Elderly Parents' Burdens

The Trials of Elderly Parents 

My family hails from Western Massachusetts. My sister and I still live here. Our parents moved to Georgia to escape fuel bills. Even then they didn’t enjoy the best of health. Things of course have worsened these past years. I spent last summer in Georgia helping my dad recover from major surgery. He had a stent placed in each kidney artery and a graft placed in the major artery. He came through the surgery fine but some snafu either in the doctor or hospital’s office—no one of course wants to take responsibility—left my father without visiting nurses once home.

Thank God I arrived in time. He’d blown up nearly thirty pounds in fluid from kidney failure and would have soon died if not brought to the doctor, who immediately admitted him to the hospital again. Through all this, he was waiting to regain sufficient health to start chemotherapy for Multiple Myeloma, an incurable but treatable bone marrow cancer.

What Do We Do Now?

Now a year later, my father receives weekly injections three times a month with one week off. Just in the past month, protein levels in the blood, a sign of cancer activity, rose. He had a bone scan and we’re waiting for the results. I don’t have the funds to make multiple trips down there, and my sister only has so much time off from work. The disease progresses as it will. We know that. The question is what do we do about it? Having them so far away from our help drives us crazy.

My mother can’t take care of a seriously ill person, which so far my father isn’t. She can’t take care of herself, though she’d vehemently deny it. She has serious heart disease and dementia from hardening of the arteries. She failed a memory test at her primary care doctor’s today, and he has prescribed something to help. Fingers crossed, though I don’t truly believe in luck. I believe in prayer and action.

The Rub

And therein, as the saying goes, lies the rub. You can take only so much action over the phone. If my father can’t stay in the home or dies before my mother, I don’t know if she’d survive the trip back up north, providing we even get her permission. Probably a majority of us baby boomers are facing these dilemmas. It’s a reminder to consider our own mortality and plan for our eventual health failures for the sake of our children. Don’t leave your elderly care to chance.