There's not a d*** thing wrong with her

[wisingup]

For several years, at increasing pace, my now 84-year old uBPDm has been seeming to decline mentally.  Missing some bill payments, seemingly unable to manage her daily tasks such as making doctor's appointments, picking up prescriptions, and large things such as figuring out how/where she wants to live.  It was exacerbated by a couple of UTI's where she did truly lose competence until we got her diagnosed and on anti-biotics, after which she was fine again.

Last week my brother took her to an appt with a new doctor, a geriatric specialist, for a regular exam but also to start the process of filling out the paperwork required for assisted living.  Her old doctor has retired.  This new doctor apparently spent quite a long time with her - close to an hour - of which a large part was asking questions aimed at evaluating her mental functioning.  Well, she aced it.  Missed only one small part involving short-term memory which the doctor thought was insignificant.  He said there are no signs of Alzheimers, dementia or anything other than normal aging.  He did tell her to quick taking her "only when needed" anxiety meds every day, which she has apparently been doing for years.

This adds a lot of weight to my suspicion that she was foisting her daily hassles onto me, my brother and my aunt both for attention and also just because she didn't want to deal with them.  I'm angry today.  I was forced into much more frequent interaction with her than was good for my mental health due to this behavior. 

I know my mother is a child emotionally.  Always has been, always will be.  The minute I was old enough to be handed her problems to solve, she started in & has not let up.  And she is too anxious to get these tasks and problems off her plate to care about the stress it causes the recipient, even if it is people she "loves".   

[Sneezy]

Oh wow, of course you're angry.  Your mom manipulated you into doing things that she could have, and should have, done for herself.  Her feigned helplessness was just a way of getting supply from you and others.  She probably feels that doing day to day chores is somehow beneath her.  And I'm sure she enjoys the attention when someone else has to handle something for her. 

I'm glad you now have a diagnosis from a doctor that says your mom is doing well mentally.  The next time she tries to foist a chore off on you, you can remind her that the doctor said she is perfectly capable of doing things for herself.  And, in fact, the more she does for herself, the better off she will be as far as mental acuity.  Use it or lose it, and the doctor apparently says your mom needs to keep using her own abilities to keep them sharp. 

Sounds like you are under doctor's orders to now drop the rope.  It will be good for your mom, and even better for you, to let her handle more things on her own.  Good luck - it is hard to say "no" but it sounds like it is well past time for your mom to start hearing you say "no" more often.

[SonofThunder]

Hi wisingup,

It seems your suspicion radar was very accurate and sorry your uBPDm has been manipulating you, your brother and aunt into action, by her masking her true abilities to self-care.  She has now been further revealed by the circumstances of her doctor retiring and the proactive evaluation.  My elderly uNPDf would turn an evaluation into a trophy challenge, yet ignorantly unaware that the show of true ability teaches everyone the truth about their capabilities.  He, like your mother, would ace the evaluation, and then upon returning home, snuggle comfortably right back into his need for others to caretake him.

Therefore, since I can only control myself, it would once again be my lot to deny his requests for hassle-care, and if denied,  I would then be the drama-triangle perpetrator dance partner to his desired victim role.  Typical PD behavior haha.  So all the evaluations in the world don't help one darn ounce, because PD's only view is on themselves.  I wish you strength going forward in boundaries and thick skin. 

SoT

[wisingup]

Sounds like you are under doctor's orders to now drop the rope.

I love this Sneezy - thank you!  And thank you SOT, for this:

Sounds like you are under doctor's orders to now drop the rope.

Part of my battle is my own need for "control" of the situation.  If I sit back and do nothing, I picture her allowing the problem to grow worse and/or intentionally fouling it up to ensure that others will need to get involved.  She is capable of this - I've seen instances before. 

I sleep better at night now that I manage her money & I've gotten it to a place where the effort I need to put in is minimal.  Everything is online now & I pay a few bills each month & do her simple taxes each year.  But of course, it's an incredibly slippery slope.

[SonofThunder]

Wising up,

I am of the opinion that humans should seek proper self-care when they are truly incapable of caring for themselves.  If humans are truly incapable of seeking proper self-care, then other humans may need to assist in the seeking.  Some elderly humans who were once able to both seek and care for themselves, become unable to do one, or the other, or both. 

Proper boundaries dictate that I self-protect as necessary, but for me, do not exclude my proper assistance to humans that can neither seek nor self-care.  If a human can self-care, great!  If they can seek self-care then also great!  If they truly can do neither, I may assist (boundary dictates) or call someone who is paid to assist. 

My being a relation to the person does not assign me any obligation to assist in a greater manner than a non-relation, unless I have some legal obligation to assist (such as a power if attorney of a family member or a minor in my care for example). 

Therefore, the words:  "... fouling it up to ensure that others will need to get involved", is fully in control by the "others" to self-protect.  If others allow themselves to get involved, that is imo, their problem because other options may exist. 

For example if your uBPDm fouls something up and pretends not capable of self-care nor seeking, then an option is simply to short-term assist by "seeking" for her, not volunteering yourself after the seeking is complete.  Since you manage her money, how about seeking (hiring) her a capable nurse-assistant or some other type of daily care person to take over the areas where she is "..fouling it up".  Therefore you are being a caring human being but fully boundary protected.

Other option are available such as Uber-like services for the elderly (there are options), 911, house-call doctors, cleaners, others..

If she is faking, and her own money gets assigned to a paid person (vs a willing target of her control), she will, imo, stop "fouling" very quickly.  If she truly needs the assistance, it will be self-protective boundary money well spent by the person assisting in the seeking without being manipulated.

SoT

[Pepin]

Sounds like you are under doctor's orders to now drop the rope.

I love this Sneezy - thank you!  And thank you SOT, for this:

Sounds like you are under doctor's orders to now drop the rope.

Part of my battle is my own need for "control" of the situation.  If I sit back and do nothing, I picture her allowing the problem to grow worse and/or intentionally fouling it up to ensure that others will need to get involved.  She is capable of this - I've seen instances before. 

I sleep better at night now that I manage her money & I've gotten it to a place where the effort I need to put in is minimal.  Everything is online now & I pay a few bills each month & do her simple taxes each year.  But of course, it's an incredibly slippery slope.

I agree with all of this.  Reminding her of what the MD said each and every time she tries to challenge you with manipulation, may give her pause to reconsider.  Or, it will lead to her finding other ways to get the supply of you she craves.

Like you, my DH had all the bills handled as well as her financial portfolio, taxes, etc.  CN MIL was suddenly unable to read bills and write checks?  Seems a bit suspicious to me and no evaluation was done.  And I don't know if her MD ignored the possibility that she was in a cognitive decline or that the MD figured since she was generally previously non compliant with any of their health suggestions, why bother?  In CN MIL's case, if she was called out for something, she'd go around it and find something else to gripe about that would bring her attention.  She indeed "fouled up" to keep everyone in line.  Personally, I think she should have been placed in AL with specialized caregivers but she was sharp to point out that that would cost money and she wanted to save every penny she could to pass on at her death.    These PDs are cunning to the core....   

[moglow]

This new doctor apparently spent quite a long time with her - close to an hour - of which a large part was asking questions aimed at evaluating her mental functioning.  Well, she aced it.  Missed only one small part involving short-term memory which the doctor thought was insignificant.  He said there are no signs of Alzheimers, dementia or anything other than normal aging.  He did tell her to quick taking her "only when needed" anxiety meds every day, which she has apparently been doing for years.

Well. Sounds like somebody needed to do it. I've said for a while that I doubt seriously any of mother's doctors are following up on prescription needs, reevaluating dosages and/or whether they're needed at all on a regular basis. And when side effects kick in, I'd imagine mother just continues complaining to everyone but her doctors. Because heaven forbid they actually change something to the good. 

One of my brother has been delegated to pick up prescriptions for her for a while now. He recently sent me pics of two he'd just picked up, one an antidepressant and another for osteoporosis. The first I was on for a while, and I told him I just had days. Not good or bad, just days - I requested a change before long! Being really depressed was bad but not feeling anything couldn't possibly be the goal. The other one? I looked up main side effects and I saw several issues she's complained about repeatedly, including extreme joint and bone pain, digestive upsets, irritability [!!] plus a few others. He went to her later and asked about them - oh but she couldn't stop taking it, it had been prescribed for her.     But ... you're having problems here, BIG problems. At least talk to your doctor and see if dosage needs adjusting or something else might be better. No, no. They prescribed it and that's that. He.Can't.Read.Your.Mind.

[wisingup]

Thanks for the replies everyone.  First of all, I noticed that I messed up trying to quote SOT.  This is the bit that should have been in the quotes above: 

I wish you strength going forward in boundaries and thick skin.

I really am light-years better in setting boundaries (even knowing what a boundary is for that matter) and having thicker skin than when I arrived at this forum around 2015 or so.  Thank you all for that!!  But I'm not done yet - there's till work to be done in this area. 

My brother has really stepped up to be the one who interacts with her now & is taking her to medical appointments.  Because I love my brother & want to ease HIS burden, I do the behind-the-scenes stuff like managing her money & taxes, researching assisted living facilities, etc.  This seems to work pretty well.  It went haywire last year when brother was going through chemotherapy whilst mom had a UTI-delirium episode, but things have normalized now.

Like you, my DH had all the bills handled as well as her financial portfolio, taxes, etc.  CN MIL was suddenly unable to read bills and write checks?

There are many layers going on with the money thing.  First of all - uBPDm is terrible with money and I believe has tremendous anxiety around it.  She has passed that anxiety to me, but thank goodness it took the form early on of me being hyper-aware of my finances, reading books, learning as much as I could to manage my own.  She tried to get me to manage hers years ago, but we were already on the outs and I didn't want to get involved with her on such a fraught topic.  She then fired her financial advisor and proceeded to make a series of truly terrible decisions including a reverse mortgage, spending huge sums to travel and remodel her home, and then ultimately selling in a down market leaving her with a fraction of what she could have now if it had been properly managed.  I'm pretty sure the financial advisor was fired because she didn't like being told to spend less, stop withdrawing huge sums to go on cruises, etc.  If it had been me managing her money, it would have been me having these conversations with her and that would have been ugly.

I think it has sunk in that she will NEVER live with either brother or I.  I'm pretty sure she's always assumed she would, so that was probably a tough realization. 

But ... you're having problems here, BIG problems. At least talk to your doctor and see if dosage needs adjusting or something else might be better. No, no. They prescribed it and that's that. He.Can't.Read.Your.Mind.

Agree, Moglow - this is a big problem.  In the past 10 years or so, mom's been diagnosed with and medicated for IBS, bi-polar disorder, and dementia.  Somehow, she currently has none of those things.  She's had a lot of turnover in doctors & is definitely not assertive in picking up the phone to ask questions or advocate for herself.  She does complain a lot though, to people who aren't her doctor   

[LikeTheSea]

My 95 yo mom did the same.  She has had bpd ever since I can remember.

She didn't know where we while I was driving around her neighborhood. She saw men on top of roof when they weren't there.  She forgot my name. Etc. I took her to a neurologist who ordered a CAT scan and MRI of her brain.  Long story short, she was fine.  There were some issues though...she's a fake and a liar.  Infuriating.