He got what was coming to him...

[CinnamonBark]

Hi all,

There is a disturbing new twist to the situation going on in my family. My narcissistic bipolar father was so difficult and horrible to the doctors/nurses at the hospital that they basically used the ECT 3x/week to disable him completely. They told me there was no other option over the phone while it was happening and I ignored the many voicemails I received from him saying he's losing his memory, losing his mind , saying goodbye to me etc because  he has always been one to exaggerate.

Well I saw him in person for the first time in 2 months yesterday and he is absolutely disabled. Somehow the ECT killed all the parts of him except the difficult narcy parts- he cannot remember how to use his computer or cell phone and just sits in a chair now and stares ahead blankly. He doesn't talk much, bathe or change clothes anymore. He is still refusing to treat a couple serious health issues and then freaking out about the symptoms (all easily curable with meds and a catheter) He was fully able and remembering everything when he went in there......

last summer he was constantly in the ER for fake made up health conditions and he begged for them to take him into the psych ward. Part of me wishes that they didn't have to do that to him but I remember how he was acting in there (refusing to eat "hunger strikes against doctors" refusing to use the bathroom then demanding the female nurses give him enemas then freaking out saying they're abusing him, harassing young female patients, ect)

This disability of his makes everything 100x harder because his sister and her husband have come to handle selling the properties but he is in such a messed up place that just taking him to the bank to sign things is a debacle because he freaks out about his health problems that he isn't helping and fixates on it. They spent an hour there with him yesterday and he was really acting out. They wanted to take him back to Oregon with them but as he is right now its impossible as they could get kicked off the plane if he causes a scene. I told them it's ok if they want to put him in assisted living or a long term psychiatric facility here, but I won't be visiting at all and he will die alone (the consequences of his abusive actions the past 21 years).

This reality is really fucking hard right now, and selling the family homes is going to be VERY difficult for me emotionally. Any support or suggestions for coping are more than welcome. I am grieving at the moment, I'm just taking it day by day. I'm 26 years old and he is 80 for context. I'm just starting to have success in life and it really sucks that all this is going on.

[bloomie]

CinnamonBark - something simple that came to mind immediately when reading your post... put your oxygen mask on first. Keep building your life, keep relying on people who are more able to assist your father, keep taking your own emotional temperature and making wise decisions about what you can and cannot do in all of this.

It really does suck that all of this is going on, but you are also spot on that how your father has lived his life until now and the decisions he is making regarding his health is coming into full play and it sounds like the scope of his needs are beyond what most people could manage.

Maybe it is time for your father to be declared incompetent and his legal and financial matters taken over by others, but that is another thing that would need highly trained professionals to determine and act on.

Your father's decompensating and mental health issues are not = to you devolving and losing focus on your goals and forward movement in your life. Your lives are two separate things. You can grieve and have deep sadness in all of this alongside of living your good and valuable life. You are making different choices than he has and your outcomes are already headed in a direction you like and are proud of.

I hope you are finding ways to care for yourself in this time. Doing things you love, getting outside, eating healthy meals, movement. All of the things you know lift you up and encourage you.. do those!

I am really glad you shared and reached out!

[CinnamonBark]

Thank you for your lovely response. I am doing all the healthy things and back in therapy, trying to fix my relationship with food and even attempting to date and meet a lot of new people which is huge since I was a recluse for much of my life. 

I am grieving but I see on the other side of the grief a life that I want and will work to have.

[treesgrowslowly]

 

Hi CinnamonBark,

That is what went through my mind as well. You are in a stressful situation right now. For you to keep yourself clear minded about what is yours and what is not yours, is going to help you a lot during this time.

I'm glad you are working with a therapist.

A theme on these boards, as a long time member, is that I have seen so many people go through this. The older parent / relative's health deteriorates, and the person on the board has to work so hard to deal with all of it. It does sound familiar - the fight to get him to the bank, his behaviour being so awful that no one knows if he would tolerate a flight, and so on... You are not alone in having to deal with this.

It sounds like he is showing one typical narc trait after another. He's being immature and childish, while also demanding that everyone around him treat him like an adult. He can't have it both ways, but like any immature narcissistic types, he won't see that. But you can see it.

It sounds like he's reactive to everything - doing things out of spite, being difficult, being contradictory...all of that is very very immature behavior. You can probably see this so clearly. It's a place of regressed behavior where the person might be 80 years old chronologically, but acting like a child again. Stubborn and unable to be reasoned with. I saw this regressing to a child in some of my older FOO as well many years ago.

I am sorry you're going through this. At 26, you do have your own life and it is great that you are wanting to give yourself all sorts of very positive, life affirming experiences. What has helped you to take care of you in the last while?

Trees

[Cat of the Canals]

I'm sorry you're going through this, and I agree with everyone else that focusing on your own life right now is the best thing for you.

I also sense some latent guilt about how this has all transpired (apologies if I'm wrong) and wanted to give my two cents.
From what I've gathered, your father:
-is 80 years old
-has more than one complex psychiatric diagnosis
-has underlying physical health problems that he's refused treatment for
-is currently more or less institutionalized
-had COVID at some point curing this process, as mentioned in a previous post

Any single one of those would often be enough to explain a rapid decline in cognition. The fact that all of these things exist concurrently? That's a lot for an 80-year-old brain to handle. So while it may look like it was the ECT... there's a chance this was a downhill slide already in progress. And if he's on any kind of psych meds, add that to the pile as well.

I don't know if that's helpful at all, but I know it's human nature to wonder if there's something you could have done differently to change the outcome for the better. And this sounds like a scenario that wasn't going to have many good outcomes, no matter what the course.

[CinnamonBark]

Trees-

Thank you for your response. You are spot on about the Regression. It's kind of alarming that that happens honestly, and it's very ironic because he spent his whole life calling other people childish and pathologizing them as a way to put them down, now he's no better than your average 3 year old. 

I have been focusing on my hobbies and taking some time off work to deal with the grief of having to sell the childhood homes. I was underweight due to having had covid back to back and getting long covid so I am making a lot of large meals and eating more to put on some weight. Reading and napping and smoking weed a lot has helped too.

[CinnamonBark]

To cat of the canals,

You are 100% right about this not having any good outcomes. He purposely didn't plan for health issues or anything, refused to appoint a POA, ect so he definitely brought this on himself.

I don't feel all that guilty because I know there's no way I could have stayed any longer at his home, I left almost a year ago without letting him know where I was going. He got so much worse after that that I had to block his phone number, so I essentially progressively went VLC and we communicated through emails. He told everyone how he missed me though- the truth is abusing me was the only pleasure he got out of life and once I took that away he had nothing to live for anymore. Over the past few weeks with the ECT he would leave voicemail saying that he is losing his mind, saying goodbye to me ect and I feel a bit guilty that I didn't answer and now he's so disabled he can't have a conversation at all.

I used to tell him "you're gonna do this behavior to the wrong person one day and you will be hurt" and I feel like that's finally happened. The doctors insisted on overdoing the ECT to try to suppress that evil part of his but what they didn't know is that is the core of him. I agree with you it's a combination of things but he still sounded like himself until the last couple weeks of the ECT (they were doing it 3x a week!).

This is a lot to process for me and I'm sorry for the long response- Thank you for responding with your 2 cents I really appreciate it during this hard time.

[JenniferSmith]

I just wanted to say I am sorry you are going through this. From personal experience, when we get to the end-of-life issues with the types of families we have on this forum, it can be very, very messy and complicated.  Even in mostly "healthy" families, end-of-life can bring up a lot of issues among the rest of the family. We have it way much worse because we've usually spent decades trying to deal with our families.

It sounds trite, but try your best to take it day by day. Things are going unfold the way they will, based on his long history of choices he made, and you don't really have all that much influence on it, so you should preserve your energy for yourself and your own life as much as possible. I know that is easier said than done though.

[SaintBlackSheep]

I am sorry you are going through this, and I can relate in many ways. It's so fascinating to see how similarly these narcs are handling aging!
My Nmom is in her late 70s, I'm her only child, she has no POA, I had no idea where her banking info is, her insurance, who her lawyer is, what her wishes are, NOTHING! Every time I asked about it, she'd blow me off and act like I was plotting her death and trying to swindle her. Then, during a horrible visit in the summer, she waited the whole week and the morning we were leaving to drive 10 hours home, she asked if I wanted to come to the bank with her real quick to sign some papers!
IDK if it was intentional that she asked when she knew I wouldn't go, or if she is just that declined and self-centered that she didn't realize my fam of 4 had a long drive ahead of us that day and that she'd already frittered a weeklong visit away where I could have gone with her to the bank.
And then the hostility...declining isn't easy on anyone, but the narc who has aggrandized themselves so much just really can't handle declining with anything but malignancy.
Put your needs first. I know it's unnatural because we were all raised to not have needs--that our parents needs ARE our needs, that keeping the narc happy should be the equivalent to food and love for us! But wet know that's not true. Still, knowing and doing are two different things, and don't be like me, waiting until I developed a serious heart problem caused by STRESS to finally take some self care.