Taking care of one’s elderly, aging parents, it’s, getting harder by the generations here that’s for certain! Translated…
Huei told me, that her father-in-law had been staying in the hospitals for over a month now, as his conditions worsened, he’d started, having delusions to, he would be lucid from time to time, agitated, suspected that the doctors and nurses at the hospitals were, out to get him, he couldn’t call the names of his wife and children correctly either. Before she’d finished telling me, her husband called her up, upset, said that her mother-in-law had a fall riding on the bicycles, and now, she’d, bumped her head, sustained an injury, and ranted incessantly about her father-in-law’s conditions to him. She’d told her husband, that he shouldn’t take his mother to visit his father at the hospital now, so she doesn’t worry, and her husband screamed back at her, “You’re not here, what right have you, to tell me what to do? I already have enough pressures from mom and dad here!”
Based off of her in-laws’ conditions, the hospital suggested that they should send her father-in-law to stay at a nursing home, because even IF with the extra help from a hired migrant worker, her mother-in-law won’t be able to, handle her father-in-law’s ups and downs. It’d reminded Huei of her own grandparents.
like this???
Her grandfather and grandmother over twenty years ago, were sent to the nursing homes to live due to Alzheimer’s and stroke, because her grandfather would ram around like crazy, he can only be tied down to the bed to restrain him, while the side effects of the tranquilizers they’d given him, made him sleepy at all time, while, as her grandmother watched her husband, her tears were, caught in the wrinkles on her face, and every time Huei left the nursing home, she’d often wondered, if there is, something there, to help her grandmother wipe her tears away.
And, the sorrows she’d felt toward her grandparents, suddenly, busted out, and, she’d, thought about how, they may have to, send her father-in-law to live in a nursing home too, and she’d cried aloud inside, “Once he’s in, he’ll, NEVER get out again!”, and yet, due to the erosions of time, she can only, force herself to accept this as a fact.
In the three-and-a-half years’ worth of her father-in-law’s condition, her husband didn’t DARE take trips for too long at a time, worried, that if he was away, something might happen to his own, father, he went between his home in Taipei, and is parents’ home out east constantly, and even if being a freelance worker, it’d, allowed him to have flexible schedules, he’d still felt, strained; and, Huei felt, helpless toward her husband’s anger, being the middle generation still working hard, lacking the money, and the time, she can only, force herself to carry the loads. As for her mother-in-law, she too, had been, tried, couldn’t, look after her self well enough, she became too anxious she started, falling ill too.
Those who’d not weathered through the trials of long-term care would NOT understand the hardships of the families. I can only offer Huei console, that even IF it’s, with a heavy heart that she and her husband decide to send the elders into a nursing home, they’d still need to, consider whether or not they’re, able to, look after their elders themselves as a primary consideration, as for the rest, don’t think too much on it.
And so, this, is the troubles, of the middle-generations, they are now, impacted with their aging parents’ issues, dementia, stroke, along with other conditions that show up with old age, and, this is a difficult lesson, and, it’s hard to manage, and people in this predicament usually, think for a very long time, before they decide what they’re, to do, for their aging parents.