Unhappy Thanksgiving (long)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Well, I’m back from Phoenix.

Mom is not doing well. She’s 70, and she has to use a walker. Her back is killing her. She won’t eat. Since she’s not eating, her body has to get its energy from somewhere. She’s always been tiny, and her body is feeding off of her muscles. This only exacerbates her walking problem, since she’s losing strength. Her back is killing her.

She actually did eat a plate of food on Thanksgiving. Friday she wouldn’t eat anything. Saturday she had to bites of pecan pie in the morning. (She fell on her way back to her chair, where she sleeps.) Sunday we went out to brunch. She didn’t eat much, but she ate some. More than she usually eats. Monday she had a bowl of cereal, and we went to Boston Market for lunch. (She ate half of her meal there.)

She weighs 87 pounds. (By comparison, my 5½-year-old nephew weighs 86. :eek: ) She’s not drinking enough water.

The first anniversary of her husband’s death is approaching (31/12). She lives alone, and is lonely.

I got very little sleep. I had an ear open listening for any signs of distress. If I heard her go to the kitchen, I’d get up and carry her coffee back to her chair for her. The first night I was there, she tried to carry her coffee herself and wound up on the floor.

My nephew likes to play with his truck in the xeriscaped back yard. He ran over one of the drip irigators and broke the T-fitting. He tried to fill one of the pools in the fountain with rocks from the ground. (He didn’t have nearly as much fun getting them all out!) He knocked back the sun dial a few times. He scratched the sandstone path rocks because he ‘had to make train tracks’. He’s noisy, and won’t listen. He’ll have food on his plate, but wants to get more so that he can play with it. He won’t eat all of his food, but has no problem eating cookies, pie and candy.

One exchange:
Him: ‘I want Gushers!’
Evil Uncle Johnny (Me): ‘You don’t need Gushers.’
Him: ‘Yes, I do!’
Me: ‘Are you hungry?’
Him: ‘No.’
Me: ‘If you’re not hungry, then you don’t need Gushers.’
Him: ‘I want Gushers!’
Me: ‘You said you’re not hungry. If you’re not hungry, then you don’t need more food.’
Him: ‘I’m hungry!’
Me: ‘You just said you’re not hungry. Which is it?’
Him: ‘I’m hungry.’
Me: ‘You have food on your plate. If you’re hungry, eat that.’

Mom’s grandson drives her nuts. She’ll be trying to sleep, and suddenly there’s an outburst of noise. It was driving me nuts, too, since he was always on the verge of misbehaving and I was trying to keep mom comfortable.

I expected to show up in Phoenix and help mom pack so she could move to San Diego to be close to my sister. She doesn’t want to live in their house, since my nephew will annoy her. She also says she’ll be ‘living under my sister’s rules’ instead of her own. But she shouldn’t be alone. It scared the hell out of me, seeing her so frail and not eating and falling down. She says a visiting nurse wouldn’t do any good, since she only needs someone occasionally; it won’t do any good if she falls when no one is there.

If she’d only eat, and drink more water! Her body would have nourishment to feed on instead of muscle tissue. But she says that she ‘can’t eat’. It makes her nauseated. I told her to eat anyway. Even if she pukes, some food might make its way into her system. (She did ask for some Jell-O salad – Jell-O, apples, walnuts, cottage cheese, Miracle Whip and pineapples sort of made up in a kind of blancmange – on Saturday evening. That made me happy.)

And then there’s the pills. She took a handful of painkillers on Friday, and she was loopy. When she got up, she had a decided list to port. I offered her Tylenol instead of the prescription stuff, and it seemed to work just as well without wiping her out. But her deteriorating back is painful all the time no matter what medication she takes.

She gave me her late husband’s flight jackets and Ray-Bans. She said he doesn’t need them. She talked to my sister about the Trust. She apologised to me for not talking to me about it. No need. My sister doesn’t work, and she’s a lot closer than I am (300 miles vs. 1,500 miles). It’s logical that my sis should be iin charge. Mom’s afraid that whoever is in charge will screw the other one. Bollocks. Sis and I don’t work that way. And who cares, anyway? Yeah, it’s ‘nice’ that there are assets to be divided when she dies; but look at the price! I’d be happier if mom lives a long, long time; able to get around and take care of herself, and without constant pain.

My nephew and BIL headed back to San Diego after dropping me off at the airport, and my sister is staying in Phoenix for another week. (It’s the first time she’s been away from her family – ever.) I’m glad she’s there. I hope she can get mom to eat and get her strength back. I know they’ll talk about getting mom to San Diego. The options are to find an assisted living place, someplace where mom can live alone but still be close to sis, or building an addition to sis’s house (there’s a 16’x22’ slab already). Mom can sell her house in Phoenix for a small profit (although since she’s been there less than two years, there will be Capital Gains taxes on it). There’s also a couple of IRAs as well as income from the house mom owns in San Diego and her late husband’s retirement income from Hilton. So she’s not exactly hurting financially. That’s a relief. Not that she’s rolling in dough, but she has enough to get along.

So the Thanksgiving holiday was not exactly a joyous one. Lots of sitting around watching TV, reading, catching catnaps when we could, and standing ready to help mom whenever we could. It was nice being in a desert again though. (I like the rain and the cold, but it’s nice to be able to sit in the sun from time to time.)

Oh: Thanksgiving dinner. Mom really wanted to cook it. She started it by chopping onions for the stuffing. I offered to help, but she wanted to do it herself. She started feeling weak though, so I ended up doing the cooking. Onions, celery, cranberries and sausage in the stuffing in the 16-pound bird. BIL did the mashed potatoes and crescent rolls, and I made the gravy. Mom made her Jell-O salad the day before. I don’t remember what sis cooked, but I know she did something. She also took care of the dishes. It was a real group effort.

2

I feel for you—my Mom’s not doing well, either.

Yours needs to be in assisted-living, or have a live-in (or visiting) nurse. She cannot be on her own, and your sister cannot take full charge of her and have her own life.

Call a visiting nurse service and ask what the good and bad assisted-living/nursing homes are in whatever area is convenient. Ask about insurance.

Your mother will not want to go, but this is the time the children have to become the parents and say, “sorry, but we want to keep you alive, and this is the only way to do it.”

Good luck!

3

I feel for the both of you. I’ve been through this with my father. He didn’t go into assisted living because between my mother, sister and me, we were able to care for him but it wasn’t easy watching him deteriorate due to Alzheimer’s.

I’m fortunate that my mother is in excellent health. She lives on her own since dad died (with my sister right next door and me a little over two hours away). Heck, she’s going on a cruise at the end of January! Go MOM! She’s considering selling her house and moving into a retirement complex though. That would be good because she would be in her own apartment for as long as she remains independent and can move to assisted living and even, Og forbid, to a full-time nursing facility within the same complex. I’m glad she’s thinking and planning ahead like that.

JohnnyLA, I agree with Eve on the idea of your mother going to assisted living. She won’t like it, but it sounds like your sister and you may just have to become the “parents” and insist on this. That’s tough to do, but it just may be what y’all need to do to ensure your mother is safe and make sure her needs are met.

FWIW, Eve and Johnny I’m sending thoughts, good vibes, prayers even, both your ways for strength and perserverance in dealing with aging parents.

4

Oh, and Johnny L.A., she needs to have a complete physical—I’m nopt talking a doctor’s visit, I’m talking a check-into-the-hospital complete going-over to see what the heck is going wrong.

5

She’s recently out of hospital. She went in for gall stones about a month ago, then she went in again because she was falling. She had a complete scan, and the docs didn’t find anything wrong with her aside from some degeneration of her lower back. Apparently she had a spot on her lung, but it’s gone now.

I think her main problem is that she’s lonely without her husband. She won’t try to make friends, and she won’t go out. She has friends in Orange County (CA), but they’re couples and she feels like a ‘third wheel’. She had a psychologist during her last hospital stay, and he told her to sell the house, move to San Diego, and be near my sister’s family. It’s not good for her to sit alone in Phoenix. She and her husband moved there in October 2003, and they weren’t there long enough to develop any friendships. So now she just sits and watches TV, taking catnaps in a chair or on the couch. I’m sure she can get her strength back, at least enough to get around safely and maybe enough to drive; but she needs a reason. We can cajole her, and we can reason with her; but we can’t make her eat. :frowning:

6

Update:
[ul][li]Mom’s going in for an MRI tomorrow to see if they can do anything about her back.[/li][li]She’s talking about going to San Diego with my sister next week. ‘Temporarily’.[/li][/ul]

7

I hope it works out, be sure to keep us updated…Up until just recently I was very concerned what was going to happen with my parents [both born in 1923…we are very long lived in our family unless we get killed in the army]

I am very glad that my brother is the back to the nest type…he was never happy away from the old home town so when he went civillian recently he moved back in with our parents but it works out beautifully - he does the heavy lifting, heavy gardening/mowing/house care type stuff, they dont mind when his girlfriend comes to visit [he and she alternate weekends - one weekend at her house, next one at his house] and they dont have to get a pet/house sitter when they go away for weekends or that 3 month florida thing they do.

We really havent discussed it, but when the time comes I am not taking the house cost equivalent in stuff/cash from the estate, or doing what Dad wants [sell it and split the cash] because as far as I am concerned, he has more than earned it. I am seriously happy that we dont have to worry about them being alone.

8

An assisted living place might help your mom in more ways than one. The one my grandparents are in, there’s levels of care - my grandfather pays one level, because he needs assistance in transferring to his chair and in the bathroom, and my grandmother pays another because she dosen’t need anything but her medications and room and board, plus assistance should she fall or something.

My grandparents don’t mix much with the others, but that’s just them - it might be good for your mom, because they all eat together in the dining room, and there are a lot of single ladies. (Okay, widows. The male/female life expectancy discrepancy is never as obvious as when you’re eating dinner at the old folks home.) They have activities and such, also, and they do things like run anybody who wants to go to Target every Friday, and bring the hairdresser in on Wednesdays, and what have you.

My grandparents have a smallish room, but they have a little tiny kitchen of their own, they can decorate it any way they like - it’s a lot like how they used to live in their condo in Florida, only there’s somebody around to help 24-7. It was a difficult adjustment, but it’s best for them and I think, given what you said about your mom’s situation, that something like that might be right for her, too.

9

Tell me about it.

Note to self: die young.

Damn, too late.

10

My great-grandmother lived in a complex like that for something like fifteen or twenty years; it was great. She moved about three times while she was there, from an apartment where she was mostly independent into a couple of smaller places where she got lots of help and meals and whatnot but they didn’t do the medical stuff – a step above the nursing home building, in other words. It was great; she had the help she needed and a social life. And if she’d needed full-time medical care she could have moved in there.

I highly, highly, highly recommend it if you can find a good one. I don’t know what took them so long to come up with the idea!