Fawnby Asked January 2023
Do you send bulletins to keep family informed about every serious health issue?
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As a caregiver, I have sent email updates to the woman's son who just "adores" his dear mother, but refuses to assist with her care or even the decision-making about her care. The last thing I need his him showing up at the last moments of his mother's life asking whether such-and-such drug or procedure was ever tried. I would also cc two adult grandchildren on the same message. One grandchild asked me to stop. The other grandchild would occasionally thank me for the info. The son asked me to stop emailing updates and would rather I communicated differently (i,e. text, message in a bottle?, telegram?). He said he doesn't like checking email, but a text message pops up on his phone. I found this hurtful. I have vision problems, and email is much better for ME than text. I think I can choose the mode of communication since I am caring for the mom? So, I still write the emails, but I send them to myself. That way, I have dates when things occurred and the specifics and I would not have to remember off the cuff when "dear son" frantically started asking questions one day. He has never once asked me why he does not receive updates anymore. Granted, my updates could get lengthy. But, even the longer updates were only hitting the most pertinent things. Writing up every single thing would fill a novel on a monthly basis.
Oh gosh, they wouldn't actually do that would they???
I can understand that people live far away from each other but to not call a brother, who seems to keep in touch, his brother died I just can't imagine.
I am with you these emails are a little much, TMI. (Too much information)
I agree. It crushed my dad when my aunt didn’t bother to call my dad when his brother died.
Like you say. if it is someone that you aren’t close with, it’s a different story.
My husband has a myriad of health issues, mostly stemming from exposure at the World Trade Center. Frankly, it's more uncommon for him to go to the doctor and NOT have them found something else. Most times, at least to us, it's minor, but to his sister AND our children? I would rather tell them about every "little" thing than risk NOT telling them and then that "little" thing morphs into something much bigger and I get accused of *not* telling them.
My daughter yelled at me because when she was in college, and my mom took a fall, we didn't call to tell her. Well, mom was falling every other day, and I didn't think it was a big deal - mom had no injuries - but my daughter was upset that I kept her "out of the loop". In her mind, anything that precipitated a trip to the ER was something I was supposed to notify her about.
And don't even get me started on telling some people and not others!!
Sometimes it's just easier for the person disseminating the information to just put all of it out there to everyone and let THEM decide what's worthy of worry and what isn't.
I get what you’re saying. I think everyone has to decide what is best in their particular situation.
You have to do what is best for you. It’s becomes exhausting repeating things over and over too.
I know what you mean about the ‘falls.’ My mom fell quite a bit. So, every time she fell, her alert service called the people that I placed on the call list so I didn’t have to make phone calls about ER trips with my mom.
But then, my phone was blowing up while in the ER while trying to handle the situation at hand. It was always a constant balancing act. Sometimes I was sorry that I had added people to the call list.
Half of them lived out of state so there wasn't much they could do realistically at the beginning. As soon as I figured out this was going to be a lot of work almost every day, I decided to send out regular emails to the family, but they were categorized in the subject line: Daily Update-FYI Only, Update-Please Read and Respond; Urgent: Need Input ASAP; and after that it would roll into texting. I did this because I was the daughter-in-law, and step-DIL so I never wanted anyone to be able to say "I didn't know..." or "You shouldn't have done that..." for any of the decisions that were being made on their behalf. For 1-1/2 years I performed almost daily care or management, chauffering, coordinating, researching, decisioin-making (even though I was not the PoA but the actual family PoAs allowed it), etc. Maybe your in-laws are doing it for similar reasons, or they feel under-appreciated, or it is a passive-aggressive way of wanting help?
I've decided the phone rings both ways...my kids ask about their Grandparents. The others do not.
Everyone in my family were pretty private about health issues. Total opposite on hubby's family. Oh my gosh, I am ready to use Excel to keep track on who has what. I would need 10 pages just for hubby's grown daughter as she is an over-board hypochondriac.
I knew that when certain elderly aunts and cousins called me. 99 percent of the time, it was either that someone died or someone was in the hospital.
I do have one elderly cousin who even when she was in her late 90’s would talk about what she was going to do the following year! She was upbeat and positive.
So much of this truly depends on a person’s outlook on life. Some people feel that it’s important for ‘everyone’ to know ‘everything.’ Others are more private and don’t want others knowing anything.
I went through this with my husband. When he was diagnosed with cancer, he asked me not to tell anyone. I respected his wish. I really think that he needed to process the situation privately first. Later on, he told me that he didn’t mind me sharing it.
And also technically releasing personal medical information is a violation of HIPAA. Whoever is POA for Health should keep Health Information private.
There is a site, CaringBridge. Someone can set up the site and anyone that is interested can go to CaringBridge and get information and can also post questions, send messages and the like. One post in place of several emails to friends and family members.
If you do not wish to read about the health matters of "Aunt Betty and Uncle Marvin" you can chose to delete email or just give a quick glance to make sure "Betty and Marvin" are still alive. (no disrespect to either).
I'd appreciate knowing what's going on with the in-laws. My husband and I weren't told until two weeks after the fact that his dad had had a heart stent inserted, nor were we told when his mother was hit by a car.
They're not big on communication, and we're the only ones who don't live within an hour of my in-laws, so we're continually out of the loop.