The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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My husband's parents live with us, and I am going a little nuts dealing with his mother. She is 81, obese, and can barely walk at this point. She sleeps about 16 hours a day, and there are many days that will go by without her coming upstairs (their bedroom and tv room are in the basement). And yet, I can see her going on like this for another 10 years or so. Hooray for modern medicine!
I have to remind myself to detach emotionally and not get frustrated with her. But what particularly bothers me is how it limits the life of my father-in-law. He used to have a job at the grocery store that he loved, but she didn't like being alone, so he quit and now just sits and watches tv with her all day. We're trying to plan a trip to Spain (where he's from), but have to figure out what to do with her because she refuses to go.
I guess I'm struggling to figure out how much of this is coming from her body not working anymore, and how much is just depression (she did spend some time in a mental hospital about 15 years ago and is on Lexapro, which doesn't seem to be doing much). And what do you do when somebody is unwilling to make any moves to help themselves get something out of life? She's just waiting around to die at this point and I hate watching it.
You are a great person for doing this. My grandad is 91 now and still works but has issues (hearing, digestion, bp, heart, gout,cannot walk properly, cant use any tech, can get annoyed at times, moody etc etc). It is super difficult to deal with ageing people. My grandad actually wanted to die far earlier but he felt that being productive in his later life would help my family out financially even though my dad and mom outearn him by a lot. He just continued to want to live because of us, his grandsons.
It gets worse, invariably you get to points where elders need surgeries or medical procedures that require people to assist them with daily tasks. Having good insurance might help (I am not in the US so cant comment.). If possible, help her find something to do, a hobby of sorts. My grandad and grandmom (maternal, she lives with my ma's brothers) are alive and somewhat happy because they have a bunch of things they do regularly and have a lot of family around always. If your husband has any siblings or nieces and nephews, having them over sometimes is a good idea but her getting a hobby would help her a lot.
My parents deal with trips by having my dad's sisters come stay in our house when we are away as you cannot leave an elderly person alone. My dad at times would even ask his friends to stay over sometimes, the ones he trusted since we do not go out a lot. My family has always had full-time house help who stay with us and it is a difficult task to deal with the elderly even with them around.
Again, I commend you for doing what you are doing. Please take care of yourself too.
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