I’m the sole caregiver for my 87 year old Mom who had a traumatic fall in February of this year. She’s been living with me seven years and was quite autonomous until then. Now she’s in a wheelchair, and has some mental problems with things she used to be able to do, go on Ipad etc. it’s become a full time job taking care of her and can not do my usual freelance work that I used to do. I’m single and have two 25 year olds. My sibling don’t help, It’s all on me, which is fine, but i resent hearing about their luxury vacations, social life etc. when they do the bare minimum to help, including any financial assistance. They have the means but choose to tell me occasionally that i’m “doing a great job”! I recently had a flood in my house, I asked them to take my mom for the day so i can sort out the issues, one said she could spare two hours, another was able to come in late afternoon as she was at the gym. I lost my temper. I told them both how resentful I am that everything is on me, and that I’m feeling angry. Now neither are speaking to me, my mom is upset about it. I feel bad that I lost my cool but at the same time I don’t really want to hear that I’m doing a great job and not giving a witted of what I’m sacrificing. I don’t find it fair and I no longer want them in my life. I also have another sister who doesn’t even bother calling my mother to check in on her.During the month she was in the hospital, everything was in me as well. The doctors basically told me she would not survive the brain injury and to let her die. I fought so hard, realized the second day she was in the hospital that they haven’t even given her IV fluids. I had to fight with doctors to give her BASIC care, Eventually she got better after soave fluids were given, the. they never checked in on her again. I noticed she was declining and was slipping into a coma. I noticed a foul scent of urine and concluded she had a UTI that wasn’t treated and she was becoming septic . I called a doctor in from on call to come to hospital at midnight, he said she wouldn’t survive and I told him about her having, which I suspected a UTI and demanded blood work and antibiotics. He finally agreed, by the next morning she was on antibiotics fluids and the doctor said she had tested isotope for a UTI and eventually found ecoli.
Had I not of done the things I had fought for she would be dead. All the while worrying about my own personal issues. Needless to say i’m resentful that this is the best they can do. I no longer want them in my life, ever again. this is ink ya fraction of my story of what I have been dealing with. Family or not, I don’t want people like that in my life. Does that make sense or am I not looking at this clearly?
I don’t want a medal, or someone to tell me I’m doing a great job. I would have appreciated some actual help in time if need. That’s why I’m done.
I think you are not looking at this clearly.
Having your mother living with you for 7 years, you are too close to the problem to see it clearly.
When the resentment creeps in, remind yourself that you chose this path, and it seems, you apparently like taking care of your mother. Your siblings are not obligated to make the same choice. They may be insensitive, and you are right to set boundaries on your relationships with people who make you not feel good. Almost everyone has some toxic family relationship, and it is ok to limit your time with those people.
But, DON'T resent them for not wanting to do all that you are doing.
Another thing I find concerning is how strongly you are fighting for her to live against all odds, and against doctor's advice. At what cost? What is her quality of life? Your quality of life? She won't live forever. And I suspect that scares you, since she has been so close to you for so long.
Now, let's address your need for help. Of course you need help sometimes!
But you can't rely on family members to provide it. Especially whenever you ask, if a plan hasn't already been made.
Please, contact a home health care agency and find someone to help out regularly. If you and your mother don't have the means to pay for such help, then you can approach your family members and get them involved in a plan to help out - financially. If they are unwilling to provide ANY type of assistance, financial or hands-on care, tell them you can not do it any more.
Force them to take some action. The family will have to make a plan for mom. And if you ask for help, you can't expect it's going to happen your way.
Going back and re-reading your post, I wonder if you have even had a discussion with siblings and ASKED them to help, and tell them what you need help with, and ask them to make a plan. Perhaps they don't know what you need, and don't know how to help. You asked them one day when they already had other plans, and they still offered to help during their available time, and you found it upsetting that they weren't available to you at the drop of a hat in the way that you wanted. You have to clearly define what needs you have that others can pitch in to help. And anything beyond what you and the rest of your family can provide, hire a professional home health aide.
I hope you are able to repair your family relationships and to get past your resentment.
You and your children have suffered long enough . It is so very sad that you can not see your children .
It’s no longer about what Mom wants , it’s about what Mom NEEDS which is to be in a managed care home . AL or memory care.
You are not the one that made Mom
old , you can’t fix old . You don’t have to give up your life because Mom got old.
This will only get worse as Mom declines. Mom will die wherever she is living . Don’t let her take you down with her . Your health matters too . Your relationship with your children and their mental health matters too .
Your mother’s dementia and request to stay at home has ruined your life and your children’s life . That’s not fair.
Your family is patronizing you with sarcasm, saying you are 'doing a great job.' That is not only insulting, it is a way for them to THINK they are avoiding taking responsibility to help/support you to care for your mother.
The question is: What do you do now and where do you go from here?
You are running circles around a situation you can not handle / manage on your own. You need to get help in, be it caregivers or look for placement for your mom. You do not have the ability to care for you based on her needs at this time - which will continue to decline.
First of all, understand how you feel about yourself and get into therapy to help you feel better about yourself. If you do not respect yourself, no one else will.
What you don't want to do is scream and express anger towards your family for how they interact with you and your mother (not helping, frankly useless). Instead, you need to CALMLY ask for a 'sit down' family discussion and calmly express your concerns, your specific needs for their support (even a weekly-monthly schedule of who does what when ... and/or talk about financial support to get others in ... or find an assisted living or a facility/housing that can provide the care she needs. Directly ask them: Do you want to help me help my mother? If you do, what are you willing to do?
As long as you continue to do as you are, the situation will remain the same.
With a therapist for you - and perhaps hiring a medical social worker - you can start to sort out what you need to do.
Obviously it would 'help' if your family would support you in these endeavors. You need to know where they - and you stand - with your family. And go from there. Lastly, develop self-compassion. You are as you are 'now' in this situation. Don't beat yourself up for how you feel / believe. The focus is on how you can make this family dynamic better for you and your mother now. Learn how to love yourself. (Many of us need to learn to do that and it is a life long process.)
Gena / Touch Matters
I would suggest meeting with a therapist and all of your sibling for family sessions. Share with your siblings your feeling and don't hold back. If you find that the therapy sessions are not improving your relationship, its time to love them from far away and YES, you are looking at this very clearly.
Take good care of yourself.
Best
J
Please, please, please find a few more people who are able to help with your mom - family, friends, members of your faith community, and even paid help. If you got sick or injured, somebody else would need to know how to care for your mom while you recovered. Find those people now. Get them involved now.
That was told to me by a wonderful Irish nurse. She said something like "Family is grand. But you also need the village".
Even 3 days a week for 7 or 8 hours would be a blessing.
If mom qualifies for Hospice (and Hospice is not JUST end of life, a person can remain on Hospice as long as there is a continued decline, that meet Medicare guidelines.)
with Hospice you would get a Nurse that would come in at least 1 time a week.
A CNA that would come at least 2 times a week to give mom a shower or bath and order personal supplies. The Nurse would order medical supplies and medications.
You can also request a Volunteer that could come sit with mom for up to 4 hours so you can get things done. The Volunteer can not do "hands on care".
You can not change what they do or their reactions all you can do is change your expectations.
If they are anticipating any inheritance use what mom has now to make her life and yours a bit easier.
My sister did not stop by to see her Mom, or even call, for 6 years. Yet, she jetted off to Iceland, Chile, and Europe during this time.
I've had to find forgiveness.
We have two chances at family: the one we're born to and the one we MAKE.
I doubt your own choices for your own life give you a whole lot of time to build friendships, but may soon no longer be a caregiver and that's the time you can build a "family", making friends you like, respect, agree with and choose.
As to how much care any individual child gives to any individual parent, that's personal individual choice and will vary. You can't waste your valuabe time on it, nor change it.
I don't know if you've ever had a calm discussion with the sibs about why they don't wish to be involved in their mom's last years? If may be edifying: if they say "Well, we like her, but we're too busy with our luxury lives"--you may be dealing with "evil" in some form. But if they say "Mom never was very good to us; we don't feel obligated to her"--then what is there to say? Because you HAVE made your own choices/they theirs.
You sound overwhelmed and angry. I'd stop looking at the sibs. It's clear where they stand. I'd start considering how long I am able to go on in this extreme dedication in a situation you admit is much changed from its beginnings. Any human has limitations. Consider getting a good counselor to work with about your own life and your own choices in this time of transition.
I wish you the best and am so sorry for the suffering, both of your mom and of yourself. I think that "sacrifice" doesn't make a good job description. I suggest reading a few books on the lives of the Sainted Martyrs. Tremor of Bliss is my favorite, and while an older book it's still out there used from Amazon. It's by Paul Elie. I hope you will consider talking calmly with your sibs. I hope you'll update us.
I always look just a little askance at people who diagnose people as "Narcissistic". I don't say they are wrong, but the fact is that fewer than 5% of our population fits the DSM-5 definition, and yet if we read AC EVERYONE's mother, father, sister or brother IS one.
Diagnosis is best left to the experts, because they themselves so often get it wrong that I suspect we don't have a chance.
So when she was ill, I couldn't understand why he wouldn't come by and visit. He never even called to see how she was doing. She would be in the hospital asking for him constantly. I would ask him to please just stop by and see how she was. He would say he was working and hang up on me.
I heard he was also enjoying his life at barbecues and movies and parties with his girlfriend and daughter. It sickened me that I was seeing mom every day and he couldn't bother. This, after all, was our mother.
He only came around when she was close to death, and that was too late, in my opinion.
I know how you feel. We cannot change others and expect them to help out or even visit. They just won't.
God bless you for taking care of your mom. I think though, that you may have to get hired help so that you can have a life of your own.
I totally understand feeling resentful (and jealous) of the fun your siblings are having while you're being a caregiver. So, it's time for you to get some help and reclaim some of your life. At your mom's expense, start adding assistance ASAP. When my mom lived with us, I added a housecleaner when she could no longer keep up with keeping her areas clean. That was great. Then I added some part time aides to spend time with her so I could do my own thing. After some time of this, I found that it was still just too much for me to handle at home and moved my mom to AL. She's been in and out of rehab and will be in LTC when rehab runs out. It's a slow steady decline and not much fun to watch.
Take care of your needs and get help.
Perhaps your anger is really more towards yourself because you can't live and enjoy your life, like your siblings are.
In reality your mom now requires way more care than even you can provide, so it may be wise to start looking into placing her in the appropriate facility where she will receive the care she requires and you can get back to just being her loving child and advocate, and not her overwhelmed, burned out and resentful caregiver.
Your mom would want better for you I'm sure if she were in her right mind. And she most certainly would not want all this chaos going on between her children because of her either.
It's time to rethink this whole situation now as you've more than paid your dues caring for you mom for 7 years, and now it's time for you to take your life back, and start living and enjoying the one life you have, as you matter too in this situation. Your mom would want that for you, this I know, because I'm a mom too, and would NEVER want my children to give up their lives to care for me.
My sister disappeared a year into caregiving, I was so mad at her then I realized I was more jealous of her than anything. Jealous that she had the, since, strength and courage to walk away.
That was absolutely disgusting that your family wouldn't help when you had an emergency, but my new saying is ," it is what it is, let go let God."
You can't change people, you can't make them do or be people that the just are not. Some are not caregivers, some choose not to for very many reasons.
But, what you can change here is yourself. Accept the fact that you can't change your siblings, only you can decide weather or not you want them in your life in the future, it's ok either way. Do what's healthy for you.
So first accept you can't change them. Now you got to figure out how to change your situation. You can't keep doing this by your self , you need help, or mom has to go into a NH.
It's just not possible to keep burning the wick at both ends and take care of yourself.
Religious or not read the serenity prayer. Read it over and over. Change the things you can, and accept the things you can't.
The work you are doing for mom should be done by a village, not one person.
Best of luck
It's a tough thing to accept, but siblings have different views, different thoughts, different feeliings.
I've been on both sides of this now.
Being the on the spot person wanting respite & more help.
Being assumed, pressured & rostered by others instead of asking what worked for me.
Caregiving works best when it works for ALL the people in the team.
Problem #1 The caregiving team is too small. This leads to caregiver burnout.
How many is in your team? One?
How do you feel about increasing your caregiving team?
Resentful? Why? Because sibs have said no? Who else can help?
Problem #2 The *family only* rule.
How do you feel about adding non-family caregivers into the team?
It reads that you have taken the lead role in your Mother's care. Based on your values, your head, your heart. It's OK to be proud of yourself!!
So keep leading if you choose to. Take that authority & build your team. If siblings can't/won't, don't have the skill, time or apptitude - find replacements. Find your village helpers. Either to extend caring for Mother in your home - or a ready-made village environment of assisted aged care living.
I do agree that it was mean that they couldn’t help out in an emergency like your flood .
In general you can’t force someone to help . They have chosen not to be caregivers . And that is how they see it. Have you ever calmly told them this is a lot and asked if they could come help to give you breaks ?
You can also choose not to be a hands on caregiver any longer and place Mom in a facility or hire caregivers using Moms money to come to the home . If Mom has no money Medicaid will pay for SNF nursing home .
The only way to get over the anger and resentment is to accept that your siblings have chosen not to be caregivers and you have .
I know it stinks , you probably assumed they would help out . I’m sorry this is so hard .
Maybe ask for an eval for hospice . A nurse would come once a week to check on Mom . An aide would come 2 days a week to give Mom a bath . Medicare pays for it . You would get all supplies like adult diapers a hospital bed etc .
Hospice would also include respite care , where Mom goes to a facility for a few days so you get a break .
FWIW, I have 4 siblings ,I got next to no help with my parents as well . I rarely asked for help but got plenty of criticism . Caregiving can cause family problems .
No one should be supporting your mother financially . Does she not get social security ? Have you applied for Medicaid for Mom? You may be able to get paid to be her caregiver . Or maybe they would send an aide to the home a few hours a week ??? Different states have their own programs . Medicaid in every state will pay for SNF nursing home . You could call your County Area of Aging to help you navigate how to find help .