My 83 year old mum is severely disabled and completely immobile. She lives with my dad, who is 86 and thankfully in reasonably good health for his age. I do as much as I can to support my parents, I help with mum’s personal care, order & collect medication, shopping, clean the house, cook several meals a week etc, just to ease the pressure on dad. I live within a couple of miles from their home so visit most days.
Prior to my mum becoming physically immobile she waited on my dad hand & foot, he has always seen cooking and housework as ‘women’s work’. Mum’s physical disability has completely changed his life but I try to support him as much as possible but lately he has seen my help as interference and has told me so. He lost his temper with me last week after a minor disagreement over the way he handles mum namely refusing to use the hoist to transfer her from her chair to the toilet. He was extremely verbally abusive towards me and went to hit me but pulled back at the last minute. He also said he was going to find somewhere else to live and mum would have to go in a nursing home. I told him that I would look after mum and she wouldn’t be going in any nursing home. It was a very unpleasant experience, I can barely look at him now but obviously I won’t abandon my mum. To put things into perspective my dad has always been very controlling and was emotionally abusive towards mum and my siblings in the past so I can’t blame his behaviour on Dementia. He never thinks he’s in the wrong and has never apologised for anything on his life. If it wasn’t for my mum I would have walked out of his house and not returned.
Prior to my mum becoming physically immobile she waited on my dad hand & foot, he has always seen cooking and housework as ‘women’s work’. Mum’s physical disability has completely changed his life but I try to support him as much as possible but lately he has seen my help as interference and has told me so. He lost his temper with me last week after a minor disagreement over the way he handles mum namely refusing to use the hoist to transfer her from her chair to the toilet. He was extremely verbally abusive towards me and went to hit me but pulled back at the last minute. He also said he was going to find somewhere else to live and mum would have to go in a nursing home. I told him that I would look after mum and she wouldn’t be going in any nursing home. It was a very unpleasant experience, I can barely look at him now but obviously I won’t abandon my mum. To put things into perspective my dad has always been very controlling and was emotionally abusive towards mum and my siblings in the past so I can’t blame his behaviour on Dementia. He never thinks he’s in the wrong and has never apologised for anything on his life. If it wasn’t for my mum I would have walked out of his house and not returned.