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By the end of this year my mom and dad will be 60 and 65, respectively. They still live together and are both in good health and spirits, my dad was even diagnosed and treated for prostate cancer last summer and is now fully recovered. But after a family friend (with children my age) lost her battle with breast cancer a couple weeks ago, I'm starting to wonder what I'm going to have to do once my parents get old enough where they can't take care of themselves as well as they can now. Compounding the issue is the fact that while I have an older sister and younger brother with whom to split these duties, my parents live in Michigan, while my sister (31) and I (29) live on the east coast and our brother (almost 25) lives on the west coast. Neither of them have broached the subject with me, but I feel like it's worth figuring out now while everyone is still healthy and we have time to work out the details. Have any of you had to plan out how to care for your aging parents, and how did you go about it? Did you have siblings or other family members to help out, or did you solo it? How much of the plan was according to your parents' desires? Did you just have a general lifestyle plan for your folks or did you also come up with a "mom/dad just had a stroke/heart attack/broken hip/poo poo themselves and someone needs to be there in 24 hours" contingency plan? The concept of my parents' mortality is a scary new thing to me so I don't even know where to start.
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Aug 2, 2017 05:02
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| # ? Apr 26, 2024 13:04 |
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If they are willing and able to discuss this with you, have the talk now. Find out their wishes, keeping in mind that people plan, God laughs. They probably want to stay in their home as long as they can, but they might need additional assistance and that can be expensive. You and your siblings will all need to be on the same page, those that are willing to help shoulder the burden. Usually the progression is 1. getting assistance in their home to 2. moving into one of their children's homes, if feasible, to 3. assisted living, as long as they can still feed themselves and are mostly mobile, to 4. personal care home when they can't feed themselves, but are not bedridden, to 5. nursing care home, when they are. Hospice care will likely kick in at the later stages when their health significantly declines. If they don't have wills, durable power of attorney, medical power of attorney, and advance directives, get them NOW. An estate lawyer can take care of all of this. He or she may recommend trusts as well, depending on the assets. If one or both are veterans, the VA has a supplemental assistance program that can help make the expenses more sustainable. You and your siblings will need to be flexible, since anything can happen. One or both of them might end up with a debilitating disease, injury, or dementia. Discuss this openly with your siblings, make sure everyone is aware of what's going on at all times. So, my experience: my father and his wife wanted absolutely nothing to do with future planning, assuming that whatever happened, Medicare and their insurance would take care of it, same as it did for his mother. But those days were long past. They were angry at us for even bringing it up. As she declined into senescence, he cared for her as best he could but it became too much, and he was starting to slip himself. They finally permitted my sister to have power of attorney and reluctantly agreed to move into assisted living close to me, since I lived closest to them, but it was a struggle. I spent a great deal of time with doctor's appts and hospital visits, in addition to shopping and visiting a lot. He eventually had a stroke and had to go into a personal care home. We moved her with him, maybe not the best thing we could have done but we were no longer sure what was best anymore. All we could do was guess. In any case, he died about three weeks after the stroke and his wife died four days later.
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Aug 3, 2017 01:47
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Serious answer: My father, family, and I both cared for our dying mother circa 2012-2013. I literally moved 2000 miles for a new job and in 6 months my mother had died. She had literally fought tooth and nail to last until her grand daughters birthday. In the course of the year she went from relatively normal, to weak but able to move, to gradual paralyzation. Important questions that need answering: 1.) Is a will written? Is it up to date? Does everyone know where it is? (Safe? Safety dposit box at a bank? Who has the keys and authorization to view it?) 2.) Who is the executor of the estate? (If family is to do this, this is A LOT of work and not something done lightly. Does the will 'compensate' for this?) 3.) What do they want funeral/service wise? Burial? Cremation? A tree? 4.) Power of attorney? Cause when poo poo happens, someone may have to make a tough decision... 5.) If you wind up as a vegetable or comotose how do you want things to be handled? 6.) If they are crippled who is to handle it? 7.) Resucitate or do not resucittate orders? (If you call 911 and say someone is dying, if there is NO do not resucitate order, the EMS may be obligated to try and resucictate them. Which can be... painful and messy for everyone.) 7.) Is their current residence productive to age in? (Master on the main floor? Who does the yard work?) 8.) Passwords and user accounts? With the will? (Cancelling most accounts and removing the name of a deceased person will sometimes require both a death certificate and power of attorney.) 9.) At what point does it go from 'family caring' to getting a nurse or putting them in a hospice? (Do they want you and do you really want to risk losing your job to look after them, when they're going to die anyway.) Yes you can get some time off, but how much? At what point do you need to go back to work to take care of your own family? After discussing things with my father. His joking (but serious) answer is if he starts to go to "Put him on the ice flows, like an eskimo." The more discussion you can have with your parents about this the better. Doing it late in the game (when they may not be able to communicate clearly or at all) is.... problematic. If they don't want to discuss it or go through you. I highly advice you trying to get them a lawyer or executor who knows and documents what they want. Death is certain and having to... learn lessons the hard way is truly unpleasant. The more you can do and plan ahead of time allows you to focus more on grieving instead of panic attacks like: "Did I hear the right location she wanted to be buried in or was she not lucid" moment. Senor P. fucked around with this message at 02:40 on Aug 7, 2017 |
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Aug 7, 2017 02:28
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Things to ask now: * where is the will * what's in the will, and should we update it * is there a family lawyer? * where are the family bank accounts kept? * who is the doctor, and are there any specialists involved? * what are the passwords for things like email, if relevant? * what debts are being carried * what are the bills that need to be upkept? (phone, power, heat, etc.) And then there's all the obvious stuff like DNR criteria, preferred type of care, etc. Topics that are awkward now end up being dire later. 65 sounds pretty young, but my mother dropped dead at that age while getting ready to take the dog for a walk. poo poo happens.
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Aug 7, 2017 04:33
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Talk to them now like everyone said, and also mentally prepare yourelf for the possibility that, should you choose to provide live-in care for someone you love, there will be moments of incredible darkness. There will be a peanut gallery on the sidelines offering relentless, unrestrained criticism as you push yourself to the edge of self-destruction while they do nothing to help. You will make a mistake that injures the person you are caring for. There will be times that you genuinely hope for the death of your loved one. This is a situation that you must enter with 100% certainty that your knowledge that you are doing the right thing is adequate reward in itself. That is very possibly the only recognition you will ever recieve for the hardest thing you will ever do.
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Aug 7, 2017 22:28
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Is there a resource/service that helps people plan and take full advantage of any services or programs that are out there? An elder care Just researching and trying to understand/process all of the options and advice out there about elder care seems fraught. A family/estate lawyer makes sense and I'm going to get one of those, but my parents saved nothing their entire lives and estate concerns aren't very high for me, while obtaining assistance for them is. Is there any organization that helps people navigate assistance options?
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Sep 3, 2017 01:38
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My dad re-married someone 12 years younger, and I hope she does the same when the time comes. Eventually my step-step-step parents will be younger than me and I'll cut ties. At that point, I'll probably still be sorting through my dad's warehouse.
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Sep 5, 2017 03:34
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Only child here. The smartest thing I probably ever did was push my parents into buying and maintaining home health insurance when they were in their early 60s and relatively healthy, and the plans were affordable. It's an insurance that pays out in the form of home health care so that people can stay in their homes instead of going to nursing homes or assisted living facilities, or requiring family members to stop working and take care of them. Now it's ~15 years later and as they grow closer to to having to use it, knowing that we have that is a huge load off my mind. They'll stay in the house they built, and instead of changing adult diapers I'll be working and have the financial means to make sure they don't have to scrimp or sacrifice anything.
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Oct 10, 2017 19:09
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I lost my mom to Alzheimer's last summer (she was diagnosed in 2010) and all I can say I'm grateful my dad had The Talk with my brother and I when it happened. We accepted it and understood it would take all three of us to help her and when she passed I was very glad I was able to help (and later see her enough when she went into care) when she passed. I'm not going to lie: it's going to be tough, sad, traumatic and stressful with lots of anxious days and too-quiet nights where you are always thinking about "it". You will have dark thoughts like "when is she going to go into care so I can stop worrying so much?" even though I knew my mother HATED the idea of going into "a home". It's going to be an experience where hard lessons will be learned and poo poo you will never unsee will occur. You will find ways to cry in a comfortable setting and find memories that will make you laugh and smile for the person they ARE. As long as you go into it with unconditional love and eternal respect for your parent everything will make sense and I comfort myself knowing I was blessed by God to have her in my life.
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Oct 10, 2017 20:00
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One thing to do is go through old family photos and have them label who random people are. After my mom died i had a ton of pictures that were taken of her as a kid, as well as childhood pictures of my grandparents, great aunts and others. No clue who they are. Don't lose your ancestors to time.
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Oct 10, 2017 20:15
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Cimber posted:One thing to do is go through old family photos and have them label who random people are. After my mom died i had a ton of pictures that were taken of her as a kid, as well as childhood pictures of my grandparents, great aunts and others. No clue who they are. This was a great move that I mostly pulled off in time. Number one thing I would have done differently: get the bathroom remodeled for accessibility now instead of later or never
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Oct 10, 2017 21:28
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I'm kinda going through this now. My parents are 80 & 81. They have their funeral arrangements taken care of. All I have to do is call the funeral home when the time comes. I've been trying to get them to figure out if they want certain people to have certain things to prevent the inevitable fights and put it their wills. They don't have much in the way of material goods, but people have been known to fight over the most insignificant things. Otherwise, we figured I'd give my brothers and sisters the opportunity to take turns taking whatever they want.
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Oct 15, 2017 01:11
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Ever seen Old Yeller?
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Oct 15, 2017 22:35
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FreudianSlippers posted:Ever seen Old Yeller? No.
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Oct 16, 2017 12:34
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| # ? Apr 26, 2024 13:04 |
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It's a good movie OP should watch it with his parents. They will surely enjoy it.
FreudianSlippers fucked around with this message at 23:17 on Oct 16, 2017 |
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Oct 16, 2017 23:13
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