Speaking of elderly parents... (sorry in advance this may be long)
I have been taking care of my parents for the last 15 years. They haven't needed to move in, but they live close, I check in a lot, and bring them food, give them money for prescriptions, extra money if they need it, etc.
In 2014, my mom got lymphoma and we were taking her to Portland for her cancer treatments (as the oncologists here in my town are terrible). I drove her back and forth, put my parents up in a hotel, and stayed with her when they found the spot on her lung, and she had a wedge resection of her lung.
Thankfully now she is cancer free, but has a bit of cognitive impairment (brain fog) left over from chemo. She also has some neuropathy in her feet and so she trips sometimes.
She fell down the stairs in their home at the beginning of December. I called both of my brothers, as they have been basically MIA the past 15 years. We have seen them a handful of times up here, and my parents have visited maybe once a year. One lives in Reno, the other in the Sacramento area. I explained we needed to come up with a plan to either retrofit their house and make it handicap friendly, or think about moving them down south near one of them (as I am moving out of town the beginning of June and they do not want to move up north with me due to the snow, and colder climate).
Sacramento brother (we will call him SB) was nonchalant, non committal, didn't really want to get involved, didn't provide much feedback or input.
Reno brother (we will call him RB) was the exact opposite. Very gungho, said he would be happy to have my parents near him, he would do some research on wills/trusts, end of life planning etc, and then plan to come up in January to go over everything with my parents and me and SB. He had a baby born at the beginning of January, and flew in last Thurs.
So I thought, great, this is awesome...I don't have to do everything...Mind you, I have literally been doing EVERYTHING the past 15 years. This with my dad inserting himself into my marriage, telling me how to raise my kids, bad mouthing my husband, bad mouthing my parenting....he is the most overbearing man you will literally ever meet. He is a legalist Adventist that thumps you over the head with a Bible. He got mad at me when I cut my daughter's hair and pierced her ears. This is just the tip of the iceberg.
Anyway, my RB came up and literally assaulted them with information. I told him before we met with our parents, that the best approach would be to just give them the lowdown, and then return the next day so they could process everything.
Well it ended up being 4 hours of arguing. Then the next day, another 4 hours of arguing, culminating in my brother yelling at my parents and me driving him back to my place. RB was discussing assisted living, senior apartments, things like this. My dad still has the idea he needs to run for the hills, despite not being able to walk 5 feet without having to sit down and catch his breath. (He has bad restrictive lung disease, but believes he is doing fine, and took himself off all his inhalers). There is no way they could take care of property, as they can barely take care of the spot of grass they have now.
During all this yelling fest on day 2, RB calls SB to make him part of the conversation. The plan then switches to them buying a travel trailer and putting it in SB's backyard. None of them have thought any of this through.
SB is happy about it as he says my mom can watch the new baby all day and it will save them $1600/mo on daycare. My mom couldn't even watch my baby for 2 hours in 2001 when he was born, and nothing has changed.
SB says he is hardly ever home. I told him dad can only see out of one eye, and mom can't drive, so how will they be able to get to appointments, etc. He said they have Uber - -- which would be great if my parents could afford that (they can't) and had a smart phone with the Uber app (they don't).
When SB's baby was born 2 months ago, he had a low blood sugar necessitating hospitalization -- a direct result of his and his wife's stupidity. His wife had gestational diabetes, and he thought it was great his baby slept through the night. I kept telling SB, NOT to let his 1 week old baby sleep through the night, and that he would need more sugar than a normal baby (ie..more feedings). Sure enough, the baby's blood sugar was 20 (should be above 80).
Bottom line is they are both so clueless SB, and my parents as to what they really need, and I believe this will end in total disaster, with me having to take extraordinary measures to get them out of an unsafe situation.
Thanks for listening. I'm just so frustrated.
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