Hello, I'm new to the site as I'm looking for general advice about my mum's behavior.
The background to it all is that I moved to France with my parents in 1992, 10 years ago I came back to England to go to university and have been here since. The year after I went to uni my dad died suddenly leaving my mum to fend for herself as she wanted to stay in France which is fair enough.
Over the last couple of years she seems to have been quite distant, she never calls but sends short emails every week or so and if you send her a long one you tend to get one worded replies or none at all.
Having not been been back to France for a while (she had come to us a few times last year) I decided to go over for a long weekend at the end of February and was very surprised at what I found... The house was in an absolute state and this was very unusual for someone who was very house proud, as the hours and days went by I discovered that the house hadn't been cleaned in ages, there was dog poo all over the floors and there were obvious signs of hording, it seemed that she bought everything in double figures including food so was eating and drinking mould on a regular basis. From walking through the door there was obviously a gas leak, I turned off the supply and explained that she someone needed to come in and fix it before turning it back on again but she went and turned it back on anyway 2-3 times a day. I also found out that her 2 large dogs hadn't been let out in the garden or taken on a walk in over a year, they were just let out on some paving around a mangy swimming pool which was ankle high in dog excrement.
A few other things I found out when I was there:
- She was adamant that someone has been trying to break in to the house every night for months and had been to the police and given them a name of a local person who had broken into a local house 6 years earlier even though she had not seen him or anyone else for that matter. The police were therefor regularly visiting his families house which had caused some tensions as you would expect. I fitted some security lights and a fake camera to try and make her feel safer but I'm not convinced this person existed.
- I started speaking to her friends and they all raised concerns, an old friend had emailed her a long message the week before and had just got a short reply saying "I have bought a hamster, he's called Hammy, he likes to run at night" and that was it, it sounded more like something you'd get from a 6 year old.
I sat her down whilst I was there and told her very emotionally that I thought there was a issue and that she needed to go and see a doctor. I spoke to her for about an hour and she showed no emotion whatsoever even though I was a mess, all she would say was that there was a book of mine under the television. She eventually agreed that she would see a doctor and I went home.
After a few weeks she hadn't been to see her doctor, I know as I had contacted him directly. She eventually made an appointment but didn't attend, she told her friends that she couldn't find the surgery, she told me and the GP that she'd fallen asleep. In the end I called up her GP on a Thursday evening in March and made an appointment for the following morning, jumped in the car and drove 12 hours through the night to take her to the appointment. She passed the memory test which wasn't a surprise as it was more her behavior I was worried about, the GP agreed that something didn't seem right, he said that she appeared indifferent to everything apart from her cold that she was telling him to give her an injection for to make it go away. He did a blood test and arranged a scan 4 weeks later. I brought her back to England with me for a couple of weeks where her strange behavior continued, she had to buy new underwear rather than let us put it in the washing machine, had to go out to a shop every day to buy random things like a knee brace (one a day), dried sage or a thousand tea bags...
She went back home and a friend took her to her scan but she hadn't taken her referral letter or got the dye they have to inject from the chemist so they had to rearrange, this time the friend took her everywhere to get what she needed, she then spent the day asking everyone she saw to inject the dye including a cashier at the supermarket.
She had the scan and it only showed a small shrinkage of the brain which the GP said could be associated to age (she's only 62) or some form of dementia. He put her on Fluoexetine to rule out depression and ask me to let him know if it made any difference. I went back to him this week to tell him that it hadn't and that the strange behaviour was continuing, he emailed back yesterday asking if I could attend an appointment with her tomorrow so I've had to drop everything and jump on a plane this afternoon, he wants to discuss her seeing a specialist or possible hospital admission and wants me there as she doesn't see that there's anything wrong.
My biggest concern is her safety and her finances, she's spending money willy nilly and only had the limited funds I gave her a couple of years ago to live off. I expressed these concerns with her when she was here but it didn't change anything as the following day she went and bought a new car as "It was cleaner than hers", she's also up to buying her 4th 2 year mobile contract in the last 2 months, chickens was her big purchase last week, goes clothes shopping pretty much every day, is trying to buy another caravan even though she bought one a few months ago that hasn't moved...
I could go on but have rambled on enough already. I'm just at wits end with it all, I have at 20 month old at home and I can't keep dropping everything and going to France every few weeks to deal with the next problem. I've tried getting her to come back to England but she doesn't want to, her house is a wreck anyway and with the french housing crisis wouldn't be worth much, definitely not enough to buy anything over her. She could rent but she'd have to pass a test with UK immigration to prove that she's back for good so that they will reinstate her NHS cover but she'd just tell them that she's going back to France and would fail.
Richard
The background to it all is that I moved to France with my parents in 1992, 10 years ago I came back to England to go to university and have been here since. The year after I went to uni my dad died suddenly leaving my mum to fend for herself as she wanted to stay in France which is fair enough.
Over the last couple of years she seems to have been quite distant, she never calls but sends short emails every week or so and if you send her a long one you tend to get one worded replies or none at all.
Having not been been back to France for a while (she had come to us a few times last year) I decided to go over for a long weekend at the end of February and was very surprised at what I found... The house was in an absolute state and this was very unusual for someone who was very house proud, as the hours and days went by I discovered that the house hadn't been cleaned in ages, there was dog poo all over the floors and there were obvious signs of hording, it seemed that she bought everything in double figures including food so was eating and drinking mould on a regular basis. From walking through the door there was obviously a gas leak, I turned off the supply and explained that she someone needed to come in and fix it before turning it back on again but she went and turned it back on anyway 2-3 times a day. I also found out that her 2 large dogs hadn't been let out in the garden or taken on a walk in over a year, they were just let out on some paving around a mangy swimming pool which was ankle high in dog excrement.
A few other things I found out when I was there:
- She was adamant that someone has been trying to break in to the house every night for months and had been to the police and given them a name of a local person who had broken into a local house 6 years earlier even though she had not seen him or anyone else for that matter. The police were therefor regularly visiting his families house which had caused some tensions as you would expect. I fitted some security lights and a fake camera to try and make her feel safer but I'm not convinced this person existed.
- I started speaking to her friends and they all raised concerns, an old friend had emailed her a long message the week before and had just got a short reply saying "I have bought a hamster, he's called Hammy, he likes to run at night" and that was it, it sounded more like something you'd get from a 6 year old.
I sat her down whilst I was there and told her very emotionally that I thought there was a issue and that she needed to go and see a doctor. I spoke to her for about an hour and she showed no emotion whatsoever even though I was a mess, all she would say was that there was a book of mine under the television. She eventually agreed that she would see a doctor and I went home.
After a few weeks she hadn't been to see her doctor, I know as I had contacted him directly. She eventually made an appointment but didn't attend, she told her friends that she couldn't find the surgery, she told me and the GP that she'd fallen asleep. In the end I called up her GP on a Thursday evening in March and made an appointment for the following morning, jumped in the car and drove 12 hours through the night to take her to the appointment. She passed the memory test which wasn't a surprise as it was more her behavior I was worried about, the GP agreed that something didn't seem right, he said that she appeared indifferent to everything apart from her cold that she was telling him to give her an injection for to make it go away. He did a blood test and arranged a scan 4 weeks later. I brought her back to England with me for a couple of weeks where her strange behavior continued, she had to buy new underwear rather than let us put it in the washing machine, had to go out to a shop every day to buy random things like a knee brace (one a day), dried sage or a thousand tea bags...
She went back home and a friend took her to her scan but she hadn't taken her referral letter or got the dye they have to inject from the chemist so they had to rearrange, this time the friend took her everywhere to get what she needed, she then spent the day asking everyone she saw to inject the dye including a cashier at the supermarket.
She had the scan and it only showed a small shrinkage of the brain which the GP said could be associated to age (she's only 62) or some form of dementia. He put her on Fluoexetine to rule out depression and ask me to let him know if it made any difference. I went back to him this week to tell him that it hadn't and that the strange behaviour was continuing, he emailed back yesterday asking if I could attend an appointment with her tomorrow so I've had to drop everything and jump on a plane this afternoon, he wants to discuss her seeing a specialist or possible hospital admission and wants me there as she doesn't see that there's anything wrong.
My biggest concern is her safety and her finances, she's spending money willy nilly and only had the limited funds I gave her a couple of years ago to live off. I expressed these concerns with her when she was here but it didn't change anything as the following day she went and bought a new car as "It was cleaner than hers", she's also up to buying her 4th 2 year mobile contract in the last 2 months, chickens was her big purchase last week, goes clothes shopping pretty much every day, is trying to buy another caravan even though she bought one a few months ago that hasn't moved...
I could go on but have rambled on enough already. I'm just at wits end with it all, I have at 20 month old at home and I can't keep dropping everything and going to France every few weeks to deal with the next problem. I've tried getting her to come back to England but she doesn't want to, her house is a wreck anyway and with the french housing crisis wouldn't be worth much, definitely not enough to buy anything over her. She could rent but she'd have to pass a test with UK immigration to prove that she's back for good so that they will reinstate her NHS cover but she'd just tell them that she's going back to France and would fail.
Richard