I am 32 years old and caring for my 70 year old father. My mother passed from cancer 5 years ago. Basically, I have been caring for my parents since I was 26. My father lives in my home and needs assistance walking, bathing, getting meals made, keeping track of appointments. I leave my house for work, which I have had to go part time at because of how much care he needs, and come home to take care of him. I feel so angry because he refuses to enter a SNF, where he can get care that I can’t provide alone. He falls often enough that my local EMS knows our names. I don’t have helpful family members. Meanwhile, I can’t go on dates, or travel, or spend time with friends. I feel like my youth is flying by. I would love to have a chance to have a family of my own, and to see the world while my body still allows for it. But when I mentioned that to him, he just says I’m ungrateful for all the times he took care of me. I just feel hopeless in my current situation.
Give him the opportunity to go to an Assisted Living home or a Skilled Nursing Facility, depending upon his needs and financial situation. But let him know that YOUR care giving days are OVER. Period.
If that makes you 'ungrateful', then so be it. In reality, it makes you a sensible woman who needs to move on with her own life now. Enough is enough.
Not to mention, your father can live another TWO DECADES, too, which means your life would truly be over then! You really need to look at this realistically.......right? My mother is 93 and has fallen 41 times......and she's going strong. Falls don't necessarily equate to living a short life.
Wishing you the very best of luck taking your life back, my friend. You sure deserve to!
Tell him that you are ungrateful and you are done because a parent that loved you would never steal your life for their own. A loving parent raises their offspring up to fly, not be a personal servant.
He has obviously not taken care of himself to be so frail and feeble at 70 years old. His choices don't obligate you to sacrifice your life for his, he could live another 20+ years. Are you ready to give up your entire life for him?
You need to decide what you want and then take one step at a time to reach your goal.
So your Dad is effecting the ability for u to take care of yourself. Thats not fair. He is just thinking of himself.
Just tell him that you can no longer care for him and that he will have to go into AL, or just move somewhere else. Do not let him lay false guilt on you, you have cared for him long enough, it is time for you to live your own life, not his.
Without a plan, you will continue to be hopeless, nothing in life remains constant, it either gets better or worse, time for you to move forward on making your life better. Make your life about you, not him and his selfish requirements.
Trust me, he won't die if you start saying NO and exerting yourself to him, you are no longer a child, you are now his equal, approach your life as such. He could live another 20 years, my mother is 95, do you really want to put your life on hold waiting for him to die? Think about this scenario.
Good Luck and be strong!
PLEASE follow the advice of the wise posters here. It will be a sea change for you to accept that YOU are more important than your father (and you are). But you are still young! Can you make the necessary changes to take your life back? I hope so!
OP- please don't live with your selfish manipulating father anymore. You do have some control here, Change YOUR living situation. It's in your power to either tell him to move if it's your house or you move out if it's his house.
Yes, he needs help. You have helped. There is a limit to what you can do. Talk to his doctor. Tell the doctor that you would like your father to be in skilled nursing.
Or ask his doctor to have a social worker return your call so you can discuss plans for your dad.
Amen!
I am in a similar situation. My mum (90 on Sunday!) is always calling me up with problems she sounds like she wants me to solve as far as her medical condition is concerned but she refuses to let our medical community know that they need to involve me in her care. Medical people aren't doing much, and I think it's because my brother doesn't tell them anything. I am the one who notices things when we're talking on the phone or when I visit, but can't communicate with her medical team. I have told her to take her prescribed Tylenol and/or see her doctor. She says she will but never does. My brother who lives at home is either out or in his room and is only interested in controlling her by deciding when to bring up food from the downstairs freezer when he wants to and not when she says she needs more of an item she thinks she's out of (I saw this happen with potatoes on a recent visit.)
I tried again on that visit to get her to talk to her medical team about getting me involved. I was calm about it and tried to nudge rather than push but her response was "Do we have to argue about this?" I said no more about it. On other occasions she has simply remained silent or changed the subject I have asked people I know from church who are in the medical field and they don't have any answers. We have a parish nurse, but just when I need her most, she has taken a leave of absence and doesn't stay long enough after a service for me to talk to her. She's the only one I can think of who has the resources I need. I would talk to her doctor but he won't even return mum's phone calls, so I doubt I would get to speak to him at all.
Frankly, I'm afraid to talk to my brother about this, he has MS and when I was at the house last he freaked out--the air was blue--because he couldn't find the cloth grocery bags. Mum blamed me for the outburst--it was either because I was there and he couldn't sit in the living room (not true--I have never stopped him) or I had said something when we'd been talking (about cell phones) that morning to upset him. He has done this before. I needed to stay a few nights once until I could get my apartment set up on the weekend. He insisted I go back before the weekend and when I explained I couldn't he threatened to call the police to get me out. My friend who was going to help me had to drop what she had planned for that evening and rescue me.
God is my only hope and stay. Thank you for that comment HurtHeartbroken.
Set boundaries....70 he needs his own place! This could go on for another 20 years and his attitude and expectations will get more demanding.
Sometimes I think it may be for selfish reasons; someone to take care of them in old age. Seems premeditated. They would rather take a chance at having an offspring care for them than having a partner through old age. You have turned into that “partner” for your Dad, except this is not a symbiotic relationship. It is more of a parasitic existence for him.
Please save yourself before he sucks all the resources, happiness, and life out of you. Please update us and let us know how you’re doing. He will not change- it’s up to you.