pill. I guess it helps having three daughter in the medical field. The oldest is a doctor but she is only helpful if my mother gets fleas or the mange.
    NEVER UNDERESTIMATE THE POWER OF STUPID PEOPLE IN LARGE GROUPS!

  4. #179
    Everytime I read here, I feel glad my dad is relativly well. Today he had his first injection in his eye, which wasn't as bad as we had expected. At least he isn't suffering from dementia, although occasionally he forgets things.
    I hope he won't need to much help, because things can get rather nasty for me, considering I live on social security. If I have to take care of my dad's finances, I can lose my social security, because they consider that I can use my dad's money, although that's not mine.

    An aquaintance of his, came back from the hospital and his wife, who was allready a bit suffering from dementia when he went to the hospital, wouldn't let him in the house, so the police had to be called to help him. She is now in a place where they take care of her. They don't have any children, so her husband has to take care of everything.

    I wish all af you in troublesome times with your parents strenght.

  5. #180
    Quote Originally Posted by Shadow View Post
    Can you get your mother in hospice care. My mother is in hospice at the house and they will do pretty much anything I ask of them,and everything is free. I don't know if her dementia qualified her or because she has a bad heart valve that is supposedly only working at a 5% rate. She will be 92 in August and is off her blood pressure and heart rate medicine. I check her pressure,heart rate and oxygen saturation. As far as eating this morning I fixed her two eggs,shredded home fries and a slice of scrapple with orange juice. After she finished that two slices of raisin bread with butter and jelly and a cup of coffee, and she drank a cup of water with her vitamin and water pill. I guess it helps having three daughter in the medical field. The oldest is a doctor but she is only helpful if my mother gets fleas or the mange.
    Mom won't take help from a stranger so in home care is off the board. There's only two options here and both suck.

    A: Get her certified and then throw her into a adult care center. That means the house gets a lien put on it and it gets taken to pay for her care. Which means I become homeless and this is a huge problem for me(selfish me) as will be described in a moment.

    B: Wait for her to die. I can sell the house, make a few bucks and maybe live on that for a time being. Not sure how long as I have no clue how much I would get.

    My problem is I'm now handicapped and may be for the rest of my life. These last few years have been unkind to my mind and I just sort of gave up. Even when I was working I didn't care about anything except when could I get to the bar. The drinking, along with a sedentary lifestyle and my lack of food as I was not dealing with things all that well caused me blood clots and a lack of circulation to my right foot. Had to have surgery and now have a set of pills that rivals that of my grandparents when they were real old and I'm "only" 50.

    Walking for me now is a Festivus activity, a feat of strength. The pain is massive and intense, my toes barely work and the whole damned foot feels like it needs to be amputated. Then I have to try and keep up on Mom and it gets difficult as I don't want to walk as it makes my foot hurt more than it already does.

    Plus, we have had to baby proof the house from Mom. She has had her access to fire revoked as she tried to smoke a plastic pen. No joke, I freaked out when I saw that one. Also anything sharp has had to be removed. Gods only know what she could do with a steak knife. Fun times indeed.

    All I can do is try to heal which is going badly. I can't work in this condition so I'm stuck here at home. Not much I can say as I screwed up my life a long time ago which ultimately put me in this position. As Journey once wrote, "Be good to yourself" as I didn't and now it may end up killing me. Not sure what's up really as all my doctors suck and don't seem to be helping me at all. I may have to change that up and get someone who can actually help but that's hard as I don't know who to switch to. Gotta do some homework, I guess.
    Carry On My Blood-Ejaculating Son - JKL2000

  6. #181
    Man of repute progmatist's Avatar
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    ^^ Perhaps you could get a reverse mortgage on your mom's house. That would give you much needed funds now, rather than after she passes.
    "Well my son, life is like a beanstalk, isn't it?"--Dalai Lama

  7. #182
    Quote Originally Posted by progmatist View Post
    ^^ Perhaps you could get a reverse mortgage on your mom's house. That would give you much needed funds now, rather than after she passes.
    You have to be careful with them, sometimes you end up getting ripped off. In the early 2000's I went to a lawyer and had my mother's house put into a deed of trust so after a certain amount of years the government can't touch the house for end of life expenses. My mother is with us and my oldest daughter has been in her house for the past five years.
    NEVER UNDERESTIMATE THE POWER OF STUPID PEOPLE IN LARGE GROUPS!

  8. #183
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    Quote Originally Posted by Shadow View Post
    You have to be careful with them, sometimes you end up getting ripped off. In the early 2000's I went to a lawyer and had my mother's house put into a deed of trust so after a certain amount of years the government can't touch the house for end of life expenses. My mother is with us and my oldest daughter has been in her house for the past five years.
    Yes, one must do ones homework to get a good reverse mortgage. That aside, they're far more problematic when seniors in relatively good health take them out, so they can take that cruise or buy that new car. Those seniors are the ones who typically end up homeless before they die.
    "Well my son, life is like a beanstalk, isn't it?"--Dalai Lama

  9. #184
    The aid comes to the house M/W/F to give my mother a shower. She called yesterday morning to say she was on her way so I went in to wake my mother. I shook her,rolled her in the bed, slapped her like the woman in the movie Airplane, couldn't wake her. Took her pressure 131/88, oxygen was 97 and heart rate was 114 which seemed a little high for sleeping. After about five minutes she comes out of whatever she was in and was fine and got her shower. After eating breakfast she threw up three times so we didn't give her anything until a late dinner and she is doing fine. The nurse just left and all her vitals are okay.
    NEVER UNDERESTIMATE THE POWER OF STUPID PEOPLE IN LARGE GROUPS!

  10. #185
    Member Camelogue's Avatar
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    89 Year old father in a decent personal care home that is draining all my parents money but so be it, he is on dialysis, can't walk, is incontinent. One of my 3 sisters is in town so we take turns taking my 89 year old mother to visit and help care for her who needs to be somewhere else but is still in family home that needs to be sold. My one sister who lives in NY has the house filled with all of her shit. Parents would not have too much to clean out.

    This is what 60 something deal with today. My grand kids live out of town so no babysitting them.

  11. #186
    Insect Overlord Progatron's Avatar
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    Went to visit my Dad on Monday, to take him to the bank (since he thinks he needs to withdraw cash instead of using his debit card) and to his two stores, where he loads up on insane amounts of chocolate bars and then several bottles of wine. I worry about him falling again, as he has done twice in the past, and the wine won't help. But I can't deny him a small pleasure at this stage of his life and with everything that has happened.

    Anyway, when I got there my sister-in-law was there, and I said "Oh, I didn't know you guys were visiting today too!" - to which the reply was, "No, we've moved in here." .... stunned silence on my part. Apparently it was decided that my brother and his wife and daughter would move into my sister's house (her husband still lives there, of course), as they are having financial trouble and want to get back on their feet. I guess everyone was okay with the arrangement, but it was truly bizarre that nobody had told me. However, rather than any hurt feelings for being left out of the loop, I guess I'm kind of glad that there will be more possible companionship there for my Dad (he does have his health worker three times a week to take him for walks, help shower, etc.) and to also have more people nearby if anything does happen, like falling again for example. This also takes a bit of pressure off my brother-in-law, who is mourning the loss of his wife while having the sudden responsibility of her elderly father on his hands. What a strange turn of events this all is... different twists and turns for people in life when tragedy strikes, I suppose - ripple effect. My wife and I agreed that we were also pleasantly surprised we weren't asked to help them move!
    Interviewer of reprobate ne'er-do-well musicians of the long-haired rock n' roll persuasion at: www.velvetthunder.co.uk and former scribe at Classic Rock Society. Only vaguely aware of anything other than music.

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  12. #187
    Member nosebone's Avatar
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    ^ The end can be cruel
    no tunes, no dynamics, no nosebone

  13. #188
    So my father in law fell one time too many and wound up in the ER for dehydration, massive weight loss, etc. He can't go back home (he's been living with my wife's sister) so he's been in a Skilled Nursing Facility ("SNiF") since late May. This Friday they are moving him into a board-and-care place closer to our house than sister-in-law's, which is fine with me.

    Her mother has been in assisted living for about 8 years now and is showing serious signs of dementia.

    My own parents, in their early and mid 80s, are still active and spending a lot of time on cruise ships, which has become their preferred lifestyle. They can afford it, so more power to 'em I say.
    Cobra handling and cocaine use are a bad mix.

  14. #189
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    Just finished selling Mom's condo (at > $25K loss) and liquidating the contents, most of it goes to Salvation Army or whatever the movers decide to do with it including a lot of photos, souvenirs and memorobilia of a lifetime. We just don't have either the room, the will to take it or the time to otherwise find a home for it. Depressing.

    Mom's in a memory unit in assisted care and thinks I'm one of her deceased brothers most of the time, can't remember my father, her career, her travels around the world etc. She is just a lttle sliver of consciousness living in the moment with precious little awareness.

    On the light (?) side I found my father's high school signature/year book from 1935 with pages and pages of signatures including one page that said, "I'm writing on this page of pink, I hope to god you marry a chink". Odd that I should read such an odious thing at the same time we are preparing to travel to China in a couple of weeks.

  15. #190
    Quote Originally Posted by Buddhabreath View Post

    On the light (?) side I found my father's high school signature/year book from 1935 with pages and pages of signatures including one page that said, "I'm writing on this page of pink, I hope to god you marry a chink". Odd that I should read such an odious thing at the same time we are preparing to travel to China in a couple of weeks.
    Off topic but I had to chuckle thinking about some of the nonsensical things written in yearbooks. In my elementary, middle-school and high school signature/year books I would sometimes hand them to classmates that I wasn't really friends with and since they didn't know me all that well they would write something like that "page of pink" stuff. And I had a few close high school friends ticked off at me because I wrote something like "good luck" while they all wrote these carefully thought-out missives that summed up our years of friendship. No one told me you were supposed to write in a yearbook like you were leaving to go off to war and might never see this person again. I was like, "dude, we're in a band together. I'll see you next week..." All these buddies were expecting me of all people to construct a yearbook magnum opus and I let them all down, lol...
    You say Mega Ultra Deluxe Special Limited Edition Extended Autographed 5-LP, 3-CD, 4-DVD, 2-BlueRay, 4-Cassette, five 8-Track, MP4 Download plus Demos, Outtakes, Booklet, T-Shirt and Guitar Pick Gold-Leafed Box Set Version like it's a bad thing...

  16. #191
    Quote Originally Posted by TheLoony View Post

    All I can do is try to heal which is going badly. I can't work in this condition so I'm stuck here at home. Not much I can say as I screwed up my life a long time ago which ultimately put me in this position. As Journey once wrote, "Be good to yourself" as I didn't and now it may end up killing me. Not sure what's up really as all my doctors suck and don't seem to be helping me at all. I may have to change that up and get someone who can actually help but that's hard as I don't know who to switch to. Gotta do some homework, I guess.
    I hope you find the strength to get through this and things work out for you. I know what you're going through. Caretaking my wheelchair-bound (and stubborn Italian) mother for the last 3 years of her life with no help from other family members took a huge toll on me. I desperately needed the money from my half of selling her house because have been struggling financially so I had to handle every bit of paperwork involving attorneys, doctors, hospital, government, funeral, hospice, banks, the whole stressful mess, or else it wouldn't get done.
    You say Mega Ultra Deluxe Special Limited Edition Extended Autographed 5-LP, 3-CD, 4-DVD, 2-BlueRay, 4-Cassette, five 8-Track, MP4 Download plus Demos, Outtakes, Booklet, T-Shirt and Guitar Pick Gold-Leafed Box Set Version like it's a bad thing...

  17. #192
    Highly Evolved Orangutan JKL2000's Avatar
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    I hope things improve for everyone having these kinds of problems/responsibilities. For better or worse my parents both died before things started to really go south, except for the cancer which was most likely because they both smoked a lot for a large part of their lives. They both managed to quit when they still had a couple of decades left but I guess the damage was done. I'm glad I never smoked cigarettes.

  18. #193
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    ^^ I'm glad I was able to kick the habit over 6 years ago. Not just for the health benefits, but not having to stand outside in 115 degree heat to have a cigarette. I've also never been stuck in a place where smoking isn't allowed, jonesing for a cigarette. The icing on the cake is having an extra $150 a month to spend on music.
    "Well my son, life is like a beanstalk, isn't it?"--Dalai Lama

  19. #194
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    Quote Originally Posted by Buddhabreath View Post
    Just finished selling Mom's condo and liquidating the contents, most of it goes to Salvation Army or whatever the movers decide to do with it including a lot of photos, souvenirs and memorobilia of a lifetime. We just don't have either the room, the will to take it or the time to otherwise find a home for it. Depressing.
    I know what you mean.

    When my dad died in 2013, nine months after my mom, it fell upon me to clean up their house and put it on the market. My mom had bugged him FOR YEARS to clean up all his years and years of "unfinished projects" and junk and "might-be-useful-some-day"s. He was a child of the Depression and never threw ANYTHING away.

    I found a can of bent nails in his workshop. "Those can be straightened!" Boxes and boxes of broken radios, cassette players, ship-to-shore radios, plumbing parts, electrical parts, scrap lumber, nails, screws, bolts, connectors. He still had, in his workshop, every tool he'd inherited from HIS dad almost 50 years earlier! Lotta old woodworking tools and hand saws and clamps from the 1930s. And magazines! Thousands of sailing magazines and Popular Science magazines and old Life magazines.

    My dad tried, several times, to clear out some of his "projects" -- at 90, he knew he'd never get to them -- but he was too emotionally attached. His response became: "Whomever inherits this house will have to clean it out as payment." I did, and I did.

    It was hard on me too, but I had less emotional attachment to it than he did -- especially my grandfather's tools, whom I'd never met -- and my wife reminded me, "If you don't throw it away, who will?" We found a handyman on the island who was willing to take old tools, and we told him he could have everything on the condition that he take everything. I listed his collection of Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Editions on E-Bay and sold almost every one for $10 each. We threw away four pickup trucks full of detrius, but it had to be done. They were his memories, not mine.

    Kept the family photo albums.

    Kept the record collection.

    Gave the silver to my daughter and the china to my sister.

    Sold the house which allowed me to retire a year earlier than planned.

    I still miss the old fart every day, but not his mountain of junk.
    Last edited by rcarlberg; 08-14-2019 at 02:09 PM.

  20. #195
    Member Vic2012's Avatar
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    ^ those old tools are collectibles. I have an old monkey wrench that's gotta be about 70 years old. It's probably a worthless piece of junk but I like having it.

  21. #196
    My wife had her hip replaced yesterday, so that is another person I have to care for until it heals. I think my only relief will be going to Progday to get away from all this madness.
    NEVER UNDERESTIMATE THE POWER OF STUPID PEOPLE IN LARGE GROUPS!

  22. #197
    Man of repute progmatist's Avatar
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    ^^ Been there, done that. My hip was replaced over 6 years. The silver lining is that was the catalyst which helped me quit smoking.
    "Well my son, life is like a beanstalk, isn't it?"--Dalai Lama

  23. #198
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    My 87-year-old mom was up from Ft. Myers last week visiting. While staying at my sister's, she fell down the stairs, went through the front-door screen door, and hit her head on the concrete landing outside (I have no idea how that chain of events happened). She was OK, but her face was all black and blue, looking like that old wrestler the Ultimate Warrior. Fortunately, she has no stairs or even a threshold in her place in Florida. But one call fall any where. That I worry about. Mom has been downsizing quite a bit, so at least there's not a lot of junk around to trip over.
    Lou

    Looking forward to my day in court.

  24. #199
    A few years before she died my Grandmother visited us in California (from New York). In a restaurant parking lot she tripped and broke her hip, winding up in California much longer than she intended. This was doubly bad because my Grandfather was developing Alzheimer's and she was pretty much his minder.
    Cobra handling and cocaine use are a bad mix.

  25. #200
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    My mom has been gone for ten years.The last three years of her life i lived with her at her apartment at North Shore Towers(just over the Queens-Nassau border).I was her "caretaker without portfolio", as she dealt with dementia and cardio-vascular illness.I had no training in being a caretaker; i learned on the job, and it was the hardest job i ever had.

    She(and i ) were lucky, in that, her dementia was gradual downward slide.She never lost her sweetness of disposition.There were very difficult days,there were many good days(at the beginning).

    Being with my mom during these three years was the best thing i ever did, and i know my brother and sister were(are) grateful to me.

    To anyone who is dealing with a parent going thru the living nightmare of dementia/Alzheimers, i wish all the best.Been there;done that.
    "please do not understand me too quickly"-andre gide

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