Is Mom Safe To Drive?
February 5, 2009 by Amy Jeanroy
Filed under Parenting
I am sure you all have asked, or will ask yourself this same question. Today I watched mom drive out of the driveway and head off to her hair appointment. As I watched her back out of the garage, I noticed that she never once turned to look behind her. Yes, she used the mirrors, but not one head turn?
Does this seem safe?
This seems trivial to write, but I suddenly had a bolt of terror, as I watched her back up, turn the truck around, and drive out of the safety of our driveway. My heart actually lurched. She had a total of 5 miles to go, including three turns-one across traffic, and I could envision the entire trip in my mind. What if she misjudged the oncoming traffic for that final turn? What if she got smacked by our famous Nebraska wind, as she passed the windbreak of trees on the highway? It is a powerful gust, and you have to anticipate it’s punch and be ready for it.
When, dear reader, WHEN is it time for your parent to give up their driving privileges? How on earth do you know, when their decline is gradual. She can’t remember names and words more often now, in conversations. Is this something I should be alert for? She certainly knows that she can’t remember the words. It makes her really angry. We laugh it off, since I have so many words jammed into my head, that I often struggle with calling a child by his correct name, when distracted.
Someone point me to a chart or a checklist of things to look for. I do not want her to not drive, she does it so rarely. Just the same, I watch out for her here at the house, it seems almost irresponsible to not consider the driving factor.
Thoughts?
Boomers delay their own retirement to take care of aging parents
Especially in these tough financial times, older adults are delaying their own retirements and using their savings to support aging parents as Sue Martin, of Claymont, Delaware has had to do:
It hasn’t been easy. Martin, who’s divorced, had planned to retire next year from her job as a legal assistant at a pharmaceutical company. But while she has a retirement fund of her own, her mother does not.
So now, Martin plans to work, indefinitely, to help cover the portion of the mortgage and living expenses that her mother’s Social Security and small allotment of food stamps don’t.
It can create a cycle, Boomers spend their savings to take care of their parents, often leaving themselves without anything and their own children have to step in someday and use their resources.
My dad has savings and a retirement plan, but what if he lives long enough to go through them? We have 3 kids, one is still young and I suppose he will be in college when my dad is very, very old. How can we do both? What if one of us gets sick?
My mother-in-law is 83 and has no retirement plan that I know of, I think she currently lives on Social Security. Will we have to support her, too?
I think part of the reason my uncle died last year is that he was upset about being broke and kind of gave up. He was 86 and essentially had no money due to some bad investments and when he got sick he didn’t try to get better so his daughters wouldn’t have to support him.
I know people have managed for years, we will too. It just makes me a little nervous, especially as an only child and someone who’s not in a position to save a whole lot of money for my own retirement at the moment.
Elderly parents in nursing homes
You may recall I talked about Slouching Mom’s touching recount of her elderly mother in the hospital.
Her mom is in a nursing home and once again, I could have written much of this myself when my mother was in a nursing home for a while, especially about meal time. For some reason, that’s one of the hardest parts:
Stepping out of the elevator and onto my mother’s floor, I spy her and the other patients eating dinner in the dining room. It is a peculiar and wrenching sight. Fifty people in wheelchairs pulled up to tables. All wearing bibs so they don’t spill on themselves. The bibs cue me to expect child-like babbling — happy noises. But instead there is absolute silence.
There’s nothing like having a parent in a nursing home, and that’s not a “nursing homes are all bad” statement, either. It’s just an experience you’ll never forget. Like her mother, mine was among the youngest patients in the nursing home, and whatever it was that I saw in her when she allowed them to put a bib on her will stay with me forever.
With friends like us…
I have a friend who has both parents in a nursing home. Like me, she also has young children at home, but her parents live a state away.
Her mother has some dementia and her father cared for her until they were in a pretty severe car accident about a year ago. Her mother was sent to a nursing home for rehab, but her dementia worsened and her father couldn’t take care of her.
Her father has diabetes, and wasn’t caring for himself properly, so he was admitted to the same nursing home, temporarily. It turned out that he had many other health problems that he didn’t tell anyone about and he likely had pretty extensive cancer all over his body.
He deteriorated gradually and my friend went to say her goodbyes a couple of weeks ago and he died over the weekend.
There are several of us in our close group of friends who have lost a parent, so we hope to show her she’s not alone, but she might wish she was alone by the time we get finished.
There’s one friend who lost her mother 10 years ago, and when our friend asked how long it takes to stop crying at unexpected moments, she helpfully replied, “Oh, it’s been 10 years and I still do it!”
Maybe this was a “you had to be there” moment, but our friend replied, “Um, thanks?”
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If you would like to enter for a chance to win the surprise gift behind this blog post, please leave a comment. Prize and Winner will be announced within a week. Check back to see if you’re the lucky winner and what you’ve won! You also have lots of chances to win great Blogtoberfest prizes!
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Aging parents can mean changes for everyone
It looks like Suebob and her dad’s trips to the grocery store have been postponed for a bit.
Send good thoughts and prayers to her dad and family as he is having some pretty severe eye problems.
I know this means big changes for everyone involved for the duration, and it’s never easy.
Easier
Slouching Mom has a wonderful post about her aging mother that, especially as a nurse, I can relate all too well:
Instead I stared at the computer screen that blinked above my mother’s head, and I played with the numbers, the blood pressure, the heart rate, the pulse oxygen, adding, subtracting, multiplying them, the arithmetic flooding my brain until there was no room for ambiguities like love, sorrow, pain, and anger.
During my mother’s illness and eventual death, I was good at being a nurse. Nurse, I could do. Motherless daughter, not quite as much.
I monitored her oxygen set-up and her oxygen levels, careful to note when the respiratory therapist would be coming back. Every time she got up to go to the bathroom, I straightened her bed and cleaned up the bedside table. Beeping IV pump? I was on it.
It all gave me something to do. Not because I was bored, there was no time for that. But, because I didn’t know what else to do with myself as my mother was disintegrating before me.
Dissociation was, and still is, so much easier.
Grocery adventures
I love to hear about my friend Suebob’s parents.
They had a hard time a while back when a family “friend” tried to take advantage of them and I hope life is somewhat back to normal for them.
She writes about her and her dad’s grocery routine and it both cracked me up and touched me:
Mom doesn’t get out much any more, so it falls to Dad and I, The B Team, to take her list and try to translate her wishes into reality.
There’s a flaw in this system - there are things that do not go on the list. They are the things that “he knows to get” like frozen meals, beer, cereal and jam. Do not ask why some items go on the list and others do not. This is not a matter for discussion. That is just the way it is.
Saving Our Parents
Saving Our Parents us a documentary about the hazards of abuse our older generation faces and it’s hosted by Ed Asner.
It features law enforcement and elder abuse specialists who share tips for abuse prevention:
Featuring real-life events, Saving our Parents is a startling demonstration of the potential pitfalls facing today’s aging adults. Exposing scams and the devious crooks that may have us or our parents in their cross-hairs, this compelling documentary delivers a message that will both empower and motivate.
Professionals, experts and “victims” share life-saving knowledge and inspirational insights with candor, their heartfelt message guiding us, our parents and our loved ones safely into the golden years.
Saving Our Parents can be purchased for $29.95 and you can see film clips here.
Lucanix for lung cancer
Lucanix is a promising looking vaccine for patients with advanced lung cancer.
It just entered Phase III testing after a successful Phase II testing period where it was thought to nearly double a person’s chance of surviving two years:
The study is designated as the STOP trial because of its expected endpoints: Survival; Tumor-free, Overall; and Progression-free. It is an international, multicenter, randomized, double-blind study involving up to 700 individuals with advanced stage NSCLC, and will be conducted at approximately 90 clinical sites in the U.S., Canada, India, and Europe.
In a Phase II clinical trial, two-year survival among patients with stages IIIB and IV disease who received Lucanix(R) was significantly longer than that of individuals being treated with the current standard of care. A second, investigator-initiated phase II study supported these results.
I’m all for anything that will increase lung cancer survival rates as there are so few things that seem to affect it, we need some good news. I’m very thankful for those men and women who take the time to be in research studies like these (as my mother did) so that it may help future patients.
Getting to know mom
Eden Kennedy of Fussy fame wrote a touching piece about her aging mother who is bedridden and no longer recognizes her:
My mom has no idea who I am. She thinks I’m just some nice lady who comes over every once in awhile to sit and chat. She has clear knowledge and memories of her daughter, Eden, but she doesn’t connect that Eden with the woman in the Target men’s bathrobe sitting off to her left. Maybe that should bother me more than it does, but it doesn’t too much. I can’t take it personally. We were never that close anyhow.
What’s interesting, though, is that because she doesn’t know I’m her daughter, because I’m for all intents and purposes a stranger, she opens up to me in ways she never has before.
She also touches on the issue of family care for aging parents as her brothers care for her mother full time and she lives 1,000 miles away with her own family, a husband and young son.
Funny, I was just eyeballing my own mother’s Joy of Cooking yesterday.
