This is my first post.
My mom is about to turn 92. She has BPD and NPD and has her entire life. Everything she is now in terms of her narcissism and borderline is a more extreme version of the way she always was when my sister and I were little kids. I am her sole caretaker -- my sister lives 3,000 miles away and hates her guts for good reason. She's paranoid and delusional and extremely tightfisted.
I started taking care of my mom 20 years ago. I didn't think she would live this long. Every year, she gets more difficult to deal with. She's delusional, paranoid, hypercritical and demanding. She's a hoarder living in a two bedroom apartment who is only not buried because she got bedbugs six years ago and had to get rid of everything she owned.
She moved into assisted living four years ago and moved out back to her apartment after seventeen months. Between the fact that the other women there were incredibly cruel to her and the fact that after she broke her hip, I had to go there every single day for six weeks because no one went and saw her except for the people doling out her pills. I thought it would be easier for her to move back to her apartment, three miles away from me in a building with a concierge instead of me driving 12 miles each way. The maid from assisted living was cleaning her apartment weekly until, true to form, my mother fired her at Christmas, despite the woman having found her when she fell in AL and having saved her life.
She has severe osteoporosis, congestive heart failure, a pacemaker. She's colonized with antibiotic resistant E. coli and is incontinent. She cannot and does not clean up after herself but NEVER has. Her apartment is a disaster and she keeps saying she has to "get someone in here" but literally no one will put up with the way she treats people. Six years ago, someone who knew my sister and BIL came her to take care of her full time and be her maid. She was so nasty to him that he would go lock himself in the bedroom and cry and told my husband that people were nicer to him when he was in jail than my mother was, since she verbally abuses anyone and everyone at will. She's completely self-centered and disinterested in anyone else's well-being.
Recently, her short term memory and word recall are just shot. I'm not talking about complex, low frequency words. She couldn't remember my niece's name and calls her "the older one." She couldn't remember amazon.com, despite ranting about it and Jeff Bezos for years. She forgot my 17 year old daughter's existence. She'll ask me a question and then ask me exactly the same question two minutes later six or ten times in a row. She confabulates like crazy all the time til my eyes are rolling around in my head as she retells stories from my childhood saying they happened to her or that she was there when she was not.
Her affairs are beyond her ability to manage them. She gets mail and never opens it because she's angry at the sender, she loses envelopes with important documents. She has a house she's renting out that she wants to get rid of the tenants in the middle of the pandemic so I can drive her there forty times in the next three months arranging things with tradesmen to repair it because she can't get along with anyone ever. I am her entire social life. She has very high social needs.
I call her daily since April 1, I do her marketing but that's not enough: she's angry that I don't see her 3x/wk, because according to her, I do virtually nothing for her. She has NO friends. Her siblings are all dead. None were on speaking terms w/her for years before they died. She wasn't allowed to go to their funerals or even notified of their deaths until years afterward. I haven't seen or spoken to my cousins since I was in high school because she antagonized her siblings so much.
Advice from those who have been there done that?
How can I sort this mess out before she doesn't know her name anymore? Her mental illness does not make her incompetent.
You have to decide what is "enough" for you, and stick to it. The best way is to do this gradually. Also, explain to her that if she needs more help, she has options like a cleaning lady, etc.
Our elderly loved ones who have these tendencies can be a danger to themselves. We have to be the voice of reason because we want to keep them safe and healthy, but we also can't allow them to consume us.
Get sound advice on her conditions, mental and physical, through your mother's doctor(s), senior social workers, support groups, etc., in order to make the best decision for your mother and you. Do not allow her to tell you what you can do for her, because some of it doesn't appear as if it is rational, reasonable, or even sensible to expect you to do.
I wish you and others facing these situations the best. It is not an easy road, but you have to consider your health and well being, too.
Could she buy her own food? Medicines? Pay bills? Keep the heating/cooling on appropriately?
Are the answers are no, no, no & no? If so, then it's time for change.
Look up from all her 'wants'. It's time to arrange the care she NEEDS. Go see her Doctor & ask for help.
And if something happens and she has to go to the hospital or ER for any reason, that is your chance to say she can't live alone safely any more and explain why, then deal with the hospital social worker about the options for her upon discharge.
Does your town have any kind of elder care services such as a meals on wheels program or senior center? You could reach out to them, they might have a social worker or program administrator you could speak with who might have some good advice too.
She should also be certain to keep a copy of the letter for future reference, such as if needed as evidence that her mother needs care in a facility if/when she ends up in a hospital and is about to be released. This will lead right back to contacting the doctor, who can then provide additional support for this decision.
Working theory: Narcissists, by virtue of their personalities, live longer lives. They may not have close families or friends and they outlive everyone but they don’t care — they are, after all, still alive and still needy.
I think after 20 years its going to be hard to set boundries now. I would never move in with her and visa versa. I think you have kept your sanity this long because u don't live together. I hope you have POA. Will make your life easier.
So pleased you saw this path, took it & am in remission now. Best of health to you!
If, at this point, the both of you can still have a conversation with her that she understands - try being firm with her about things that MUST happen if she wants to continue living where she is. A person, selected by you, will be coming in X times a week to clean. For initial cleaning, you should be there to sort through junk mail and important documents. As I understand, she is living in an apartment so the landlord owns her residence - not her. They have an expectation of cleanliness for safety of other residents. Blame the deep cleaning on them if you have to.
You can go online and change her bills to come to your address or arrange auto debit payment for most all of them. That will prevent digging through stacks of mail at her house.
If she is beyond living alone, and you have no plans to take her to your house, then it may be time for assisted living where people are paid to help her out. They will stop the hoarding, for same reason an apt manage would. They would be on call to help her. They have activities if she wants to participate. It may be time to make the hard decision.
Long long ago I realized something about my mother: she was never, ever, under any circumstances going to be happy or satisfied or content. So why was I jumping through fiery hoops to make something IMPOSSIBLE happen? Because I was trained to do so. From an early age, as an only child, with nobody to back me up or tell me Mommy Dearest was a freaking lunatic. So I am now almost 63 and STILL dealing with this crapola on a daily basis. But at least it's on MY terms, nobody else's.
What are YOU going to do to get your mother placed? Or to get in home help to her so that lets YOU off the hook? You can probably get her deemed incompetent, from the sound of what's going on.........check with an Elder Care attorney to see what your options are. But get OUT of the dreadful scenario you've been in for too long now or YOU will be the one to die young. Again, these women live forever, it is their children who die young.
Don't be a statistic.
There are actual academic papers that show that people with narcissistic personality disorder live longer than normal people.
She almost died four years ago. She had pneumonia and LBBB. Her heart was 30 bpm. I took her to the hospital and dealt with everything for her to get a pacemaker and go to rehab. Then I thought she would go live in assisted living at a CCF and I would be done. But she fell and broke her pelvis in AL twice, which was a total nightmare. Then the doctors told me the chances of her dying within one year were staggeringly high. Wrong.
She moved out and that was three years ago this summer.
I just want make nice with her until she dies or ceases to have any idea who I am.
The problem is that she's too compos mentis to be put in a nursing home against her will. In many ways, she's sharp as a tack when it comes to the news. She can pass the Mini Mental Status Exam with a score of 24. Obviously, she's going to get worse eventually.
It's not abandoning. It's still being in touch, calls, visits etc. But as a daughter - not a servant.
Have you said no to some of her requests in the past? What happened?
https://www.agingcare.com/articles/anosognosia-dementia-patients-cant-recognize-impairment-210090.htm
https://www.agingcare.com/articles/anosognosia-and-caregiving-suffering-from-a-lack-of-insight-196699.htm
When logic & reason fails face to face, you have to work behind the scenes instead.
one of favorite repeat ones was “clean the house, don’t throw anything away.”
the funny part was she would put them in my clean non hoarded room on the mirror, she was in the house.
She’s 92, she could live for another 10 years. Seriously! She may be ‘about to die’, but don’t count on it. Stop the stuff about ‘want to make nice’. Just walk out. If and when she dies, so what? Acknowledge to yourself that it’s what you always wanted, what she always deserved, and what is inevitable anyway. That’s the brutal truth - at least look at it!