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I'm sorry you're going through this, Spam. When my dad died, it was really sudden, so I didn't have to deal with the long, drawn out suffering. At the time, I thought it would've been better, but after 8 years, I finally realize that was the best way to go.

 

I'm worried about my mom. She's 73, and is in pretty good health for someone who eats fast food and junk food almost exclusively. While at the same time starving herself to be thin.

She fell and broke her right foot and her left leg. She definitely needs surgery on the foot and will find out tomorrow if she needs it on the other leg. If she does, she's going to a rehab facility for several weeks, If that happens, I'm worried about her mental health causing a decline in her physical health. I could see it happening pretty quickly, because she already struggles with a lot of mental health issues.

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I usually just stick the backside in the morning and fast groomers after that. I avoid moguls like the plague.

We had a really terrible season with low snow levels because it just kept raining

midweek and then snowing a little on weekends, and the mountain was also short-staffed, so they basically gave up on grooming. So tons of moguls, even on blue runs. It was ridiculous. I called it a season as soon as my daughter's lessons were over (we made 5 of 6).

 

Where do you ski? I ski at Copper Mountain and we got 6 feet in March and has been a great year. I have made it up about 12 days this year (I am hoping to get 3 more days), my lowest in like 7 years. I plan to make up for it next year.

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Soooooooooo.

 

I have bone spurs in my shoulder and am having surgery on Wednesday to shave them off. I fell off a damn ladder in my bathroom changing the overhead light bulb out and put my head through the bathroom door.

 

And to make myself feel even worse my Mom has been moved to hospice (her choice she doesn't want to do any more things and wants out of the hospital).

 

I am feeling pretty damn down.

 

For Tami's sake I have a Tim story.

 

I had to get a sub a week before spring break and head to Tucson to visit my Mom. My brother called the ambulance on February 12 because our mother, who bought him a pick up and feeds his weed habit and lets him live the life of playing video games all day and mooching off her social security became concerned AFTER she'd been on the toilet 8 hours.

 

The ambulance comes and takes my Mom to the ER way back then and I got an update. Mom is still in the ER 24 hours later. No room. She is having trouble breathing and still hasn't peed or pooped. Turns out when I got to Tucson I learned she was refusing to take her clothes off for the admitting nurses to do their work. They ended up having to put her on a ventilator for a week and a half. I have been disowned because I didn't drop everything and come right out.

 

Basically Mom weighs 87 pounds and is malnourished and dehydrated and she was struggling to breath. She is on oxygen now but REFUSES to eat anything.

 

Tim just comes at about noon and he's done a wake and bake. I can't believe my Mother chooses him to be her person. She feels like she will die without him. The thing is she is dying with him as his caretaker. But it's not like there isn't food in the house. She just doesn't eat and cannot force her to. Her doctors have been telling her for the two weeks after the ventilator came off that if she eats she can go home and drink her booze but she has to eat. They put her on a protein drip and have to treat her like a diabetic and give her steroids.

 

My uncle and aunt want to press elder abuse charges against my brother because let's make a bad situation worse. She hates both of them and claims she's pooped so Uncle and Aunt will leave the room while the nurses check her behind.

 

On my last day Friday I finally got to talk to her alone. She just wants to go home to die and be with her dogs. She was crying when I came to sit with her tor the night and I told her she was beautiful and I loved her and we love her. I've known for years that she was doing a REALLY slow suicide. But my brother can't believe it.

 

Anyways. The whole thing is a mess and when you get older think about your relationships and make plans to make this easier. Because this **** isn't easy. I had to pay for deductibles on credit because the healthcare industry is AWFUL and nothing has changed, if they do a procedure I guarantee the hospital will come down and ask for money. You don't have to pay and they'll still do it but hospitals want their money. I don't want my mothers estate to be tangled up in stuff because they haven't made any plans and pretty much it's going to probate when she dies.

She is starving herself intentionally?

 

I am fairly sure my grandfather, whom started getting pretty bad dementia, tried to kill himself with Oxycotin in a few brief minutes of clarity.

 

As an atheist, I am scared shitless of death. But at the same time, I would never, ever want to be a burden on either of my sons to the point where they had to wipe my ass. My das, who has MS and can barely walk, took care of my grandfather in this condition for a few years. If that becomes me, I hope I have the strength to end it.

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I usually just stick the backside in the morning and fast groomers after that. I avoid moguls like the plague.

We had a really terrible season with low snow levels because it just kept raining

midweek and then snowing a little on weekends, and the mountain was also short-staffed, so they basically gave up on grooming. So tons of moguls, even on blue runs. It was ridiculous. I called it a season as soon as my daughter's lessons were over (we made 5 of 6).

Where do you ski? I ski at Copper Mountain and we got 6 feet in March and has been a great year. I have made it up about 12 days this year (I am hoping to get 3 more days), my lowest in like 7 years. I plan to make up for it next year.
Summit at Snoqualmie. It's considered the crappiest ski area in the state because it's the lowest elevation, but it's the easiest to get to and ski lessons are dirt cheap through my company ski club ($150 for 6 weeks for my daughter, $99 for me if I want to do them). It also used to have plenty of parking, but they started that stupid Ikon Pass and now its crowded AF. It's so bad we are switching back to Friday night lessons next year and then we will try to get back up there on Sundays first thing or after 1pm if we can when parking opens back up.
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A lot of people have told me it's not my job. HA! I worried too that my last words would be mad words. It was super hard to control myself with my Aunt and Uncle and my brother. I carry a lot of anger about how this all came down to begin with but it wasn't my choice.

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My Mom has mental issues like undiagnosed anxiety which I think is linked to the desire to not eat food so she's not a big eater but she starves herself not because she forgets to eat but on purpose through this.

 

Brando! My mom hated rehab when broke her hip four years ago. Find a good home. We thought we found one for mom but it was super noisy and Mom hated it.

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Thanks for the advice. There's what seems to be a good one really close to her. At least it's run by the best hospital system around here, and her surgeon is connected with that hospital. But you never really know until someone is there. But I became a bit of an expert at the hospitals in Columbus in the past year and the hospital they're most closely affiliated with is the best.

 

I'm really hoping it doesn't happen but I think it will. Unless she can convince them to wait, but I don't think waiting weeks for the second surgery is practical.

 

She went to a shitty doctor at first. He's well respected, but I don't get it. He ignored symptoms, including missing that she had broken her leg, because he just cared about the foot. Then he wasn't going to do surgery at all and wanted her walking, and then later berated her for not being in a wheelchair after refusing to prescribe one.

 

She got into a new doctor and he immediately said she needed surgery and was concerned about everything wrong with her. I'm no doctor, but I was shocked that the first doc didn't want to do surgery because it was so obvious that she wasn't going to just heal on her own. Maybe is she was 33 instead of 73, but even at that she had serious injuries.

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My mom had this horrible resident right after her hypoxic brain injury that exaggerated and made a lot of bad assumptions at the start, so as treatment continued, we couldn't trust anything she said. She was very biased about pulling her from life support but refused to do additional testing for brain function that would've made that decision a lot easier to make. Refused to consult neurology because it wasn't a neurological issue, it was a pulmonary issue. If she wouldn't have been so stubborn, we probably would've let her go with some appropriate consulting with neurology. My mom did recover fully from the pulmonary issue, but there was brain damage that wasnt clear until months later. Arrogance has no place in patient care.

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My mom had this horrible resident right after her hypoxic brain injury that exaggerated and made a lot of bad assumptions at the start, so as treatment continued, we couldn't trust anything she said. She was very biased about pulling her from life support but refused to do additional testing for brain function that would've made that decision a lot easier to make. Refused to consult neurology because it wasn't a neurological issue, it was a pulmonary issue. If she wouldn't have been so stubborn, we probably would've let her go with some appropriate consulting with neurology. My mom did recover fully from the pulmonary issue, but there was brain damage that wasnt clear until months later. Arrogance has no place in patient care.

The question isn't "can she live", but "what is the quality of life and who is going to care for her". I need to make a living will to pull that plug if I won't be able to care for myself after a reasonable amount of recovery time.

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She was super upset with us because she did not agree with my mom's quality of life, but up until then it was completely her decision and she had made her wishes clear a couple of months prior. She wanted to fight. She also made dumb mistakes like assuming my mom's urine tube was a feeding tube. My mom had never been on a feeding tube until this happened. When I explained that to her, she told me I was wrong, there was no way it was a urine tube. Just the most arrogant person I ever encountered in health care. We had to ask for her to be removed from my mom's case and we continued to hear her complaining about us in the hallways.

 

One person's quality of life threshold is different than another. My dad said make him DNR. My mother-in-law would let herself die from an infected paper cut. My mom, who was arguably in the worst shape out of everyone, wanted to fight. As soon as it became clear she had brain damage, I took over as MPOA and signed all the DNR orders. When she got pneumonia it was a done deal, but she had to suffer for 17 months until then. But breathed fine until then!

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Is it just the worst feeling being that person. I feel the weight of the world and making the right decisions and stuff. On my last day before I had to go back to Texas after seeing my Mom I was so mad she still chooses my brother to make decisions for her because they're all bad and painful. I just told her she was beautiful and I loved her and sat with her quietly for three hours. She's still hanging in there. They have her on a slow feeding tube and she's had three different times that they've taken out a liter of fluid from her lungs.

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I think I was the right person to be making decisions. My dad was really good at it, too. He actually went against her wishes once and had her intubated because he knew she wasn't ready, even though she had said never put me on life support. When she came out of it, she was happy he had made that decision. She also knew he wouldn't let her be a vegetable, he just didn't make rash decisions. And my dad always supported me, and was a wealth of information when I went through this three times with her, even though they were divorced, and it was definitely not in his best financial interest for her to be alive. My mom's family always freaked out and the doctors preferred dealing with me. I was also much more effective at advocating for her when stuff went badly. I was great in crisis mode, but my mom never thought I did enough for her. If it had been up to her I would've never left the house and would've spent my whole life waiting on her hand and foot and wiping her ass. She loved her sister who would fuss and cry over her and make a big show while I dealt with the doctors. I realized at the end that my aunt was who she really wanted, and I was just a disappointing substitute because that's just not how I operate. I'm fairly affectionate with my kids but I don't coddle them endlessly. My mom's family thought I was a shitty person for not doting on her like she wanted, but when they finally saw me in action with the last major issue, they saw what I really did. Unfortunately, Mom never saw it. You do what you can for them.

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We are twinning so much right now. My brother is the guy my mom wants and it really hurts. I think though I am jealous a tiny bit. I think on that a lot as I drive multiple times back and forth between here and Tucson. Going out again this weekend now that school is being pushed back until April 3 but I'm flying now. Tickets were cheap and I'm willing to risk it. It just really sticks in my craw that she didn't even add me to the notification list so when I call the hospital I can't get any information while I am here in Texas. My Mom also wanted that for me... stay home and wait on her hand and foot. I feel like I'm trying to grow adults and they are all over 45 years of age when I go out there. Like little kids or something.

 

My older brother Matt flew out last week to spend time with Mom and it made me rest easier knowing he was out there because he hates drama and stupid stuff and just comes right out and says it. He DGAF. None of these people did anything for him or I and we don't owe them anything.

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This Tim story isn't funny, though, it's ****ing tragic. Your family is a Jerry Springer Show. You got all the good stuff.

 

I don't know what to do with adults who won't do anything or are in no mental position to help themselves. The older I get and the more time I spend with my Mom, the better care I take of myself and the more I'm motivated to take care of crap I put off. I have no relatives who would be tasked with this burden of cleaning up my shit and I certainly won't have to the money to hire anyone.

 

What do you DO with a mother who won''t eat enough to stay relatively healthy? <3

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