My dad is draining me and my mom. I don’t know how to handle it.
In mid August, my dad (85) had several silent heart attacks that he thought was indigestion. We took him to the hospital when I came over to visit and saw that he was YELLOW and his breathing was shallow.
A bit of context:
For the better part of a decade he has eaten like a garbage disposal. Daily milkshakes, fried, fatty food all in excess. My mom and I are pretty healthy eaters and we work out regularly, we tried to tell him to eat better but even if he eats healthy he will eat A LOT, he’ll eat his way through the fridge and cupboards if we don’t stop him.
He would lay in his room and smoke weed and watch movies all day, rarely moved his body, never leaves the house unless he’s going to pick up his medical marijuana or go to the doctor.
My mom (70) does gig/freelance work, she loves her jobs because they allow her to travel once a month and she likes her bosses but she works LONG hours, sometimes 12-14 hours a day with an hour commute each way. Before he went to the hospital for his heart attacks he would be home all day eating and smoking and then ask her to cook him something as soon as she got home from her shifts. Everything he asks for needs to be RIGHT NOW or he tries to guilt us into doing it for him or gets snappy. He will blow my phone up while I’m at work and if I don’t answer I get several texts with a grocery list of expensive foods that come from 3-4 different stores that he expects me to bring him (ex: bring me this specific organic OJ from Whole Foods, bring me this brand of imported chips from Publix). We’ve gotten better at saying no but it’s draining.
Flash forward to now:
He’s been in the hospital since mid August. First in the ICU, then step down, then a rehab facility and now he’s in a new rehab/senior living facility. They estimate that he had ~3 heart attacks, acute kidney failure, and they told us that there was no point in putting a stint in because it’s too far gone. In their words “it would be like watering dead grass” and they would focus on medication that keeps him alive and as comfortable as possible.
He complains about the food constantly, and always expects us to bring him outside food when we visit. He will ask for fast food or fatty food or sugary food and drinks and we say no because he had a heart attack and he snaps at us. He asks for very specific dishes that he expects us to cook after working all day and if we don’t bring it, or we say we don’t have time to cook it for him, he snaps at us. If we bring him healthy food he complains. The first thing he asks us when we come in is “what did you bring me?” Not even a hello … and if we come with nothing, he has an attitude the entire visit.
It’s not even that I mind him asking for things, it’s the fact that he demands and expects it from us that’s bothering me. We’ve been trying to get him Medicaid, staying on top of the nursing facility to get all of his paperwork submitted, going to the Medicaid office to make sure the case worker has all of the information needed so we’re not stuck with a huge bill, working full time, taking care of our very needy dog, on top of the normal life things that don’t stop, but to him, it seems like that doesn’t matter. We should stop whatever we’re doing to make sure he has exactly what he wants exactly when he wants it.
I’m trying my best to have empathy because I can imagine how frustrating it is to be in the hospital this long and know that your body isn’t working like it used to (he’s currently unable to walk unassisted since the heart attacks. He gets PT 5 days a week to help get him moving better) but he makes it so hard…
Maybe I’m fatigued from years of his demands and watching my mom work herself to death to keep their life together, but I’m so frustrated with him for still asking for such awful food and being so rude to us when he doesn’t get his way. We thought this would be a wake up call for him to eat better and take better care of himself, but he’s almost worse than before.
Do I need to have more empathy?
Is it normal to be this angry?
Or am I being too harsh?