Enough is Enough
I’ve had all I can stand of that man, he is an angry bitter man and Im done with him. From day one I have said I will stay home and take care of him because I dont want him to end up in a nursing home. For the last year of our lives we have all given up so much of ourselves just to make sure he gets what he needs. For the last 3 months I have slowly started to hate him. My mom always taught me that hate is a strong word, so I never use it unless I really mean it and I honestly mean it. I hate who he has become. I HATE him for being the way he is. We are trying our best to give him everything he needs to get the best he is going to get………and how does he repay us? Verbal abuse……..he screams, cusses, threatens and sometimes carries through with those threats………do we deserve it, HELL NO!!! I’m done with him, I’ve had all I can take.
We have told mom to just go ahead and send him to a home, its not what we want but its whats best for everyone. We are all becoming bitter and angry and I dont want my last memories of my father to be filled with hate. He hates me at this point, he has disowned me, told me Im not allowed to go to his funeral, he calls me every name in the book, wishes harm on my child and tells mom he doesnt want me there taking care of him. Why? Because I try to do whats best for him. He fell just before Christmas and hasnt had a bath since, he sits there all day in urine soaked sheets, litterally up to his head, he smells, hes got bedsores, his skin is turning a blackish purple……..so, I force him to get up. He would rather just lay there in his own rotting filth than get up and get taken care of. He hates me because I’m doing whats best for him but its not what he wants to be doing. The other day I finally got him up and I shoved him and his entire wheelchair into the shower. Thats the first half ass shower hes had since before Christmas. A week or so before that I forced him to get up so I could clean the bed again and at the same time I gave him a half ass sponge bath. NONE of us want him sitting there in his filth but when he acts the way he does none of us even want to go back there and fight with him about it. It makes me angry that he’d rather just lay there than get himself up and get better.
He says we are just doing it to be mean to him, that we like hurting him………..he doesnt see it as us trying to help him. We try to explain it to him, when I get him up I point out how nasty the bed is, that the sheets are litterally black because of his filth, but he doesnt care. Doesnt care at all. I think part of his behavior can be blamed on the stroke, but the majority of it is just him, just who he is. So, he doesnt want our help, why bother giving it to him? He’d be better off in a home, where they have the means to get him up out of bed and into the shower and such, not to mention all the stress relief for us it would be.
When mom took him for his surgery Thursday she talked to him about a DNR. She told him all surgeries have risk and she would like to tell the Dr. if anything happens not to save him. He said no, she went on to question him, if he’d rather be worse off than he is now and he said yes, he would rather be worse than he is now than dead. We dont want that. Mom needs to get power of attorney, I’ve given her the paper work for that. Then he has no say so in it.
All this is leading up to my point of this entry. We want him to get all the help he can get. He was supposed to be admitted into rehab after his surgery but while mom was sitting in the waiting room Thursday before they took him back for his surgery she found out that type of surgery does not warrant in-patient rehab. She tried on Friday to talk with the insurance to see if there was anything she can do. At this point all she can do now is have a physical therapist come out to the house 2 times a week for about a half hour. So, she set him up with that program again, he was on it just before his fall. They came out this morning to do paperwork to get him enrolled. The lady said she was going to need to look at his knee. He was butt ass naked and laying in piss, so I went back there to change the pad under him and put a diaper on him. He starts screaming and cussing and then yells out "Get out of here lady I dont need you". Before she got there he was telling me that he didnt want them coming to help him. So, I finally just threw the covers back on him told him I hated him and then let her go back to look at his knee. Before she went back there she asked if he was going to be like that when the therapist come out because she doesnt want to send them out if hes going to be like that. I told her I dont know. So, she goes back there and looks and asked him the same thing, he said he was going to act exactly like that to them, so she said she would call the Dr. and tell him that dad refuses therapy. Dad told her he wasnt refusing so I just told her we would post pone it for now. So she left, he wasted her fking time. After she left I went back to his room and yelled at him. Told him he was a sorry ahole that we are trying to get him the help he needs and he just wants to be an ahole.
So I’m done with it. At this point we’ve done all we can for him. Until his attitude changes we cant do anything else. He’s refusing the help we are offering him…….so our hands are tied. I really hope this is the last straw for mom as well because what hes been putting her through is pure hell. She doesnt deserve it and I’m sick of watching it happen.
random noter: it almost sounds like he has dementia/memory loss. he might not even realize what he’s saying. or he’s just so miserable because he has to depend on everyone. putting him in a place where real nurses can take care of him seems best. i hope you can salvage the relationship before its too late.
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It sounds like the stroke caused some major frontal lobe damage. I also agree with the other noter who says it may be dementia. If this wasn’t what your dad was like before now… something is wrong. No shame in admitting that you can’t handle him anymore. With his attitude I can see that he really does need help, a home is best for him.
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randomed in – it could be something physical or it could be emtional/mental. NO FATHER wants to be a burden on his kids. It’s teh fathers place to take care of the children not the other way around. And since he can’t do it for himself he would rather just live in/with it than hinder you. It is a pride thing. We went thorugh the same thing with my grandfather. He raised 12 children and once he lost his legs in his early 60’s he became dependant on them for just about everything. It threw him headlong in to a deep depression. It’s NOT the “natural” order of things and he was too prideful to just accept help. Sit down with your dad and just talk to him don’t TRY to help him don’t MAKE him do things but tell him YOU WANT TO HELP HIM HELP HIMSELF. Tell him you understand that it’s hard for the roles to be switched but you still see him as your strong daddy and that you do what you do because you WANT to. NOT because you feel you have to.
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I’m going to have to agree with the other noters… I’m sorry you’re going through this but it definitely sounds like it could be dementia. My grandmother, who was a difficult person to begin with, went through similar personality changes after her quadruple bypass and it only got worse. She’d accuse us of trying to kill/poison her, refuse her medications, etc. Her doctor explained that it happensto a lot of older or middle-aged people after major ilness or surgery – even if physically they are able to recover, they’re just never the same person afterwards.
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God that sucks! Good luck with that.
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