Skip to main content

Eldercare: Almost It's Over!

How did things go so far downhill so fast?

A month ago, I wasn't thinking about my parents going to a nursing home and selling almost all their belongings. But kidney failure put my mother in the hospital and an accident put my father there, too, a few weeks ago. They've since improved and now they're both at a rehab center. Their dog has moved in with me.

Mom and Dad were in the same room, but they had to move my father because he called out for my mother all night and she couldn't get any sleep. Now he calls out to her from the room across the hall. He stops if I'm there--he calls out for me instead. At least my mother has the room to herself so she can learn to drive her new wheelchair, the one I found on Craigslist and bought from a guy at a storage unit way out in Longmont. When Mom said she found it hard to control, I bought a new joystick for it off Ebay.

Ebay wouldn't take my credit card--it said it had expired. It hadn't. The seller's website wouldn't take my address, even though I live in the US. I finally gave the seller my credit card number over the phone and got the joystick. I put the new joystick on her wheelchair the day after I got it, but Mom still can't drive it. This, from a woman who used to get around in a wheelchair that drove like a bumper car. I advised her to practice for a few hours.

Monday, I met with a man who does estate sales. He looked around my parents' house (after I'd taken out about 50 bags of papers and old toiletries) and said it would take him and his crew of six to eight people two weeks to set up. Most houses, he said, took a week to set up. Yes, I grew up in a (borderline) hoarder house. I've watched episodes of Clean House lately and wished the messy houses they show were all I had to deal with.

Among the papers I sorted were several unpaid bills. I take care of my parents' bills, but I can't take care of them if I don't see them. They're paid now, and now that my mother doesn't have to spend so much time taking care of Dad, she has time to deal with credit card companies and her credit union. The way her lawyer set up her power of attorney (with two co-successors) renders it useless with her credit union. She's putting me on her account and I've whipped up a new power of attorney form.

You'd think a nursing home would take care of all needs. Not so. I do my parents' laundry since nursing homes lose patients' clothes left and right; the last time, they sent Dad home with random clothes that weren't even his size and ended up writing me a check for clothing that I had bought for Dad a week earlier. Since both parents have lost weight, I bought them some new threads from Goodwill and ARC.

My mother's blood sugars have been running over 200 since she can't take metformin anymore. She can't control her blood sugar with food alone--I think the kidney failure scared her into being more strict about carbs than she had been. (The doctors said her kidney failure might have been caused by an antibiotic she reacted to.) So along with clean laundry, I brought her some Atkins bars and made sure she had enough coconut oil.

My next project is to scan her photos and letters onto her laptop and send the originals to her sister, who has volunteered to act as curator. (I bought a laptop cable so the laptop doesn't go the way of my Dad's clothes.) If Mom ends up with one more thing that needs to be taken to the post office, she's on her own.

Helping my parents isn't all I've been doing: I got three fillings replaced a few days ago. Between that and having revived my habit of grinding my teeth at night, my teeth have hurt for the past few days to the point that it's hard to eat. But I feel well enough to go to Engrish.com and have a good laugh without hurting myself. And now that things are becoming more stable, I tell myself, "almost it's over."

Comments

tess said…
you're a great woman, Lori! your family has a lot to thank you for!
Lori Miller said…
Thanks, Tess. I am in amazement of people who do this sort of thing for a living.
Lowcarb team member said…
Lori , wish I could do more to help ....but my good wishes to you are strongly being sent across the wire.

All the best Jan
Lori Miller said…
I wish people around here could do more to help.
Galina L. said…
Yes, it looks like for better or for worse your worries are almost over. How quikly things changed! Not long time ago you were doing landscaping around your parents house.
I am not sure, would it be comforting for you to know that the situation with elderly care in US in general and your parents in partyicular looks like a heaven from some far away countries? Really, everything is not too bad at all.
Lori Miller said…
True, it could be a lot worse--I'm lucky we live close together without a continent and an ocean between us. Their nursing home is clean and pleasant. But the most stressful thing next to their being so ill has been dealing with all of their clutter.
Galina L. said…
It is not about distance. My mom's partner is in a care facility now, and it is impossible to communicate with his caretakers when their care is causing mostly discomfort for poor guy. My main focus during my visit was on keeping my mother calm.

There is a bright side of people living in small apartments in Moscow - they don't have much space to hoard staff.
Lori Miller said…
I'm sorry to hear about your mother and her partner.

My mom's physical therapy has been causing her pain, but yesterday, I happened to be there when a therapist came to her room and I told her that exercises weren't going to help her bad leg (caused by surgery) or her torn rotator cuffs. The therapist listened and asked us about the wheelchair--the one Mom needs practice to learn to drive. Hurray!

I tried for years to get my parent to downsize and move closer to me.
Galina L. said…
My mom's partner now is often delusional, refuses to eat, and they keep him on IV which requires restraining and odviously causing him discomfort to put it mildly.
Lori Miller said…
How awful--I don't know what else to say.
Karen said…
Hugs! I dealt with so much of this last year when I lost my Dad. Still dealing with it with my Mom.

Scanning old photos brought me the most peace and happiness. Good luck through the next few weeks and months. Karen P
Lori Miller said…
Thanks, Karen. Sorry to hear about your father.

Popular posts from this blog

1972: Carole King, M*A*S*H and...Food for 2014?

I feel well enough to try Atkins induction again. The palpitations are gone, even without taking potassium. My energy level is back to normal--no more trucking on the treadmill early in the morning  to burn off nervous energy or emergency meat, cheese and mineral water stops after yoga. It's back to lounging around to Chopin and Debussy in the morning and stopping at the wine bar for pleasure. I'm using the original Atkins book: Dr. Atkins' Diet Revolution from 1972. While looking in the book for a way to make gelatin (which is allowed on induction, but Jello(TM) and products like it have questionable ingredients), I felt the earth move under my feet : those recipes from 42 years ago look delicious and they're mostly real food. It makes sense, though: the cooks who wrote the recipes probably didn't have had a palette used to low-fat food full of added sugar or a bag of tricks to make low-fat food edible. Anyone who writes a recipe called "Cottage Cheese and...

Mince Meat Pie Recipe, low carb

The star of Christmas dinner this year was made of unlikely ingredients. Fruit and beef tongue sound high carb or unpalatable, but mince meat pie was so popular 250 years ago that it was in many cookbooks from the time--and it wasn't just for Christmas. My version cuts the carbs by using tart cooking apples, cranberries, monk fruit sweetener and a nut flour crust. The main flavors are orange and slightly tart fruit; the meat and fat make it filling. Have it for dessert or with coffee or tea for breakfast. Make some soup with the collagen-filled broth and discover how tender and tasty the rest of the beef tongue is. Worth the time and effort. IMPORTANT--start this recipe the day before. Links in the recipe go to hard-to-find ingredients and directly to the cookbook with the recipe for the pie crust. (I made the almond flour variation of the crust.) Recipe 1 beef tongue (I get mine here ; look for farms or ranches in your area that sell directly to consumers) 2 Granny Smith apples 1 ...

In Defense of Fast Food

Another modern trend - healthy food should be expensive, not nutrients-dense and preferably exotic, or you would be eating like plebs who live on a dollar McD menu. --Galina L. I don't try to jump over seven-foot hurdles, I look for one-foot hurdles I can step over. --Warren Buffett, pleb who eats at McDonald's Despite all the talk about wild-caught v. farmed, grass-fed v. CAFO and the vilification of fast food, a lot of us plebs benefit simply from carbohydrate restriction. But even though diabetes and obesity are rampant, and carb restriction alone would help millions of people, the impression is out there that you need to eat in a very specific way, far beyond just watching the carbs. Following a low-carb diet is already a high hurdle for many people. If some people want or need to raise the bar for themselves, that's fine with me, but there's no need to turn low-carb into a hurdle that a lot of people can't jump over. Organic produce and grass-fed or p...

My New Favorite Sweetener

If you're looking for a low-carb sweetener with no aftertaste, no franken-ingredients, and that doesn't upset your stomach, try monk fruit (also known as luo han guo). This is what Quest bars were sweetened with when they first came out. Monk fruit is Dr. Davis approved. You can buy monk fruit in powdered or liquid form; both are super-concentrated. They might seem expensive, but you use the powder by the spoonful (even in baking recipes) and the liquid by the drop. The baking recipes I've made with the powder have turned out well. Available from Amazon . Beware monk fruit sweeteners with erythritol.  The package of powdered monk fruit sweetener I bought says, "Use 1/8 teaspoon to create the same sweet taste as 1 teaspoon of sugar." But it's so sweet that I use 1/10 the amount. To replace a cup of sugar, I would use 5 teaspoons of monk fruit sweetener. Tip: hand-stir this in before using the beaters. It's such a fine powder that it flies up and out of the ...

Is the NIH Privately Helping Patients with COVID Vax Injuries?

In a recent letter from several attorneys general (AGs) demanding an explanation as to why so few vaccine-injured people have received so little compensation, the AGs asked a curious question: We have been told by constituents that NIH [National Institutes of Health] is privately helping patients across the country with COVID-19 vaccine–related injuries and is even bringing patients to NIH for study and treatment. Is that correct? Why have these activities not been better publicized? What sorts of studies of these patients is NIH currently conducting? What treatments is NIH administering? Photo from Pixabay . Most of the letter focused on compensation for COVID-19 vaccine injuries. As you know, vaccine manufacturers in the US have immunity from lawsuits, but people suffering from vaccine injuries can be compensated by the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP). But among the 10,000 COVID vaccine related claims, only 20 claimants have received compensation. "And but for...