Hello dear people of the Dope,
this is going to be a very long post, partly because I need to vent a bit, and partly because I am at a total loss what to do.
My mother is a bit over 60, significantly overweight, was diagnosed with COPD a few years back after several decades of being a heavy smoker, and is doing her best to shorten her already decreased life expectancy even more.
While she did quit smoking actual cigarettes and now is only vaping all day long, this is pretty much the only change for the better that she managed. Everything else she does seems to be like going through a list of unhealthy lifestyle choices and checking off all the points. And she has excuses over excuses as to why she can’t do anything to improve her health.
She barely leaves the house at all, and most of her days are spent playing Facebook games, watching TV and sleeping at random times. She grazes on food all day long but rarely ever cooks actual meals, so her main diet is sweets, snacks and things like cheese and sausage with a disturbing amount of extra salt added on top of everything. And all this is washed down with huge bottles of coke or energy drinks.
She is treating her COPD with cortisone pretty much all the time now, even though I think this was actually supposed to be a spray just for emergencies only originally.
She has severe lymphedema on both legs and has been blatantly ignoring that problem for so long that her legs now have cracked skin and oozing blisters all over. Her only attempt at solving this particular problem was to take twice as many diuretica every day as before, because even just applying cream to moisturize and repair the skin barrier is too much work and she “doesn’t like creams because it’s so messy”.
A few months ago her lung specialist told her he can’t do an X-ray of her lungs anymore because the chair in the X-ray room is only for a maximum of 130kg and she is over that now. Mind you, she didn’t tell me that story because she was shocked and angry, but because she thought it was funny. And then as an afterthought she added, “and by the way, the doctor is overweight too”, as if that would prove some point.
I could go on and on, but basically it comes down to her living a very unhealthy life and always having a reason and an excuse. She can’t go for walks because it’s too hot, too cold, too rainy, too much pollen in the air, she is too sleepy. She can’t drink mineral water instead of coke because it makes her mouth feel dry and it has no flavour. And so forth.
Right now she is in hospital because she fell off some furniture while trying to hang up her curtains. Miraculously she didn’t break anything, but she has a huge gash on her leg that isn’t healing properly, which is why they have been keeping her there all week and may even have to perform surgery on it if more tissue keeps dying off.
So half of my phonecalls at the moment are my mother complaining that there isn’t even sausage or other cold cuts for breakfast at the hospital, and talking about how she is trying to convince the doctors to release her early. The other half of the phonecalls are my brother being very angry at my mother for not taking care of her health at all.
It’s honestly starting to wear me down, even though at this point I’m mostly doing the “open ear” thing and letting them both talk until they’ve said all they need to say.
But how do you get through to someone who is actively avoiding trying to make good and reasonable changes to their life? Being angry at her obviously isn’t useful. I tried the gently encouraging approach for many years, even with some very subtle guilt-tripping, but I think she just ignores that. Directly addressing the issues just makes her react angry and hostile, or she will crack bad jokes about it and laugh it off - anything but actually take it seriously.
So any ideas, insights, … would be very welcome. 