I am in poor health and am unable to provide level of care my dad needs. My sister insists we have to split the job (although she isn’t around much.) She has scared my dad my telling him I want to put him in an awful and nasty nursing home! (Not true!) But I’m stuck with hospital visits, trips to store and doctor, handling meds and appointments. She has a job, runs a business and also is promoting a book she wrote. Dad has plenty of money so he can afford nice care. She insists we must do the care “out of love”, but knows NOTHING about caregiving and won’t learn. (I cared for our mother for like 17 years while also raising a child). My sister is their favorite and I’m the bad one — although I’m the one who does all the important care. I’m deteriorating health wise and need advice. Thank you for lustening!
Also, many people wait until their parent has broken a hip down a flight of stairs or nearly burned down the house before they realize being in their own home is not safe anymore. Watching a parent 24/7 is impossible unless there's an environment like no stove access, no stairs and someone watching the front door at all times (if dementia is the issue, they often wander at night due to Sundowner's syndrome). I know some people have an emotional stigma around assisted care, but it's not a logical one. Care today is far better and more highly regulated than it's ever been before and it's actually less safe for them to stay with family than to have trained professionals handle their care. Every now and again we hear a horror story, but we also hear horror stories about stores getting robbed byt we shouldn't stop shopping....or schools getting shot up but we shouldn't keep all our kids locked up at home....or preachers doing awful things, but we shouldn't stop practicing or faith. These are very few instances and can't do everything based on fear. Try to bring this info to your sister along with some supporting articles you find online and perhaps she will come to see it's the best option.
Have a meeting with your sister and your father to discuss your future level of commitment and participation to correct their expectations.
Even though you think your sister can’t handle whatever is remaining, let her make that decision for herself.
Hiring help is always an option that they might choose if your father wants to stay in his home and he may have enough resources to cover this without any contribution from you.
The neighbors are neither family nor healthcare professionals, seeking their consultation or advice could be humiliating to your father or even compromise his situation.
Realign your hopes of long-term relationships and communication with your family in accordance with your level of commitment to them.
Maybe you’ll show up as a character in your sister’s next book!
As some of our readers have posted, give notice to resign from your caregiving position, and have your sister take on those required responsibilites until She finds other help for your father. Like any non-contact job, it is an At-Will situation.
Perhaps you can help with things that can be done from your home like online bill paying, online grocery orders and get a virtual capabilities to have online visits with your dad so your not physically having to be there so much . This will decrease your running around for yourself and save your energy a bit . Either hire a full time live in aid for your dad or hire services to come in and care for him . Personally I would try this before heading of to an institution . Either way your dad has a need to be met and it isn’t and your sister needs to recognize that.
best of luck, keep your boundaries!
Lots children trying save parents’
money so they can inherit …
money belongs to parents and should be used to make their life
comfortable
Have you heard about what you should do during an emergency on an airplane trip? "Place the oxygen mask on yourself before assisting anyone else." This idea is an anology to what you are facing, what, saving up for family inheritance for both of you or only your sister?? No inheritance happens until after someone passes away. Yes, if there is any assts left after the deceased is gone.
I have heard so much about respectively forced obligations regarding caregiving levels going beyond their loved ones capacity for caregiving. It is truly thankless work and often killing caregivers before their recipients.
I look out for many readers and happy you reached out to us for support.
Again, please tell your sister to leave you alone and move on in your life. Save Yourself!
That's what facilities are there for, to assist people who can no longer care for themselves. They have lived their productive lives and earned the respect to go into professional care when family options have run out.
Place your father in a facility before your forced responsibilities kill you.
Lady, you have paid your dues in spades. You took care of your mom for 17 years!
Do as you damn well please at this point in your life.
Just because your sister has asked you to ‘split’ the caregiving doesn’t mean that you have to agree.
Where was she when you needed her to help with your mom? Huh? She was nowhere to be found, so pull the same disappearing act on her now.
Your sister has a lot of gall to ask you for anything!
I would say, “Are you serious? Not happening, Sissy! Find someone else or place dad in a facility where you won’t have to lift a finger, just like you did with mom.”
If she has to care for your dad like you did for mom, she most likely will be researching facilities in your area within a week.
Our kids have been promised nothing. They are grown adults, and take care of their own expenses, and so do we. As much as we hope to leave them “their legacy”, haha, they know the help we will appreciate, is them selling everything we have, and helping us find a care home, that our meager savings, and profit from our humble house, will provide, then we belong to the government, once our funds are gone.
There will be no hiding of assets, so we can set the kids up in style, cause they have plenty, and more would be excess to them….OR to sustain them, cause they did not bother to do that themselves. They know they are not to save their mom and dad, should all our efforts to stay in control of lives not work out. I have never received an inheritance beyond a few thousand from a grandparent. But I know folks waiting on their pot of gold, soon as their parents/s are gone. How sad. We owe no one. Feels better.
Good luck to you. You can take back your life, but it is up to you.
Any conversations with either Dad or Sister to notify them you will be winding back some of your allotted tasks?
Is your sister the boss of you? Are you afraid of her? Does she have POA and you think that means she calls the shots?
My YB took over mother's care and didn't HAVE to--he chose it, month after month. His health suffered tremendously as he was working, trying to raise a family and has been morbidly obese for the last 25 years. His health is awful and we all truly worried he would die before mom did.
We had many meeting about spreading her care out a little better, but he fought us tooth and nail to be the primary CG, I'll never know why.
He was he MPOA, and he took that to mean he was in charge of her. Like, literally. It DOESN'T mean that! We sure didn't push him into doing ANYTHING for her, yet he took it on. If he got angry b/c one of us didn't 'step up', well, sometimes we had to remind him that he booted us all out of the loop many times.
You sister has a real attitude--making you feel guilty for not doing it all.
If mom can afford FT care, then by all means, get that for her! Yes, it will decrease your 'inheritance' but I know a lot of people who refuse to get FT care for their folks so 'they' can inherit more and by the time the parent dies...there really ISN'T any money to speak of.
Now is the time to be taking dad to look at places. I bet he's used to your bossy sister and might look forward to living in a place that has elderly gents like himself who'd LOVE to play checkers, go on outings, check out the chicks in the facility. A single man of any age in a NH can write his own ticket. He'll NEVER sit alone at a meal again.
Good Luck with this. Families are great until they're not. Don't kowtow to sis--be dad's voice and advocate!!
This.
You make no mention of dementia in your father in your profile. How old is he? How old are you? Your sister? What does your sister do for your father, since she "isn't around much"?
You can't make your sister agree to do more. You can't make your father (assuming he is legally competent) agree to hire outside help or to agree to Assisted Living.
You can't change others.
BUT you can take ownership of your own actions. You can stop the caregiving, and let the chips fall where they may. If your father doesn't realize the toll on your health that caregiving is taking, then he doesn't care very much about you.
Save yourself. YOUR health is your priority.
Ether Dad is independent, hires his own help or moves.
Which will it be?
Good luck!
Tell her you WILL NOT help her in any way, shape or form with dad's care, period. That you have health issues yourself and are in no shape to cut your life short by doing any more hands on caregiving. Sorry/not sorry sister dear, but YOU will have to do it all alone! That should open her eyes up very quickly to the fact that she's ignorant when it comes to HOW to do hands on caregiving, and, that it's impossible for her to do it alone.
Assisted Living is a much better answer, and if this cuts into your sister's inheritance, too bad about it. That's my advice to you; stick to your guns on offering NO help with dad, except to help her move him into AL, and see how it goes. If dad refuses to move into AL, then he'll have to agree to bringing paid caregivers into his home b/c your sister won't be able to handle it all by herself.
Best of luck!
First go back to the legal basics about who can ‘put’ Dad anywhere. Is he legally competent? Does he have a diagnosis of dementia, indicating that he is unlikely to be legally competent? Do you or your sister (or jointly) have a POA, so that you can force it? Is he refusing to move? Is it because of sister’s comments? Does he actually know much about the care options?
Strategies to deal with a situation where Dad just doesn’t want to move (and almost no-one does):
1) Keep a record for a week or a month, day by day, of what you do for Dad and what your sister does for Dad.
2) Do an estimate of the cost of care that each of you provides, at commercial rates.
3) Show it to sister and suggest that she subsidises you for the extra time and value that you put in.
4) Make it clear to sister that all this information will go to Dad.
5) Take Dad for lunch to a couple of suitable (good plus local) facilities at the level of care he needs. Try and pick a day when other residents are likely to have family visiting as well, so he sees that people aren’t ‘abandoned’.
6) Get sister to come with you both for one of the lunch visits, to the place that seemed to be best.
7) Show your own doctor the level of care you are providing, and get an estimate from the doctor about the impact on you and the length of time that you will be able to keep up that level.
8) Tell sister when you will need to stop or phase down, and ask for her plans to deal with the situation when it happens.
9) Do a rough costing on the value of care that you provided to your mother, because of the choices you made.
10) Tell Dad all the things you have worked out – the level of care you each provide, the $ value of it, when you will need to phase down and/ or stop, the huge value to the family of the choices that you made. Also what his options will be if he makes no plans, then has to find care in a hurry (eg if he has a fall and breaks a bone, or if the same thing happens to you).
11) Tell him that being on a waiting list protects his priority for the ‘best’ place, and does commit him to moving in to the first available vacancy.
It sounds to me that your sister is probably seen as being successful and important, and the choices that you have made are undervalued. Dad may feel quite ‘shy’ about asking more from such an important person. He needs a reality check about a lot of it. Figures will often make a lot more impact than just conversation.