I know people think of Hospice as supporting your final months but their only criteria is a terminally sick patient that will never recover. They can come and do an in house visit several times a week and bring health care to your parents, and it’s free. I knew somebody who had hospice care for years.
Ask HN: Advice about aging parents
141–150 of 243 posts
Re: Ask HN: Advice about aging parents
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
Such advance directives aren't completely legally binding, and rely on family and caregivers respecting his wishes. If your brother is mentally incapacitated and his next-of-kin asks a healthcare facility to put in a feeding tube then they'll probably do it.
Also, if he has dementia and is begging and crying to his family for food, they're not going to respect the prior wishes. They're just not.
My father's last intelligible words were "I want a pill." My mother understood this request, but we could not act on it.
A year later he stopped swallowing. My mother polled the family, and the consensus was to try intravenous fluids once, to see if this was temporary. With the fluids it took him a week to die. See how hard it is to even follow someone's last words?
My brother would like to avoid that year.
Re: Ask HN: Advice about aging parents
#143The best thing you can do is realize these are unique individuals. They’re your parents, sure, but it’s not your responsibility. Live your life, let them live theirs. It’s ridiculous the way we as a society have normalized the idea that we need to care for our parents.
Is there a society out there that doesn't care of their parents? It is part of being human yo
Re: Ask HN: Advice about aging parents
#144This hits home for me… my parents are about the same age as yours and I’m 43.
We’re both part of sandwich generation [0] - the link provide general overview of how common it is and tips.
I’ll add that what you can do truly depends on your culture (and even tribe for me) - Americans or Westerners to generalize can simply put their aging parents in elderly care and call it the day - life moves on. If you’re foreign-ish then that a sensitive thing to do and even not an option to consider.
Luckily, for me, my parents live in rural Kenya - so it’s cheap to hire help and provide them with all the care they need in multigenerational setup.
While my parents are relatively healthy- my dad is starting to have recurring medical issues that needs close attention. He’s as stubborn as it gets - I cannot even mention the need to prepare for eventuality with stuff like a will because it a taboo.
My experience thus far has me thinking how I need to prepare myself so my kids don’t get sandwiched as well.
Re: Ask HN: Advice about aging parents
#145A bit of an aside, a fascinating video [0] that reviews a recent metastudy: "how many steps per day does it take to reduce all cause mortality".
Turns out the answer is between 3000 and 7000 steps a day. This is a sample of 30,000 people between the ages of 45-80.
Get yourself and your parents moving.
Re: Ask HN: Advice about aging parents
#146This hits home for me… my parents are about the same age as yours and I’m 43. We’re both part of sandwich generation [0] - the link provide general overview of how common it is and tips. I’ll add that what you can do truly depends on your culture (and even tribe for me) - Americans or Westerners to generalize can simply put their aging parents in elderly care and call it the day - life moves on. If you’re foreign-ish…
I wondered if there was a name for it. It seemed strange to me for OP to be raising a young family while his parents are so old. That means both him and his father had children in their 40s (or perhaps one was even older). It honestly does seem far better for everyone if people have children in their 20s. I wish I could have done that.
Re: Ask HN: Advice about aging parents
#147This likely isn't relevant to you OP, but perhaps for someone else who is a little earlier in the process here. I'm in my late 30's and my parents are in their early 60's (Dad will be retiring next year). Two years ago we decided move into a multi-generational home. We found a place big enough for our family of 5, in addition to an "in-law" apartment big enough for my parents. This was born directly out of my parents…
For the right group, that sounds ideal.
It's hard to tell sometimes what the right group is, though. My grandmother moved in with us. We all got on so well it seemed like the obvious thing to do. But she became depressed and just felt like she was living in someone else's house (which she was, really). Living together is a tricky thing and in my experience it's hard to know what will work. Worth a shot, though. They might love it.
Re: Ask HN: Advice about aging parents
#148This hits home for me… my parents are about the same age as yours and I’m 43. We’re both part of sandwich generation [0] - the link provide general overview of how common it is and tips. I’ll add that what you can do truly depends on your culture (and even tribe for me) - Americans or Westerners to generalize can simply put their aging parents in elderly care and call it the day - life moves on. If you’re foreign-ish…
"Americans or Westerners to generalize can simply put their aging parents in elderly care and call it the day - life moves on."
That's quite a dismissal. Reading it sound like 'westerners and Americans just don't care about their elderly ones'.
I assure you that's not the case and in general every generalization it's wrong almost by definition. Be well.
Re: Ask HN: Advice about aging parents
#149I am sorry for this situation. My brother-in-law’s parents were also super stubborn and it cost my sister dearly until they passed away. I am very lucky that my own parents usually are very reasonable and accept that they are getting old. My mom stopped driving and they also moved into a smaller, easier to maintain place.
I don’t think there is an easy solution for your situation other than learning acceptance and tolerance so this doesn’t affect you too much. I bet people who live with alcoholics have a lot of lessons for how to deal with irresponsible people while maintaining your own mental health.
Re: Ask HN: Advice about aging parents
#150This likely isn't relevant to you OP, but perhaps for someone else who is a little earlier in the process here. I'm in my late 30's and my parents are in their early 60's (Dad will be retiring next year). Two years ago we decided move into a multi-generational home. We found a place big enough for our family of 5, in addition to an "in-law" apartment big enough for my parents. This was born directly out of my parents…
I think this is a good solution, but I want to add a few disclaimers after watching my parents make a similar decision with my grandparents. My parents moved into my mom's childhood home with her parents, and renovated to build out a second floor with separate living/sleeping space (no extra kitchen). This was great in that the property became the de-facto gathering place for a large and geographically distributed fa…
Struggling to directly address things isn't really our failure mode (if anything, we tend in the other direction). With the specific example of driving, I don't expect much of an issue there. My wife and my mom frequently run errands together anyway, so I expect that will just become the default. My dad will be annoyed, but he's a _very_ pragmatic and risk-averse person and my guess is he'll be the one to make the call (probably earlier than we would)
We talked a lot about money going in, and one of the requirements was that the house had to be something that my wife and I could afford entirely on our own. We own the house (my parents aren't on the deed). If my parents moved out tomorrow, we'd have to tighten up a little bit, but we wouldn't be at any risk of having to move if we didn't want to. My parents pay us monthly based on a sq ft percentage of the house (utilities, taxes, etc), and they have invested a fair bit in their side of the house out of their own pockets (renovating the kitchen, building a small addition, etc... things that also benefit us in terms of value of the property)
As far as your second two points... time will tell... We're not far enough in to run into those issues yet. I think we're all on board for the long haul (3+ decades), but that's easy to say now. We do have regular intentional check-ins about how things are going to make sure we all still agree on where we're at and where we're going.
Your summary is spot on. If you nail expectations, finances, and boundaries, I suspect you'll be in good shape.
All in all, it has been a huge quality of life increase for us. It's really great for our kids to have such a close relationship with their grandparents, and there are significant practical benefits for us as well (my wife and I are able to get away for a weekend every few months, something made much much easier by the fact that we have "live in childcare")