Do I say Hell No or let the MIL bully us into coming

[Edd]

Of course some of us no longer or never had children so we are screwed if we get old. That’s why I always intend on keeping ’enough’ pills in the house. Especially once Mrs AFB is gone (should she go first).

Add to that my pension is worth less at the end of the year than it was at the start! Nice. Should have just spent the cash!

Admirably grim post but I pretty much agree with you. There should be some right to end your own life past an advanced age. It’s not like life gets easier but it does get harder in many ways, with a lot more physical pain. I’d pick a lower age but if you’re 90 for example and you want it to be over, nobody should be able to stop you from doing that.

 

[mollyc]

My parents are in their mid-80s and finally moved to a retirement community next month. Given their ages, they get along well enough (both with life and with each other ) but my dad is overweight and falls with some regularity, and my mom probably weighs about 110 pounds soaking wet and she can't help him get up when he falls, so it requires a call to the ambulance. He rarely gets admitted, but they just literally need someone strong and agile enough to get him off the floor. They live 6 hours away from me, and about 4 from my brother. And their house is really too big for them.

They are moving to a duplex kind of place, but have the ability to move to other housing if their health requires it. I'm not going to lie, the grounds are kind of depressing looking, but we visited at Thanksgiving so hopefully it's a bit cheerier during a greener season. But from a daughter perspective, I'm glad they are moving where they can be looked after; someone checks in on them every morning to make sure they are okay. My mom was the primary caretaker for her own mother, who got moved to assisted living in our town when she started getting dementia, and also her great aunt who lived about an hour away and did die in her own house. It's always annoyed me my mom insisted on staying in the big house for so long because she went through both sides of it, but I also get that moving requires a mental adjustment to "this is the beginning of the end" which must be horrifying.

 

[Herdfan]

My parents are in their mid-80s and finally moved to a retirement community next month. Given their ages, they get along well enough (both with life and with each other ) but my dad is overweight and falls with some regularity, and my mom probably weighs about 110 pounds soaking wet and she can't help him get up when he falls, so it requires a call to the ambulance. He rarely gets admitted, but they just literally need someone strong and agile enough to get him off the floor. They live 6 hours away from me, and about 4 from my brother. And their house is really too big for them.

This was a frequent occurrence when mom was living. If she fell and they ambulance took her to the hospital, Medicare paid the bill. If she fell and they just helped her up, they billed her $100. After she passed and I was looking through her checkbook, I found way more of these $100 payments that I was aware of.

Mom needed to be in AL long before she got there. I think her living alone and trying to do things by herself contributed to her decline. I am glad I lived about 15 minutes away.

 

[Eric]

She is alone. But she is stubborn as hell. She was raised on a farm and still has some of that independence in her, but in a bad way.

When my mom passed, my wife offered her 1) a recliner with a lift to make getting out of the chair easier and 2) a scooter so she could get around easier. She flatly refused both because she is not ready to give up. Of course, she is also the one that thinks everything that happens to older people only happens to her. She got breast cancer a few years ago and didn't understand "why these things happen to me", ignoring the fact that most people her age have some type of cancer. Everything is about her.

I mentioned she was raised on a farm, but she was also the youngest by 8 years (a "recreational" baby) and has always felt entitled. So when things don't go smoothly, she doesn't understand that sometimes, happens and it's not the universe conspiring against her.

She would be a perfect candidate for Assisted Living, buy according to her, those places are full of old people who need help. Like I said, entitled mentality.

You are describing my mother perfectly, when she got to the point of either falling or being unable to eat/take care of herself she absolutely refused going into assisted living and became such a burden on the family that everyone ended up resenting her for it. Eventually she ended up there about a month before her death but it was a long and difficult journey for all of us.

I get that we all want our independence but I have a hard time understanding why they won't accept some help when it gets this bad. I can tell you that as soon as I feel like I can't handle it on my own I'll gladly move into assisted living, are you kidding me? All of your meals are taken care of, your room is cleaned regularly, etc. it's all inclusive. If/when that day comes I'll look forward to it.

 

[Apple fanboy]

You are describing my mother perfectly, when she got to the point of either falling or being unable to eat/take care of herself she absolutely refused going into assisted living and became such a burden on the family that everyone ended up resenting her for it. Eventually she ended up there about a month before her death but it was a long and difficult journey for all of us.

I get that we all want our independence but I have a hard time understanding why they won't accept some help when it gets this bad. I can tell you that as soon as I feel like I can't handle it on my own I'll gladly move into assisted living, are you kidding me? All of your meals are taken care of, your room is cleaned regularly, etc. it's all inclusive. If/when that day comes I'll look forward to it.

Different strokes for different folks. Sounds like my idea of hell. Even worse for Mrs AFB.

 

[Eric]

Different strokes for different folks. Sounds like my idea of hell. Even worse for Mrs AFB.

The question is who will you lean on when you can no longer stand?

 

[lizkat]

Different strokes for different folks. Sounds like my idea of hell. Even worse for Mrs AFB.

Your viewpoint can change as faculties begin to decline to point of not being able to get around well. So far I have escaped that (unlike some women around here who were farming partners and spent a lot of time back in the day kicking hundred-pound bales of hay down the mow), but I do try to look ahead and plan for adjustments over time. For instance, I've quit buying both Porsches and top-of-line Ford trucks.

 

[Scepticalscribe]

Different strokes for different folks. Sounds like my idea of hell. Even worse for Mrs AFB.

Agree completely.

My idea of hell, also.

 

[lizkat]

Well I do admit to thinking I will have to summon denial to my aid if ending up in a "fresh food desert" featuring mostly canned soups, canned vegetables, canned fruits and institution-ready beef patties etc with a nod to vegetarians along lines of "vegetarian baked beans."

I am spoiled by having had access to fresh produce most of the time and frozen veggies otherwise.

Still and by experience so far, I realize that over time one's expectations can change and some things become less important than others. The times I was without power for a few days, I was happy to have canned things to fall back on, even if they had to be eaten cold. But I also realize there's a kind of "camping out" sense to those experiences, which would not persist long in a nursing home for sure.

My friends of an age and I laugh sometimes to see our expectations dwindling: "well we have adjustable fonts for our ebooks, plus audiobooks and powerbanks for our phones, and Ella just got a hearing aid and is happy as a clam, so..." bit by bit we are already accommodating failing vision or hearing, and being appreciative of the fact that we are better off than our own elders in their later years.

Will any of those improvements distract me from sadness over eventual inability to set the book down and go out to the kitchen and make a crunchy and colorful stir fry for supper? No way. But there are some disappointments naturally in the offing for all who manage to cling to life that otherwise still seems enjoyable into great old age, and all I can do about that scenario is enjoy what there still remains of my faculties and good luck in the meantime.

There's some advantage to being a cherry-picker of memories of the fun times every day, and letting the less fun ones slide away to the dust-bin. That's probably especially true of anyone who's somehow managed to stay pretty healthy. I don't want to become a sudden whiner if "something happens" or whenever my expectations of good health take a hit just because no one lives forever. I don't want to live forever. I do want to remember the fun of being alive though, and I feel like I'm the only one capable of taking that experience away from myself prematurely by focusing on what's around the next curve in road.

Every year at wellness checks I remind myself that most people end up having to take some sort of medication for this or that. So far not the case for me yet, but I need to work on accepting that taking some pills is not the same as tubes-in tubes-out, since I rather think of that day of prescribed meds as some sort of dire milestone: "the end is near!" But that's silly, isn't it. For one thing I'd finally get some use out of the Part D drugs plan premium. For another I've always been grateful for meds that extended the lives and lent quality of life for longer to family members I loved.

 

[Herdfan]

Every year at wellness checks I remind myself that most people end up having to take some sort of medication for this or that. So far not the case for me yet, but I need to work on accepting that taking some pills is not the same as tubes-in tubes-out, since I rather think of that day of prescribed meds as some sort of dire milestone: "the end is near!" But that's silly, isn't it. For one thing I'd finally get some use out of the Part D drugs plan premium. For another I've always been grateful for meds that extended the lives and lent quality of life for longer to family members I loved.

I know you are older than me, but do you get pushback from those doing your intakes? My wife and I are in our mid-50's and sometimes they simply don't believe when we tell them we are not on any prescription medications. WTH?

I will resist needing to take a handful of pills as long as I possibly can. I would take my dad to the Dr. and one of his Dr's always required that he bring in all his medications. The irony is that he went to one of those large practices where all his Dr.s were there. So all his scrips were in their computer with the exception of his dry eye drops. There was no reason for him to have to bring his bag of pills in. None.

 

[lizkat]

I know you are older than me, but do you get pushback from those doing your intakes? My wife and I are in our mid-50's and sometimes they simply don't believe when we tell them we are not on any prescription medications. WTH?

I will resist needing to take a handful of pills as long as I possibly can. I would take my dad to the Dr. and one of his Dr's always required that he bring in all his medications. The irony is that he went to one of those large practices where all his Dr.s were there. So all his scrips were in their computer with the exception of his dry eye drops. There was no reason for him to have to bring his bag of pills in. None.

No pushback yet but yes I remember my eye doc asking me to verify that I was not taking any drugs after I had filled out some forms before cataract surgery. She was surprised I guess.

Anyway she later said to keep some over the counter drops around for occasional dry eye that she deemed not bad enough to require prescribed versions. That's it.. so far. That and well the eye drops they gave me when I had those eye surgeries. So I count my blessings.

Yeah the thing about bringing in all your meds sounds like a throwback to the 50s or something. My doc's practice just asks for identification of any medications (otc or otherwise) that are not prescribed by them. Anything else is in their files or files from referrals to other physicians. They ask just in case you've seen some other doctor without getting a referral. Or... just got a prescription "somehow" for "something."

It's good practice for doctors to inquire about all meds taken (just in case a referral practice didn't fill out forms with data that should end up back in the primary physician's files) as well as about any recreational drug use including alcohol, but they realize that some people will never mention drugs --usually painkillers or soporifics etc-- that they managed to get from other sources. Can't fix stupid, even when doctors try to avoid being a source of contraindicated drug combos.

 

[Chew Toy McCoy]

I get that we all want our independence but I have a hard time understanding why they won't accept some help when it gets this bad. I can tell you that as soon as I feel like I can't handle it on my own I'll gladly move into assisted living, are you kidding me? All of your meals are taken care of, your room is cleaned regularly, etc. it's all inclusive. If/when that day comes I'll look forward to it.

Perhaps a silver lining in the cost of living being more and more unreasonable is that by the time you go to assisted living it will be a step up. You go from living with roommates who don’t pull their own weight to living with roommates where everything is taken care of.

Not to mention we already have a generation (or 2) used to locking themselves in a room with their face glued to a screen all day. When your body tells you that, that is now your only option it won’t be a big disappointment or lifestyle downgrade.

 

[Eric]

Perhaps a silver lining in the cost of living being more and more unreasonable is that by the time you go to assisted living it will be a step up. You go from living with roommates who don’t pull their own weight to living with roommates where everything is taken care of.

Not to mention we already have a generation (or 2) used to locking themselves in a room with their face glued to a screen all day. When your body tells you that, that is now your only option it won’t be a big disappointment or lifestyle downgrade.

In our case we paid for my mother to have her own room and had a long term plan, she just needed to take the step which she eventually did and at that point things normalized greatly. She had all of her meds on time, regular doctor visits, no more falls and was able to socialize with other occupants.

It also helped with her and my sister's relationship which was really strained prior to my mother moving into assisted living because she was so demanding of her family's time. So by the time the end came around everyone was on much better terms as a result and she got the care she needed and deserved.

 

[Chew Toy McCoy]

In our case we paid for my mother to have her own room and had a long term plan, she just needed to take the step which she eventually did and at that point things normalized greatly. She had all of her meds on time, regular doctor visits, no more falls and was able to socialize with other occupants.

It also helped with her and my sister's relationship which was really strained prior to my mother moving into assisted living because she was so demanding of her family's time. So by the time the end came around everyone was on much better terms as a result and she got the care she needed and deserved.

I don't know if there was any kickback, but my uncle at one point moved his inlaws from a house into an assisted living complex. They essentially had their own 1 bedroom apartment and there was a nice community dining room. I'm sure it wasn't cheap, but I think society likes to picture assisted living facilities like those mental asylums from the 60's.

But I suppose it's also probably a mental hurdle for some. Not just loss of freedom, but admitting they are close or closer to the end and once they're in there's no turning back or denying it.

 

[Eric]

I don't know if there was any kickback, but my uncle at one point moved his inlaws from a house into an assisted living complex. They essentially had their own 1 bedroom apartment and there was a nice community dining room. I'm sure it wasn't cheap, but I think society likes to picture assisted living facilities like those mental asylums from the 60's.

Right, this was exactly what it was like for my mother, great digs all around and had everything included. At the same time it takes them out of their home and I'm sure it feels like they're losing some of their independence and it's hard to argue that side of it. It's a difficult decision for all parties involved sadly.

But I suppose it's also probably a mental hurdle for some. Not just loss of freedom, but admitting they are close or closer to the end and once they're in there's no turning back or denying it.

I look at it from my own point of view, when I'm old and unable to function on my own would I expect my family to change their lives around to accomodate my care? There's no way I would ever expect that and in our case it ended up causing a lot of resentment. At the same time there are families who choose to care for their loved ones through the end and that's just as understandable, I have a hard time knocking either side, in the end it's really a personal decision.

 

[Scepticalscribe]

This is not - just - about loss of independence and autonomy (which have often been both hard earned and hard won - especially for women), - although, it is, of course, about that - and not just about (reluctantly) accepting that you are no longer quite as capable or competent as you once were, and not even just about emotional blackmail (as @Herdfan's story suggests, and which I agree is very trying, and a most difficult - and wounding - psychological weapon to have to deal with) but - and I am sure that @Apple fanboy and Mrs AFB will agree - also about personal preference and individual temperament.

For introverts, one version hell is other people, especially unwanted - or excessive - contact, or proximity with other people, a proximity and contact you cannot choose, or control, or regulate.

"Socialise with other people" and "community dining rooms..."; unless the context calls for it (for example, when at work, or in a professional environment where this is the expected norm and where it is necessary for professional reasons, net-working, simply connecting with - sometimes, even befriending - colleagues, and where common professional (and occasionally personal) interests mean that it can also be interesting), simply reading this makes me shudder with appalled horror.

Some of us like privacy, and solitude, and our own company, and enforced - and that word is key - enforced contact with other people, especially compulsory community activities - good grief, I loathed this stuff at school, - is something I would have devoutly hoped never to have to encounter for the rest of my life until I draw my last breath.

 

[lizkat]

Some of us like privacy, and solitude, and our own company, and enforced - and that word is key - enforced contact with other people, especially compulsory community activities - good grief, I loathed this stuff at school, - is something I would have devoutly hoped never to have to encounter for the rest of my life until I draw my last breath.

Yah, I hope and actually think the times may be changing. Care home directors do now realize that some folks really do like activities such as those at a typical senior citizens center, but others are happiest left to their books or a TV program or doomscrolling their way through Twitter. The idea in an assisted living facility or a nursing home is that the people still able to get around a bit just not end up feeling left out.. but also to let those who are more introverted be comfortable in their solitary pursuits.

The "one size fits all" eldercare model deserved discredit, just has taken awhile to arrive. The place upstate where I used to visit a former neighbor was quite nice about that. They would observe how new residents seemed to fit in or not fit into various scenarios, and then tried to create awareness of a choice of activities and dining options, but didn't push any of them. Also they would let a resident have a cat or dog around, and to sleep at foot of the bed if desired. They took in a few elderly animals from the local shelters now and then, and provided for vet care when necessary, so the critters and the animal lovers were well suited to each other.

My only wariness there was that that guy's daughter, who was paying for the care, was quite well to do, so God only knows what it was costing. I'm not expecting that level of care when I get farther down the road. But I know I can eventually adapt to commercial cream of chicken soup with a side salad and canned peaches if necessary, and even be grateful for such food. Just don't ask me to play bingo.

 

[Apple fanboy]

The question is who will you lean on when you can no longer stand?

No one. There is no one else. The only family I have are my parents and my wife. My parents will be long gone by the time I’m needing ‘help’.
Lots of people just cope in their old age without leaning on anyone.

 

[Apple fanboy]

Your viewpoint can change as faculties begin to decline to point of not being able to get around well. So far I have escaped that (unlike some women around here who were farming partners and spent a lot of time back in the day kicking hundred-pound bales of hay down the mow), but I do try to look ahead and plan for adjustments over time. For instance, I've quit buying both Porsches and top-of-line Ford trucks.

We planned ahead and moved into a single story bungalow. It’s our intention to die here.

 

[Apple fanboy]

This is not - just - about loss of independence and autonomy (which have often been hard earned and hard won for women), - although, it is, of course, about that - and not just about (reluctantly) accepting that you are no longer quite as capable or competent as you once were, and not even just about emotional blackmail (as @Herdfan's story suggests, and which is very trying) but - and I am sure that @Apple fanboy and Mrs AFB will agree - also about personal preference and individual temperament.

For introverts, one version hell is other people, especially unwanted - or excessive - contact, or proximity with other people, a proximity and contact you cannot choose, or control, or regulate.

"Socialise with other people" and "community dining rooms..."; unless the context calls for it (for example, when at work, or in a professional environment where this is the expected norm and where it is necessary for professional reasons, net-working, simply connecting with - sometimes, even befriending - colleagues, and where common professional (and occasionally personal) interests mean that it can also be interesting), simply reading this makes me shudder with appalled horror.

Some of us like privacy, and solitude, and our own company, and enforced - and that word is key - enforced contact with other people, especially compulsory community activities - good grief, I loathed this stuff at school, - is something I would have devoutly hoped never to have to encounter for the rest of my life until I draw my last breath.

This. I can cope with people at work etc. but only because I get to come home to my own space. If my own space was shared I just wouldn’t want to be there.
Even worse for Mrs AFB. I saw how staying in a hospital for two months with our daughter put such a strain on her mentally. She is more of an introvert than I.
Also to be truthful the way things are we will be struggling to pay for food when I retire, let alone assisted living!

That said I do worry about my parents as they get older and require more assistance. They are both in their mud 70’s and doing fine at the moment. But neither live near me. It’s a 3-4 hour car journey away.