Caregiving to elderly people dear to you - and you can go crazy

[Aerows]

Care giving to elderly parents, relatives and friends can make you crazy.

THIS is what happened to me on Saturday afternoon, but I remain a cheerful human being somehow:

My dad asked me (insisted) I get some office chair from the neighbor's house that they had moved off and left. I reluctantly did so, and dragged it home, hoping it would be some sort of project he would look into that was low impact and would occupy his time.

A day later, my mother is screaming "your father fell" and of course I go running. He is in the middle of the kitchen floor, because the chair I *thought* he was going to refurbish, he assumed was sound and it gave way and there he is on the kitchen floor.

He is griping, my mother is yelling, and this continues for 45 minutes. I sit on the floor with my back to my fathers back and inch him along - because he cannot get up. I try to get him up and he yells that I'm hurting his arm, shoulder, hand ... can't get him out of the floor. All I can do is sit there, listen to the yelling, screaming and be the back for him to be in the floor.

Finally my uncle comes over after the hour and a half ordeal of me getting him to the couch and gets him on it.

I have never felt so powerless in my life. Not because I couldn't get a 175 lbs man up off of the floor, but because he cried like a baby when I tried to do so. Man comes by, does the same thing, it's all good.

Mind you, I hover around 105-110, but I also lift weights. It doesn't matter I guess, though, because the ordeal ended. 2 hrs. because of a fucking chair he just HAD to "salvage", sat down in, and fell out of.

I did a sanity check on myself. I thought, Aerows? Are you a lunatic, or was this some major bullshit? I affirmed to myself this was some major bullshit.

He has the chair on the back porch. Tuesday is trash day. I will beat that damn thing down with a hammer and put it in the trash, and barring that, I will set the SOB on FIRE before he will get mixed up with that damn thing again.

Sometimes, you just have to say WTF.

[Mnemosyne]

1. It's rough indeed. Sorry you had a hard time, Aerows.

[Suich]

2. Glad everyone is ok, Aerows!

Don''t hesitate to call 911 if someone has fallen. That's what they are there for.

Take care...

[vanlassie]

3. Many times, if you place a (sturdy) chair next to them, they can get on all fours, then

use the chair to work their way back up. First they have to calm down, tho.

[pnwmom]

4. Maybe you should sic the raccoon on him?

Sometimes black humor is the only thing that works with me.

Hang in there, Aerows!

[area51]

5. I hear you.

Am taking care of my elderly mother & it's not easy.

[a la izquierda]

6. I was watching my grandma for a week

while my mom took her grandkids to Disney. My grandma had Lewy-Body Dementia (an awful disease). Anyway, the cable guy had to come over and buy, was my grandma not stoked about that. She kept telling me he was the devil, she paced frantically, all the while calling this guy every awful name in the book. Then she told him to get the fuck out of our house. Just like that, all 100# of Italian lady, cursing at the cable you.

I was horrified, but seeing as though the guy realized she was sick, he thankfully took it in stride.

[yeoman6987]

7. I did it for a very short time,

Hardest job ever although glad I did it but it was not fun.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

8. I'm sorry to hear that you had to go through that, Aerows.

Taking care of elderly relatives is tough. I did it for a while with my parents before they passed away, but I never had it as bad as some people I know have had it. Elderly people can get some extremely strange ideas in their heads and drive us crazy attempting to deal with it.

When I was about ten, my step grandfather wanted me to hold his hand to help pull him up, to help him get out of a recliner. He was in a sitting position, not reclining. I kept telling him I couldn't help him. In high school I weighed about 115, I was a small kid. I'm still not much over five feet tall. And I have delicate bones. Meanwhile, step-grandfather was a big strong man, who used to work hard, and my grandmother, his wife, had infantilized him and tried to make him as helpless as possible.

He probably weighed 200 pounds, and was a big strong man sitting in a chair, acting like he couldn't get up by himself. He just couldn't understand why I couldn't go along with his plan to have me pull him up out of a chair when he weighed twice as much as I did. But my grandmother was busy waiting on him all the time, so she could play the martyr. Relatives are weird.

[Yo_Mama]

9. Ah, I'm sorry, sometimes you just have to call for help

I am one of those that thinks calling 911 carelessly is extremely awful, but when you have an elderly person down from a fall that you are not able to get up due to complaints of pain, it's time to call.

The elderly can get very emotional from frustration, and sometimes getting the official medical authorities into it breaks the cycle. In any case, you just don't know how serious the problem may be. That was a very hard hour and a half for you.

Also make sure your father gets in for a medical evaluation within the next couple of days. Even a short period of immobility from pain can wreak havoc on the elderly, and sometimes strains don't heal well and they need PT.

Lastly, the physical therapy now for the elderly is pretty good, and actually helps some of them a lot. Medicare pays for gait training, etc, and I have seen it make a big difference in quality of life.

One can never tell how things will come across on the internet, but my purpose in posting this is to validate your WTF instinct. I don't think you should let this slide.

Did the office chair have wheels on it? He may have been so intent on getting it because he thought he could use it to get around better. Office chairs aren't NORMALLY found in kitchens.

My thoughts and prayers are with you. This is very hard for everyone.

[brer cat]

10. It is a much harder job

than many realize. It is both physically and mentally draining. The only advise I can give you from my experience is to keep a good sense of humor...it will help you keep your sanity.

[malaise]

11. It's hard to win with stuborn elders

At least the next time you can use this example to deny his wish. He'll cry and scream anyway.
Sadly the phrase once a man twice a child is real and we really have little choice but to treat them as children sometimes. It's hard because we love and respect our elders and we want then to make their own decisions.

By the way you weren't crazy - just overwhelmed.

[a kennedy]

12. You have got to keep your sanity through this all, I recommend drinking heavily.....

Sorry it might get a whole lot worse.

[PatrickforO]

13. It's rough to care for elderly parents. I know.

Take care of yourself, too.

[spinbaby]

14. Reminds me of my father in-law

He was obsessed with acquiring useless objects and fell down a lot tripping over useless objects. The dementia eventually progressed to where he was placed in a nursing home. It's hard to visit now because he's almost completely non functioning--can't stand, can't feed himself, doesn't recognize family, but somehow still manages to fall out of his wheelchair.

[Peacetrain]

15. Aerows... I know exactly what you are talking about