Dealing with ageing family members

Fwiffo said:
Yes it does but at least there are things you can do about it. Putting in crowns to save what's left of your teeth might not help in the long term but improving your fitness and strength like Jan Libourel is a way to overcome or at the very least mitigate some of the effects.
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Thanks for the kind remark. Fitness really is worth the time and investment in energy. It paid off earlier this afternoon: I was helping my stepson get his F-150 up on a ramp for an oil change. The truck clipped me and I was knocked arse over teakettle on the concrete floor. Fortunately I was able to bounce right up with no appreciable damage discernible.
 
I forgot to add one. Swallowing water or liquids into the windpipe and the coughing fit afterwards. I don't see Nancy Pelosi or Joe Biden having issues.
 
Fwiffo said:
I forgot to add one. Swallowing water or liquids into the windpipe and the coughing fit afterwards. I don't see Nancy Pelosi or Joe Biden having issues.
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That’s less age and more a sign of esophageal issues
 
My grandfather-in-law is 102 today. He still has hair and walks without assistance, but stopped driving a few years ago. Still drinks, but I think he has recently stopped smoking, gambling and chasing women.

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I thought about writing in this thread for awhile but I wasn't really sure how much I wanted to disclose. Ever since Wuhan and repatriating my parents from their world travels my father who used to be joining a cycling tour in Netherlands and Scandinavia, going on world cruises, and playing a full length 18 holes of golf for 5 hours pulling a cart seems to be on a downward trajectory.

Issues I noticed since then:
  • Swelling at the extremities especially feet
  • Cuts that don’t heal quickly
  • Can’t bend down to tie shoelaces because of esophageal throw up
  • Loses a tooth every quarter or two
  • Low levels of energy
  • Almost always a muscular injury or something twists if there is a serious amount of physical activity during the day (~5km walking which is pedestrian). Ben Gay has become a cologne.
  • Complete loss of speed – like an athlete who hit 35 and suddenly lost quick reflexes and top sprint
  • Hot and cold flashes – literally jumpers in one hour, then sweating in an undershirt 3 hours later in the same climate controlled room
  • Sensitivity to temperature – showering can be optional
  • Random episodes of coughing
  • Sensitivity to any amount of spices (not hot, just herbs) or can choke on something like a fish bone during meals + coughing episode = you might as well just give up on talking for the rest of the meal
  • Random urge to throw up which is only made worse if you drink water and then it sprays on everyone at the table
  • Intermittent motility issues
  • Turned from a <100 low blood pressure person to a >130 high blood pressure person

Of course after being in the hospital most of last month he is now accepting he needs medication to get back to a half decent baseline but now there are new issues:

  • Fainting from blood pressure dropping to 70 on random days
  • Intermittent motility issues have turned to motility issue one day and having dysentery runs three days later
I don’t believe in this mental health rubbish but of course all of this decline encourages him to think – what’s the point, it’s the end, I had my kids and they are okay, it’s time to go. He broke something after discharge and I had to arrange for it to be replaced. He was at a loss how to set up virtual health care, or any type of health care so I ended up doing all of it. It’s completely baffling how he was always the alpha male who fixed everything himself and now he has zero confidence and almost seems helpless at an age when men should be running for the presidency or getting that one last term to set themselves up as dictators for life.

This doesn't include the impact on my mother who isn't healthy herself (borderline diabetic, high blood pressure) and confirmed during the hospital stint where only one visitor was allowed that she actually doesn't have a life outside of my father.

The only silver lining is I'm about as useful to society these days as a homeless person so I have a lot of time to help them fix some things in the hopes they can get ready to go on their snowbird hibernation for this upcoming winter.
 
That’s awful to witness. It’s good that you can spend enough time with them. What has society ever done for you?
 
güero said:
That’s awful to witness. It’s good that you can spend enough time with them. What has society ever done for you?
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I think it's easier to deal with it if you lived further away and only showed up once a year or a few times a year. But being down the street you start picking up on more and more signs. They're not stupid because they try to hide things.

My statement was more the other way around - I'm not out there generating GDP for society with $500 lunches anymore.
 
I think having an activity or obligation of sorts helps. If they are left to their own devices, it's a lot of work to create a routine.

My grandma has sort of regressed as well due to COVID. She didn't go out as much, and her leg muscles atrophied enough that she needs a cane now. She stopped going to church. She doesn't go to the senior center anymore. She's not as active as she used to be and it's a bit alarming to see because there's a snowball effect to her mental health, her physical health, and overall well being. She is not excited anymore and has lost a lot of enthusiasm and is more negative instead of optimistic about things.

I think the only thing keeping her together is having a personal care assistant who she can manage/boss around every day so she's got something to do during the days. That's about the only thing she uses her brain for now. I think without that daily ritual she'd be a vegetable.
 
Fwiffo said:
I don’t believe in this mental health rubbish but of course all of this decline encourages him to think – what’s the point, it’s the end, I had my kids and they are okay, it’s time to go. He broke something after discharge and I had to arrange for it to be replaced. He was at a loss how to set up virtual health care, or any type of health care so I ended up doing all of it. It’s completely baffling how he was always the alpha male who fixed everything himself and now he has zero confidence and almost seems helpless at an age when men should be running for the presidency or getting that one last term to set themselves up as dictators for life.
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that's generally how it goes fwiffs. once it starts on the downhill it almost never turns around. have they figured out what's causing any of his health issues? long covid? some sort of disease?
 
ballmouse said:
I think having an activity or obligation of sorts helps. If they are left to their own devices, it's a lot of work to create a routine.

My grandma has sort of regressed as well due to COVID. She didn't go out as much, and her leg muscles atrophied enough that she needs a cane now. She stopped going to church. She doesn't go to the senior center anymore. She's not as active as she used to be and it's a bit alarming to see because there's a snowball effect to her mental health, her physical health, and overall well being. She is not excited anymore and has lost a lot of enthusiasm and is more negative instead of optimistic about things.

I think the only thing keeping her together is having a personal care assistant who she can manage/boss around every day so she's got something to do during the days. That's about the only thing she uses her brain for now. I think without that daily ritual she'd be a vegetable.
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Commiserations. My mother stopped seeing anyone including her own family members after the virus. Her younger brother died and she didn't even bother to fly out to his funeral. One of her sister in laws is literally on the subway line that she is 5 minutes walking distance to but she has a million excuses not to go see her.

Unfortunately with the care assistant/personal maid/agent/valet/whatever you call the person - I'm fully convinced I'll be reading one of those news stories of how that person swindled what's left of the family fortunes except it happened to me. I already have to deal with the fact they give out cash and other gifts to wait staff at the local restaurant over their own blood relations for special occasions.

I had been trying to sign her up to classes like cooking but she frequently forgets taking her mobile and often her keys with her because she's so dependent on her husband. I wanted to do the same for my father but the last time I signed him up for a lecture at my uni he couldn't follow directions to get to the lecture hall. He gave up and then hoofed it to go buy groceries instead.
 
güero said:
It certainly isn’t easier for your parents. I‘m sure their life would have been easier without having to take care of baby fwiffo.
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No, it wasn't. When I was born my mother hit a patch of post partum depression because I was breast fed and I was the first child and there wasn't enough to feed anyway. At one point my mother screamed and my father said, "What do you want me to do? Shove him back in?" But then he was pressured to have kids because his 4 siblings died in the war.
 
Grand Potentate said:
that's generally how it goes fwiffs. once it starts on the downhill it almost never turns around. have they figured out what's causing any of his health issues? long covid? some sort of disease?
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The type 2 diabetes is genetic. 3 of 4 of my grandparents had diabetes (except my paternal grandfather). All 4 had heart problems. But no, to this day no one knows why he collapsed in May. It was either a syncopy or a heart attack. That's on his report. He was too weak to get injected with a dye to do an angiogram during his hospital stay but when they cleared him out no one remembered that he was missing that.

They didn't want to inject anything in him at that time because there was so much fluid build up it was getting into his lungs. The fluid retention and swelling are probably because the weak heart can't pump everthing in & out - but is it a blockage or he's pre-destined to have a heart that will give out...or the years of untreated diabetes weakened his heart...no one knows. Maybe he needs a stent.

It was sh*tty because I did the morning shift on that last day in the hospital and I went to go see someone for lunch. I told my mum that if they set a discharge date 24-48 hours out, make sure to get the angiogram appointment and a follow up with the cardiologist. Then she messaged me during the lunch - he's leaving in a few hours and the "euphoria" made everyone forget about that.

I'm more peeved at the self-defeatist attitude. Maybe I can use golf terms - okay, I can't walk and pull a cart for 18 holes so I'll drive a golf cart. Okay I can't play a full length course so I'll play an executive course. Okay I can't play any courses I'll just go to the driving range. Okay I can't do driving range now I'll just give up golfing completely. At one point I can completely imagine for him getting out the front door is something you only do once a week.
 
That suck, Fwiffs. I can only imagine how hard it is for you.

It’s also terrifying for me. My mum is older, living in alone in a different country to me and I have no siblings. When she goes down hill I’m going to feel like the worst son ever.
 
Fwiffo said:
The type 2 diabetes is genetic
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type 2 diabetes is not genetic. you can be genetically pre-disoposed to type 2 diabetes.

Fwiffo said:
At one point I can completely imagine for him getting out the front door is something you only do once a week.
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honestly that's how it goes. have my next door neighbor here is an old lady from jamaica. she's 93 now and completely bed ridden with dementia. when i moved in here 8 years ago she was a pistol. we used to talk all the time, she'd make me ox tail and peas and rice, and was the best neighbor i'd ever had. slowly she started forgetting more things, became more paranoid, having more problems. i'd see less and less of her as time went one. now she's all but waiting for death.
 
Dropbear said:
That suck, Fwiffs. I can only imagine how hard it is for you.

It’s also terrifying for me. My mum is older, living in alone in a different country to me and I have no siblings. When she goes down hill I’m going to feel like the worst son ever.
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In my experience the ones that hang around the ageing parent are the ones who get blamed and abused the most. The ones that only come once a year are saints. My father is still at the stage where he knows not to bite the hand that feeds helps him but my mother does get flak simply because she is around 24/7.

Grand Potentate said:
type 2 diabetes is not genetic. you can be genetically pre-disoposed to type 2 diabetes.


honestly that's how it goes. have my next door neighbor here is an old lady from jamaica. she's 93 now and completely bed ridden with dementia. when i moved in here 8 years ago she was a pistol. we used to talk all the time, she'd make me ox tail and peas and rice, and was the best neighbor i'd ever had. slowly she started forgetting more things, became more paranoid, having more problems. i'd see less and less of her as time went one. now she's all but waiting for death.
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Age 94 is when my paternal grandfather gave up and died. But my father is two decades younger. Two decades is a bloody long time.

The tragic thing is they went through this with their own parents and they said at that time, I will never end up like this. I'm intelligent. I will avoid doing this and now they're falling consciously/subconsciously/unconsciously into the same trap. Their breakfast is dominated by - how did you sleep, how many times did you go to the bathroom + visceral descriptions of what happened, counting pills/vitamins that they need to take, then talking about ancient history from decades ago, and then people watching and making sarcastic comments from the corner unit window I got them.
 
Back to the hospital tomorrow. It's every 2 weeks for one specialist. Every month for the other. Never mind we haven't even got to the point where we can see a physical rehab person.
 
My father is getting a grand tour of all the hospitals in the city - last week it was for his heart, this week was for his eyes, and next week he stays overnight for tests.
 
I showed my mother a new dental clinic that opened inside the main rail station. There was an advertisement saying out of pocket dental cleaning can be $99 with two digital x-rays (not sure what x-rays I was getting that was way more than this) and you get 2 units of scaling. She wasn't sure how many units would be needed to cover my father's mouth. But I said he only has 8 or 9 teeth and 1 of them is dead so if anything he can probably donate 1/2 a unit to her if she visits at the same time.
 
Taking my father back to the hospital overnight in a week again His AHI score of 40+ hopefully will be fixed with a CPAP or whatever they will try that night.
 
One side of my father's hearing is practically half deaf. In noisy environments he will request you to switch sides so he can hear you. I see him wear bluetooth ear buds - with just one ear. If my father can't hear you, he's a bit like Mitch McConnell in that you think he is going to respond but there is a pause where he doesn't.

My mother is progressively suffering hearing loss to the point I think half the conversations where you're not screaming at the top of your lungs she is missing words. She goes on tangents because she catches only a few words and sometimes you reply but you get further and further away from the actual topic you want to address. She will repeat or talk in circles - I think it's her way of trying to elicit what you were originally getting at but it makes short conversations into long winded circular arguments.

Put these two people together and it's a recipe for high blood pressure and off the rail rants because of misunderstandings and frustration at loss of hearing or perceived loss of intelligence/comprehension. I frequently tell them to get their hearing checked out but am told that's for deaf people, or they are dying so what's the point. More two-way communication happens in the United Nations than sitting at a dinner table with them together because I find myself explaining or re-explaining what one party meant to the other at an audible level.
 
A push walker to a wheelchair. All in the timespan of 2 months.
 
Grand Potentate said:
I’m very sorry to hear this. When it goes it generally goes pretty quickly. Is there any hope for recovery?
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I would hope so. He picked up a knock getting off public transit at the beginning of autumn and now (at least according to him) the onset of cold weather exacerbates his arthritis. He can't take the usual anti-inflammatories so he's getting by on hydromorphones and codeine. Of course none of that fixes the issue. To cope he has developed a weird gait and bowing out of his hip to compensate for not putting pressure on the knee.

Sitting or lying around all the time means he continues to lose muscle mass all over.

Unless the scans on Tuesday show anything different his heart vitals have mostly stabilised except for the odd day where his blood pressure drops to borderline danger areas. Then his cocktail of drugs is tweaked and he is back on the mend after 48 hours. His diabetes is under control although the havoc it wreaked on the organs including one eye is not reversible. He has a CPAP that keeps his oxygen levels up but he chooses not to use it unless it's in the 70s during his respiratory illnesses.
 
Fwiffo said:
He can't take the usual anti-inflammatories so he's getting by on hydromorphones and codeine.
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Why can’t he take arthritis meds? What kind of arthritis does he have? Pain killers are pretty worthless for arthritis pain.

Fwiffo said:
To cope he has developed a weird gait and bowing out of his hip to compensate for not putting pressure on the knee.
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Has he seen an ortho for the knee?
 
Grand Potentate said:
Why can’t he take arthritis meds? What kind of arthritis does he have? Pain killers are pretty worthless for arthritis pain.


Has he seen an ortho for the knee?
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NSAIDs increase chances of heart attacks.

After all the scans and screens his family doctor found him some physical rehab.
 
Grand Potentate said:
I mean prescription meds, depending on the type of arthritis.


Physical therapy or rehab?
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He got hydromorphone and around 100 codeine tablets. If he isn’t using all of it I could make some money peddling it.

It’s orthopaedic. Whatever that is.
 
I don't know if osteoarthritis can degenerate in a 4-6 weeks like this. At the end of November he could hobble one block or more than a block with some rest. (sitting down periodically like someone who has a hernia).

In December he started favouring one side and trying to get the swelling of both knees down with ice/heat treatments & acetaminophen. By Christmas he was on a push walker. His gait started changing. By the end of January he's in a wheelchair. The gait has heavily changed on the right from the hip down. 8 weeks for your bone to just give out (with x-ray, ultrasound and MRI in between) is pretty quick. No family history of osteoporosis.

Anyway - hopefully they come up with something.

On the positive side he just did a whole bunch of cardio checkups yesterday and his heart is consistently bad (as in it didn't get worse) and his hemoglobin is now at the bottom level of a normal adult male. Those oral iron supplements worked over 2 1/2 months. The diuretic dose he was on made him drop 7kg of (water) weight in a week.

One thing gets fixed or stabilises and another pops up. At least he's doing better than the King.

My mother was prescribed some steroid (ointment?) and her hearing has returned a bit. She finally gets to see a specialist on Thursday. But her dementia is getting worse. She burnt an empty pot the other day.
 
Apparently he needs a total knee reconstruction but the surgeon there won't touch him because of his pre-existing diabetes and heart conditions. There's no alternative treatment because it's basically bone decay so he can't bear weight on it.

Next specialist today.
 
Fwiffo said:
Apparently he needs a total knee reconstruction but the surgeon there won't touch him because of his pre-existing diabetes and heart conditions. There's no alternative treatment because it's basically bone decay so he can't bear weight on it.

Next specialist today.
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Knee reconstruction or replacement?
 
Fwiffo said:
I think it's replacement. There's nothing to salvage.

Yesterday's appointment wasn't going well because his diabetes is nudging up again.
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That’s why I asked. Bone on bone = replacement.

Has he maybe looked into some diabetes meds or something like Ozempic/mounjaro? Is he overweight?
 
Fwiffo said:
Apparently he needs a total knee reconstruction but the surgeon there won't touch him because of his pre-existing diabetes and heart conditions. There's no alternative treatment because it's basically bone decay so he can't bear weight on it.

Next specialist today.
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Follow your doc's advice.
However 8 years ago a member of my family was told by a Canadian doctor that she needed a knee replacement but that she could also try an injection and supplements.

She took ( and still takes)glucosamine and chrondroitin and had the injection below. It worked.
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