Convincing an Elderly Parent to Go to the Doctor

In My Humble Opinion
1

My mom, early 70s, refuses to go to the doctor. I would like to hear if you ever managed to convince your elderly parents to go, and if so, how. I have already contacted a local aging council and am waiting on what they have to say. The rest below is just me rambling into the void, because Feelings. Just to make this more of a thread, if you also need to Talk about Sick Parents here, please do.

She lives about two hours away and the isolation of the pandemic has not been good for her. She’s always been paranoid, but it’s really ramped up with the election. She called me a couple of days ago convinced Democrats Are Out To Get Her, but everyone is a democrat - the postman, the shop cashiers, etc. She says she hears feet at night walking around her housing and throwing firecrackers at her house even though she lives in a great area. She says people follow her home from the store. I think a lot of this is because her only entertainment is watching conservative nut jobs on Youtube.

On this call, I was caught off guard and did the reasonable thing, which was start to cry and ask her to go to the doctor. She was very angry and accused me of thinking she’s crazy. Then later, she sent me a wall of texts about how she’s going to sell her two houses and move to Wyoming. Today it’s Costa Rica. I don’t know if I’m actually scared she’ll do this or not. She has done impulsive things before.

My mother is so against doctors that last year, when an infection literally collapsed her lung, and when I called 911 because she was dying, she fought with the police and EMS for THREE HOURS before they could get her to the hospital. She hadn’t moved in three days from her bed but still managed to scream No. It’s like her very essence, purified into one unconscious action, is denial. The police man claimed he couldn’t force her.

So there’s no good evidence this is possible. She’s still able to drive and cook for herself, so should I just wait until that is no longer true? Talking to her, when she is not on a paranoid tirade, she seems very clear minded and smart. I don’t think there’s anyway she’d move to my town, and I doubt she could afford it even if she wanted to.

2

What a nightmare. I’m sorry. I’ve been there, and am still there. There’s not a lot you can do when a parent is getting really creaky and not quite sane, yet still insists they’re absolutely fine, thank-you-very-much, even when they’re clearly not.

It’s true that cops and EMTs can’t force anyone into an ambulance against their will, even if it’s pretty clear they’re not making a smart choice. If your mother is determined not to get medical care, that’s her absolute right – until she is unresponsive, THEN the medical folks are allowed to step in. It may come to that, sorry to say. Hope it doesn’t.

Everything that follows is based on my experience with a similar parent in an extremely remote and isolated area thousands of miles away. You’re two hours’ drive, so it won’t all apply, but just throwing out ideas in the hope it helps you.

You might call around more in your mom’s local area – ask to talk with a social worker at a local hospital; talk to the senior center. Talk to the county health department, and the state department of public health.

You can call her state’s Adult Protective Services or Elder Protective Services and discuss the situation with them. You may, if you want, file a formal report of elder self-neglect; this ought to trigger a welfare-check visit. They may decide to open a case based on what they find.

You can and should discuss all this with her physician, if any. Make it clear you’re concerned for her safety, and that she is refusing to get any medical help.

If she’s out in a rural area, or even if she’s not, call up the sheriff’s department and introduce yourself. Call up her church, if any. You can even call a local church/synagogue/mosque that doesn’t know her at all, and tell them there’s a person in their community who may be in need. Most people, I’ve found, are willing to listen and offer advice, even if they can’t help directly. Keep a log and make a file.

Oh, and you can also call your own employer’s EAP, if any. They can refer you to people who specialize in elder care issues.

3

Thank you for all of those suggestions, that is really good information! I’m sorry that you have to go through this, too. I imagine being so far away must be even harder.

I’ve been a little scared about calling something like APS because I want my mom to still be willing to talk to me (I’m lucky in that she’ll text me almost every day), but I know “my mom will be mad” isn’t a good reason for not acting. It’s hard to know where to draw the line! Thank you again.

4

I was fortunate, in a sense, that both my parents were ambulatory and sane until their final illnesses took them within a couple of weeks (each separately, separated by 6 years).

My father was 87 when he died. Mostly he was normal and sane, except for his driving, which was actually fine, except when it wasn’t. His best friend, a former neighbor and woman about my age, suggested that maybe she should drive when they went to dinner, and he regarded it as such an emasculating suggestion that he cut her out of his life, and never saw her or talked to her again.

How this relates: old people often seem to have one thing they cling to, so that they can say to themselves "Well, at least I’m not THAT old (or sick, or disabled, or something). When there is a threat that whatever that is will be taken from them, I think they often get a little nuts. Often it is loss of independence that can feel very threatening (side note: it would help so much, for me at least, if the staff and management of long-term care services didn’t treat their charges as if they were children; but that’s another rant for another time). You’re making them come to terms with not just their mortality but their increasing frailty and inability to do normal self-care activities like going to the bathroom. (Another side note: that prospect is very nervous-making to me, as well, at “only” 71).

I don’t know if these meanderings help you at all, but if they seem to hit home even a little, maybe you could try some mirroring activities with your mother (you’d have to look that up for a more thorough treatment of it), saying things like “I guess going to see a doctor can be pretty scary” or “I know I’d hate to be told that there stuff I can’t do any more” or things like that (in your own words, and of course things that fit the conversation and situation). Let her see that she can discuss her feelings with you and you won’t judge her or nag her or tell her what to do. Eventually, she might come to the right decisions on her own, if you have the time and patience to let her get there.

Good luck. I am dreading these things when they come up with either me or my husband. One of us is going to be stuck taking care of the other, and the one being taken care of is going to be miserable because of it.

5

I’m so sorry for what you’re going through.

I have experience pushing someone who is reluctant to go to the doctor to get checked out, but nothing when it’s paranoia that you’re dealing with.

I have at least pushed some people to stop watching just Fox and such and watch other networks to get some perspective, often by essentially arguing “how do you know Fox isn’t the fake news?” but that seems inappropriate here, making her question even more things.

This is part of the reason I am so big on blaming those who push fearmongering and misinformation for the results of that information. It genuinely causes so much harm.

6

Thank you for this suggestion! This is a good idea, and I will look up mirroring activities. I know she’s scared of losing her independence, and she told me she hates being so alone. I think I get frustrated because I want to yell “You’d have your independence a lot longer if you’d accept help!” but I know it’s not that easy. She’s in otherwise good health, eats healthy, exercises a lot, avid gardener. She’s only 72 so it really caught me off-guard that this is happening now. She had me late, and I fucked around most of my 20s, so I don’t have a good foundation to help take care of her.

This part is really frustrating to me, because my mom doesn’t have TV or a computer. She never even had a cellphone until about two years ago, and at first, I was happy she was so open to texting, but it didn’t occur to me that she basically spends all of her day watching the looniest of loonies on youtube. I feel responsible because I introduced her to it to watch garden videos, and didn’t realize that it would so quickly turn to outright Nazi propaganda. She went from volunteering to environmentalist orgs with aging hippies to being openly and aggressively racist and right wing. It’s scary what happened to her.

7

I dealt with this with both my father and mother. I am 400 miles away and relying on reports from my sister to get some sense of their well-being. Occasionally, my mom will break down in tears and tell me that my father is neglecting his health and is clearly dying. My mother neglects her own health. She hasn’t been to a doctor in 30 years… They each have their issues.

Convincing my dad to go to the doctor was like waiting for a junkie to hit rock bottom. Losing 30% of his body weight for no reason didn’t convince him. He was proud of getting down to a healthier weight. When he couldn’t walk more than 10 feet at a time without a break; when the bathroom, which is adjacent to his couch, was too far to walk; when he turned gray; when his brother visited him to say his goodbyes; when he couldn’t life himself off the toilet after pooping, he finally decided he should go to the doctor. It did take some cajoling on my part. I yelled at him that he owes his wife of 52 years more than dying on the couch holding his own bottle of pee.

When he finally went to the doctor, and from there to the hospital, my mother assumed that she would never see him again… My sister thought the same thing. My mother yelled at me like it was my fault he waited this long.

His condition was fully treatable and never would have gotten that bad had he just gone to the doctor sooner. Because he waited so long, instead of being treated as an outpatient, he was hospitalized for four days and received four transfusions before checking himself out against medical advice. Ironically, he needs at least two treatments to fully recover. He’s skipping the second one. Apparently, he learned nothing.

Talking with adult protective services or a social worker is probably a good idea. Be careful about reporting elder self neglect though. The result may be that adult protective services moves to put a guardian over your parents to care for them. This may not be in their best interest. This Last Week Tonight video on guardianship may make you both laugh and cry.

Did you know there are foreign language versions of all those same ultra-conservative videos designed to scare immigrants? It’s shocking how effective those things are at crazy making.