I'm stuck in a situation where I am doing most of the health and financial caregiving in which my mom is pre-dementia with cancer. My father is a retired Vet with disabilities and is supposedly on paper her "caregiver" but in reality I am care-giving for the both of them. My father is a very stubborn, angry man and takes the hard route. He never wanted to agree to find ways to actually hire a care-giver because he doesn't want somebody in the house. So he took up the role, but I pick up after the holes where in which he is unable to give proper care with her medications, food preparation, cleaning, financial duties, appointment setting, communication with doctors, being the most dependable one at her appointments.. It has been 3 long months of me burning myself out completely, not being able to be funded or be able to work due to the never ending need and support when my dad needs a solution to a simple problem. Our case manager doesn't have a great attitude about helping us, and our social worker has only really helped us through the means of simple paperwork. She has provided resources only and within those resources are just things my father will not allow to happen. So I’m stuck in a rut. I'm juggling my mental health which is declining. I'm depending on Medi-cal to help me out and hoping to talk to a therapist soon but I've just felt like I'm the walking dead. I know you'll suggest VA benefits to me as well as other options but I don't feel I qualify for them. He has to be homebound and won't go in for further evaluation beyond this point to potentially have me be paid as a caregiver. I am toughing it out. Saving as much as I have and doing very minimal freelance work as a spiritual advisor which I can barely tend to due to the responsibilities and duties I have to my parents.
We live at home both me and my boyfriend. We were just about to plan to move out before all of this had happened. It is so unbearable to just be here because of how heavy handed and obnoxiously loud my father is on a day to day basis. I'm so happy he is able to be home and isn't working but it's unbearable to deal with daily. My trauma is just triggered day after day and I am slumped. I'm just pushing my strength and resiliency, meditating multiple times a day and putting on earplugs the moment I wake up. I've been toughing it out because I know just leaving my mom with him is not a good option, but the amount of daily stress that is holding on me is phenomenal.
I've spoken to my dad about how we were just saving money to potentially move out and how I’d just be back and forth. He was okay with that idea of us being close by, but that just sucks, it’s an inconvenience because we live in CA and the cost of living is crazy. We were planning on moving out of state before all of this. We could room, but after everything I've been through that has not been mentioned here, I just want to be able to have our own peace and space.
My mother wouldn't have even gone to the emergency room when she had the internal bleeding if I didn't continue to stress it and practically harass my father because he thought she was "faking."
I feel just so stuck and I want to just make this work for everyone but it seems completely impossible without stretching myself completely thin. I just wish I would figure out a way. The path is unclear to me because I'm just so weighted with stress and worry to the point where I can't see solutions for this and myself. I love my parents but this has not just been a recent struggle. I have been carrying burden my whole life. I wish there was a way.
Stop letting him get away with having you do all the work.
Stop doing all that you have been. Let him do what he is supposed to be doing. He has documented that he is her "caregiver" let him assume that role.
Tell the Social Worker and Case Manager that you are going to step back and dad will be the contact person and the caregiver.
Find a place and move out.
A very wise social worker told me “ STOP HELPING . The stubborn ones have to fail at living on their own to accept help ( meaning allowing paid caregivers in the home , or placement ) “
You will get good advice her, you deserve a life your life, guilt free! Your not stuck, there is always a way out
Best of luck to crystal.
You are grown up now and in charge of your choices for your life.
If you do not wish to stay with your parents (and your living there with your partner was not a good decision) then you are going to have to give your parents and their case managers the date that you are moving out.
This has become entertwined into an enmeshed interdependency that's very unhealthy and will end nowhere good.
Whether your mother had died of not having gone for hospital care or not, in her this, her last illness, cannot be know; had she not, then she would likely have died some few months before she will die in any case of her combined dementia and cancer. This is very sad, but your parents have HAD their lives. We are now talking about YOURS.
You will now have your life or you will sacrifice it upon their burning funeral pyre, which will do NO ONE any good whatsoever. It will be a total waste of your life, and you will not be the first to have done it.
Only you can make choices for your own life.
Whatever choices you do make will be difficult.
No one will want you to leave. Why would they? You are the unpaid help keeping your parent from the taxpayers' coffers. So give those case managers the same info you give your folks.
No one has any miraculous, easy or pain-free advice here. This is tough stuff in which you go to your father and tell him you will be moving in ______ months and he has that long to make other arrangements. If he does not do so you will supply him with the phone numbers for APS, and be on your way.
This also may mean that while you help your Dad and mom plan for the inevitable leavetaking your partner will be working two jobs to make savings for first and last rental in your new place. My advice would make it at least a day's travel from your parents, but that's up to you.