2-3 years ago, Dad was seriously ill. In a coma for a month.
Afterwards, my sister Heather pressured him to sell the house & move in with her.
Today, January 1, 2012, I phoned Dad to wish him a Happy New Year, & to chat.
Heather wants him to go into an assisted living facility.
They went around to a few, & picked one together.
Dad hemmed & hawed, & I can’t get a straight story from him.
[ul]
[li]Heather & Neal want him to meet new people.[/li][li]Him being there is a “burden” on Heather.[/li][li]He has unspecified health needs, that he won’t talk about.[/li][/ul]
My brothers? Tommy doesn’t want him. Andy hasn’t phoned him at all, in about 2 years.
I live in a 1 bedroom condo. I have offered to shared it with him. He says no.
Dad doesn’t want me to talk to anybody in town, as the people I know, he also knew. But I need to unburden myself.
This isn’t right! He’s our Father! Heather badgered him to sell his home, & now she’s dumping him!
He’s my Dad. And Heather didn’t even call to tell me this was happening!
I don’t really know what to say except for that isn’t right (which I’m sure you already knew) and I’m sorry to hear about what you and your dad are going through. Have you tried to talk to your sister to see what she has to say about it?
Until you know what those “unspecified medical needs” are, it’s hard to say if Heather’s being a selfish bitch or not.
It may come to the point where my father will need to move into a nursing home. Probably, actually. All it’s going to take is one stroke that wipes out his ability to control his bowel or bladder or his ability to feed himself. Mom works full time, which leaves me, and while I’m willing (while praying to every god in the wide universe to please spare me) to handle diapers and feeding, there’s no way in Hell Dad will let me.
Well, he can’t sit in poop all day, and he can’t starve four days out of seven, so even if his cognition were intact, we’d move him into a nursing home for care. If his cognition were intact, I can pretty much guarantee that he would never actually say the words “incontinent” or “can’t feed myself”.
So, from the outside, the situation might look a lot like what you’re dealing with. Would it be worth it to talk to Heather and discover what’s going on?
That really sucks, Bsoda…even if there is a real health reason, your sister really should have discussed it with the whole family before something this big happens.
I wish I had some good advice…but…all I can do is agree with you right now.
-D/a
There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with assisted living. The stress of taking care of my father almost certainly contributed to my mother’s early death. Neither my sister or I could give my father the 24 hour a day help he needs. There’s nothing wrong with someone admitting that they no longer can do it alone. And assisted living is not some sort of waste bin to throw old people in. My dad loves his place, he sees more friends in a day than he did in a month living on his own.
That’s not to say in your specific family situation that there isn’t something fishy going on, just that it’s possible that it could be a totally positive change.
As someone who’s seen the other side of this with my own Grandmother, and whose parents are heading in that direction, I can tell you - don’t judge your sister until/unless you get the whole story. And even then, don’t judge her too harshly. Taking care of an aging parent is no walk in the park, and nursing homes/assisted living facilities are not akin to the 9th level of Hell.
You have no idea of how difficult it is to take care of an old person until you do it. I watched my mother take care of my Gram, and she nearly put herself in a nursing home with the stress of it. It doesn’t take much to need round-the-clock care, and no one person can do that without it taking a huge toll on their own health, not to mention their immediate family. Your sister may have invited your Dad to live with her with all the best intentions, and it may have worked out well for the past few years, but now your Dad is at the point where he needs more care than she can give. Or maybe it hasn’t worked out well, and your sister has struggled with it for years before finally coming to realize that for both her and your Dad’s health, he needs to live somewhere else. And yeah, maybe she is a total selfish bitch. But my biased opinion is that she’s probably not.
You might want to check out the facility he’s going to move into yourself; they’ve come a long way over the past few years. The nursing home my Gram was in was hardly a high-class or expense place - most of the residents were low-income or downright poor - and it was good. She was happy there, they took care of her, and she had much-needed social interactions that she would have never gotten in a private home. If she fell in the middle of the night, an alarm would go off and they’d find her right away. If she needed assistance doing anything, she had a button to press. Her doctors came to her, sparing her a tiring visit to their office. Overall, she had WAY better care than she would have gotten from living with a relative, no matter how dedicated that person may have been.
So don’t jump to conclusions, and try to understand that nursing homes are not bad places at all. We all may end up in one eventually, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Your sister might be making the very best decision for your Dad.
Assuming that your father is competent, I’m not really seeing anything inherently wrong here. I could be mistaken of course, but a few questions would need to be answered. What happened to the proceeds of the house that Heather “pressured” him to sell? Has Heather adequately cared for him the past few years? What exactly ARE his medical needs? Why do you think that he’d rather live in your one-bedroom condo than in what is basically an apartment building with a bunch of his peers and qualified medical personnel?
I understand your distress, but I think you may be projecting a bit. I’d much rather be in assisted living than trapped in the house with my well-meaning kids who are nonetheless resentful about wiping my ass.
Another vote, not without sympathy for your situation, for Assisted Living can be a really good thing. It is for my Great Aunt. Who admittedly is the poster child for her Assisted Living community because she’s cheerful, healthy, and enjoying life.
She had been living independently until a couple of years ago, but at nearly 90, people were concerned about what could happen, and she was starting to become isolated, because neither she nor her friends drove at night . . .
Living with adult children can be rough for all concerned, especially if the adult children are not in the best of shape (physically or mentally). Plus the whole (potential) isolation factor.
So your sister may be making mistakes (in lack of communication if nothing else), but assisted living may be the right place for your dad.
My grandmother has been in assisted living for something like fifteen years, and it’s been great. Wait and see what it’s like before you freak. It may turn out to be a great opportunity for him.
My 98 year old grandfather went into assisted living about 5 years ago. About a year into it, he told my mother he was going to need her to get him a bigger bed because the one in his apartment couldn’t accomodate overnight guests. The year after that, his then girlfriend ended up with a broken hip due to amorous activities. (She went through surgery and rehab, and is fine now, btw). He’s now on girlfriend #3. One of their favorite things to do is take their walkers, stroll on down to the local liquor store, come back with their selections hanging off of their walkers, and have an evening of it. I wish I was kidding about any of the preceding, but I am not.
My point it, Dad may not find assisted living to be quite so bad.
I would like to point out that I do not know the exact details of said activities, nor do I want to. Ever. However, the famillial reaction ranged from mortification (my mother), to frank admiration (all the males in the family, pretty much).
Seconded. My great aunt lived in Assisted housing for the two decades before she died, and loved it. It was a far better solution than a non-specialist relative sacrificing their life to care for her. Of course, it is still a shame that nobody in your family was consulted.
Agreed. But assisted living/nursing homes are not always a bad thing. We kept my MIL at her home as long as we possibly could. Between heart problems and on-setting dementia that became impossible and we faced several hurdles - we needed a secure (locked down) unit NOW and none were available. The good facilities were basically full because of patients who had started assisted living and then declined. There were beds – but those were in places that were not much about care, just warehousing until death caught up. It took a lot of fight and our own money to get her into a good place (two years now) - something we couldn’t provide otherwise. And one that will keep her in that manner and location long after its just Medicare paying the bills. Had we gotten Muvver into an assisted living when she was a little healthier. And let them advance her as her condition declined. Maybe - just maybe - she and us would have been a little better off. I’m not saying that is for sure the case for you but its another side of a coin with a lot of faces on it.
I would think that living with an elderly parent in a one-bedroom condo is going to be taxing even if the relationship is perfect. But I seem to remember prior posts from you in which you complained about the difficulty of living in your parents’ home with your widowed father. As I remember, you had a difficult relationship with him.
Have you tried to talk to your sister to see what she has to say about it?