She’s fine, Baba, but thanks for the concern. 
I think I’m going to call it a night myself. I’ll check back in tomorrow.
Thanks again for everything, ya’ll. It means more than you could ever know. Good night.
On preview, I see that several other posters have posted since Baba, so I’ll respond to them tomorrow. I haven’t missed them, just need to get to sleep. 5am comes oh so quickly…
DoperChic,
I think your willingness to help your mother as long as you have says much that is good about you. That being said, I want to add my voice to the “you’ve done much more than should be asked off you” group. I don’t know where you are, so I can’t give you specific advice on how to seek assistance in this situation. I would suggest trying to find something nearby with www.eldercare.gov or another resource. (I looked up “elder assistance” in Google; that was the first hit.) Find some organization that can start by giving you options on how to find help. You are 100% correct that your situation needs to change; hopefully you can find the method that will help you best.
Good luck and best wishes.
-Geek
Lots of good advice here.
I quoted this one for a single reason
Run
Run fast, run far.
You love your mother, but are you going to let her kill your life?
Run girl, run.
{{Hugs}}
I took the liberty of searching for posts by DoperChic with the keyword “fiance,” and found two threads: this one, and one from March '06 about buying a house. I found lots of laudable caution in that thread, so I’m going in with a default assumption that you, DoperChic, are not easily railroaded into a new situation that isn’t in your best interests (I’m also assuming the the situation with your mother is one that gradually engulfed you, after the fashion of a brick wall gradually being covered with ivy). Still, if it doesn’t seem to be an invasion of your personal life, may I ask what kind of feedback you’ve gotten from DoperGuy, wrt the high-maintenance mother you have?
Oh, and just so you know, I really am rooting for you achieving most healthy modus vivendi that you can find, given current circumstances.
Or at least, feel guilty enough about not being able to love her to put up with her pee. But it’s hard to love someone who doesn’t do anything good for you. Oh, yeah, she gave birth to you and your sister. Like a classic comic strip says: “ok, so I’m your daughter and we graduated on the same day!”
That was my case for a long, long time. Your mother makes mine look… less bad (sorry, no way she can look “good”)… but I’ve been down the road you’re in.
You need to get out of there. Both you and, if she hasn’t done it yet, your sister. IT’S NOT ABANDONMENT. Your duty to yourself goes first. “Thou shall not kill thyself in the name of honoring a parent who refuses to be one.”
A year after Dad’s death, I left home (again, I’d moved back in to help while he was sick) because I knew that if I didn’t I was going to die. Every day I died a little. Mom would call me when she knew I was in the kitchen cooking to fetch things that were half an inch too far for her to reach them without moving her pillows out of place. She’d repeat this four or five times in the time it takes to cook pasta - we’re talking eight freaking minutes! One day she woke up at 3am, decided she wanted to tell me something, barged into my bedroom, switched on the big lamp and sat on me. OK, she only weighed about 200lb… “only”? AGH! Of course, I was a selfish bad daughter for yelling “geroff!” ferchrissakescan’tevensleepinthisbloodyhouse… We’d make deals: I’d keep my part, she wouldn’t keep hers.
My brothers thought I was being selfish and thoughtless. One of the parish priests came up to me and told me that he thought I was doing the right thing, that “you have to love yourself first”, that his parents gave the same crap to his little brother.
In time, first one brother, then another, and finally even Mom, told me that leaving her and thus “forcing her to stand on her own two feet” was actually the best thing I did for her in all that year.
It’s hard, yes. Both your situation and my post. But I promise, promise, promise, there’s people out here who understand you and who feel your pain even though we’ve never met you.
And I promise, promise, promise, things can get better. I just wish I wasn’t on the other side of the sea and could help more.
{{{{{{{{DoperChic}}}}}}}
Can I throw in one more suggestion? In this day and age, there are bound to be on-line support groups for people in your situation. Why not check a few out? You’re not stupid. You know the current situation is unhealthy for both you and your mother. What’s going to be difficult is breaking the pattern and changing it. I’m sure there are other people who’ve been in your situation. They may have ideas and coping mechanisms you haven’t thought of. When your mother complains, you may want to point out these people who turn up on the evening news at intervals whose houses are packed and who are unable to move independently and tell her you don’t want her to end up like that and you won’t participate in her doing so.
Is your fiance behind you on this? How about real life friends? If nothing else, there are a bunch of us here you can post to or e-mail when things are getting rough.
Good luck!
Ah. But under the present circumstances, because everyone else’s families take priority, Doperchic will never have a family of her own. At what point does Doperchic become a priority, or will she always be treated as a second class person subordinate to the needs of others?
It’s easy for me to say “nursing home” - she’s not my mother. On the other hand, telling the rest of the family you’ve had it, done all you can (tell them YOUR health is suffering. Your mental health certainly is!), and if you don’t get help a nursing home it is for mom. Tear up: “They can take better care of her than I can…” But don’t say this as a bluff. Mean it. Because what you are being asked to do is unreasonable, even abusive.
You missed the next sentences:
DoperChic, you and your sister need, desperately, to work on leaving. Is your mother on some kind of public aid? Medicaid/Medicare? Those are good places to start on finding help. Also, QtM raised a good point about who’s feeding her now that she can’t get out of bed, and what’s happened to her weight since.
You’re not selfish, you’re human. And you have been dumped on greatly.
Allow me to offer some advice, if I may. Set a target date in the fairly near future, say 90-120 days from now. Then sit down with your mother and explain to her that you are moving out on that date, and she will have to start being responsible for her own actions again.
Then do it.
It will be difficult. She’ll play the guilt card on you bigtime. But the bottom line is that you and she are both adults and are responsible for your own lives. At age 24, you should be kicking up your heels and enjoying yourself, not waiting hand and foot on your mother.
I’ll make a blanket statement: love is required in order to take such total and selfless care of someone. That goes for you, too, Nava. I’m one who believes that love is better expressed in actions, rather than one’s emotional state at a given moment.
Amen. DoperChic, you sound like you have been psychologically messed with to the point that you feel that you don’t have choices, and that you are being a wicked daughter for having even an ounce of resentment (thus why I emphasize your capacity for love so much). It’ll be hard crawling out of this mental cage, but you should do so, and don’t waver in your commitment to make a better life for both yourself and your mother. Your mother will be much better off with professional care.
The nursing home suggestion is a good one. They would be much better equipped to deal with all of her needs (I can see that there are alot of them). You may be able to find a good home, with a physical therapy department also. There would also be a better dietary department, and time for your mother to socialize with others outside of the family.
There are plenty of dopers who are also elder caretakers. I have done this for my mother for a dozen years. At first things were headed to the same place that you are now, but I was able to pull back, and get support from the family and the community. My mother has a life and I have one too.
Talk to her. Talk to her sisters. Talk to her doctors. Heck you can even talk to me, if you would like. If you are in PA, I can make some recommendations for resources.
Big hugs from here.
Please, DoperChic , if you can’t work up the nerve to move out, try to convince yourself that you aren’t doing enough for her and she needs professional help. Whatever it takes, get out of there.
I wish I could give you some of my own attitude towards my mother. She’s smoking herself into oblivion and she’s so gross and stinky I can’t even bring myself to hug her. I will NOT be taking care of her since it’s her own fault she’s sickly.
Emphasis mine.
That’s the best part of your advice – set some hard numbers. The vague “sometime in the future” will never arrive.
And don’t think of it as abandoning your mother. Think of it as enabling her to take control over her own life.
Yes, please hire a caretaker as soon as possible. They are not too expensive. Taking care of someone is a job, and it deserves to be a paid on with beginning and ending hours.
Don’t let the word “nursing home” scare you away. Thing have changed, and there are some very nice places for people to live that can help their needs. My great-grandparents spend their elder years in an “independent living facility” where they had their own large apartments with kitchens, but still had the option of eating meals (served on china with table clothes) downstairs in the “restaurant”. The place had great facilities- a library, a jigsaw puzzle room, a chapel, a piano room…and a lot of activities. They had a hair dresser that came by weekly, a parking lot so people could keep their cars, and was located downtown where people could walk out to parks, etc. It was a wonderful place for them and they had great social lives there- much livlier than if they had stayed at their homes relying only on family fo human contact. We hired home aids for both of them to do laundry, give pills, etc. and that way everyone was actually able to enjoy family visits (twice weekly) instead of turning them in to work sessions.
It sounds like your mom isn’t quite independent, but I’m sure you could find a place for her to live that could give her the help she needs and give her a shot at a social life.
DoperChic, if I may ask, how old is your mother?
I’m so sorry to hear about your situation.
Many Dopers have already given good advice. Allow me to share what I’ve been going through, so you can see what worked for me.
My 85 year old elderly father is a wonderful man. However he has various health problems (e.g. high blood pressure, Parkinson’s disease, chronic arthritis) and has lost the sight of one eye (plus most of the other) following a stroke.
He was being cared for by my lovely mother, aged 84, (with my sister and I helping), until she was rushed into hospital for an emergency operation.
This meant my Dad had to go into full-time care.
I spent the next two weeks visiting my Dad every day and driving 2 hours three times a week to see Mum. The stress (and worry about their health) on top of my regular job (I’m a teacher) meant I was starting to crack up.
My cousin, who works in a care home, told me that nobody can care for somebody else 24/7 (especially family, because of the extra emotional pressure) and that I must give myself a break.
I didn’t want to because I thought I would be a bad son if I did so.
Then both my parents told me to go on holiday.
So I did, and it was only then I realised how shattered I was.
Now I visit my parents regularly, but I have my own time too.
I hasten to add that I was lucky to have such unselfish parents and to get such good advice.
I’m sorry, but not only should you do exactly what I did, but your mother is also being manipulative and selfish.
Get some cover and give yourself a life.
Damn. A true life What’s Eating Gilbert Grape. Almost. Just don’t burn the house down.
I’ll add here that some people do just take and take and take, and the term I’ve heard before, “emotional vampires”, does seem to apply here. Even if depressed, your mother should at least realize that you need to live a life of your own.
My husband has used the phrase, “I love him, but I don’t like him,” to refer to his father. His father recently came out of the hospital and a rehab center after a long bout of pneumonia with lots of other complications (hematoma, stroke, etc.). His mother can drive just fine, but his father got so accustomed to being catered to by his kids that apparently he butted into a conversation my MIL was having with one of her daughters to demand the daughter bring him ice cream and soda from the store. :rolleyes:
DoperChic, you are dealing with a seriously ill person, both mentally and physically, on your own. Your mother needs complicated medical attention.
I would talk to her doctor. Tell Doc your mom needs help more than what you can provide her, and ask for suggestions. I think some hospitalization is in order at the very least. And your mom has been living in that River in Egypt for so long, it’s going to take a long time to get her out.
Just out of curiousity, has she seen herself in a mirror lately? How about a recent video?
For what it’s worth, I turned my back on my father for less than what you’ve had to deal with. Not a lot less, but definitely less.
It’s been more than fifteen years and I haven’t regretted it for a moment.