feeling very down and having awful thoughts?

[JennyS]

Why don`t you try to get help for your mother to bathe or shower without discussing it and let the carers make the suggestion.

As for the smell. Have you checked where dirty clothes are kept? Is your mother responsible for her own laundry? If not you might uncover the root cause of the problem with a quick search of drawers and the bottom of the wardrobes.[/QUOTE.

I was thinking I'll call the care agency in the morning to see what they say about it......thankyou.

I do her laundry and have to sneak it out before she sees me take it, otherwise she snatches it back off me. I've bought her new underwear this week and will have to sneak the old ones out first hoping she doesn't notice.

 

[lallstom]

I've only ever made one or two posts on here because I can usually find the answer to a question in one of the threads. However, I'm struggling this time with terrible guilt feelings due to a number of things. My 80 year old mum, before she was diagnosed, was a home loving lady who was spotlessly clean about everything including herself. Now when I go to her house, there's a terrible smell as soon as I set foot in her door, so bad that I've taken to putting perfume under my nose so I can't smell it. My brother & I have tried the cleaning routine but after a day it's back to how it was. I believe some of the problem lies with never opening the windows, but I wondered if it was something other than that we must be missing. Another thing is her personal hygiene - we're convinced she isn't showering/bathing, although she insists she is,the bath is always dry and there are never any damp towels around. I'm struggling with the fact that I should be able to let her know she's not clean and offer to help her in the bathroom. I don't know why, but I just can't and I simply couldn't bathe or shower her (not that she'd allow me to anyway). Surely this can't be right? I feel so guilty that I'm not able to do this for my own mother. Has anyone else felt like this? When we go out for the day I check her clothing is clean and can quite easily let her know if what she's wearing is dirty and ask her to change. This offends her a lot and she says I'm cruel for telling her. I don't know of any other way of saying it. She has carers twice daily purely for meds prompts & I'm thinking I should add another call to help her shower/bathe daily. I know that if I even made so much of a suggestion of doing this she would be horrified. Does anyone have any ideas how to get around this?
Now I've just realised I've posted in response to another post which mine is nothing to do with! Grrrrrrrr......sorry

Hi
I had exactly the same problem with my mother. The worst smell turned out to be rotten eggs, months old still intact but very smelly.
I never got round the washing aspect. She went for 3 months without any sort of wash, despite being incontinent. It was only when she was admitted to hospital after a fall that she was washed. She is now in a care home smelling much better! After she went into hospital I found dirty pads in many strange places adding to the smell eg behind radiators.
I also used to have to change her wet bed each morning very quickly before she noticed what I was doing.