AboutMargot RN BScN CGN Expertise I nursed my own Mother and Grandmother at home when they were dying so I have personal experience with the emotions involved. I have also spent the last 15+ years as a Registered Nurse caring for The Elderly and Terminally Ill and it has brought me great satisfaction. I am willing to answer any questions I can.
Experience
Past/Present clients Hundreds of Long Term Care Residents as well as hundreds of Cleitns and families in the community (including my Mother and Grandmother).
Question My 84 yr. old mother has been diagnosed with end-stage COPD. She also has CHF. She is on oxygen 24/7 and does breathing treatments 4 times a day. She was always an extremely hard worker (in the cotton fields at age 5) and can't seem to slow down at all now. She gets extremely out of breath doing small housekeeping tasks. (She lives with me and is always asking to help) We have to keep an eye on her heart rate because of the CHF. She will finish one task and them immediately ask for something else to do even though she can hardly stand up for being out of breath. I try to make her sit and rest between "jobs", but that is almost impossible. It's sometimes frustrating to me because she is working me to death trying to keep her something to do. But at the same time I am very worried that her heart will just give out and she will collapse and die and I will feel it is my fault because I worked her too hard. I know it won't be my fault, but I will still feel guilty. I've searche everywhere for some kind of answer to this type of behavior and have found nothing. Is this her way of "getting everything done" before she passes on or what????? Thank you for your time. Belinda, TX
Answer Hi Belinda and thanks for writing,
It sounds to me like your Mother has prided herself on being an active and contributing member of the family all of her life and she’s not going to change now. The CHF &COPD will make her wear out faster and should slow her down a bit unless she literally works until she drops (in which case you’ll know she went out on her terms and didn’t suffer a long, drawn out demise).’
My only advice is to recognise and respect her need to keep busy and feel like an important contributor to the family but have someone she respects and will listen to talk with her. Try to explain that you all love her and appreciate her assistance, but you really worry that she’ll put too much strain on her cardio-vascular and respiratory systems and prematurely advance her progressive diseases unnecessarily; respectively tell her that when she doesn’t rest it actually causes the rest of you a lot of stress. Tell her she has done more than her share and while you appreciate her ongoing help, you also need her to take care of herself; maybe tell her it would be selfish to run herself into the ground so then she’d need to be cared for 24-7 and become a burden for the family (I am trying to make different suggestions, you know her and know what approach may work on her personality).
She’s not the only senior who is stubborn, set in her ways and won’t listen to anyone. We all have the right to live at risk if we chose as long as we don’t put others at risk too. She may never listen to anyone and may keep going until something beyond her control slows her down. Just remember you can’t make others always do what is best for them and if sh does work herself into an early grave then you know you did all you could but also allowed her to live as she pleased – nothing to feel guilty about at all!
Wishing you all my best, please fell free to write again any time if I can be of any further assistance.
