My grandfather had a heart attack about a decade ago, and since then – neighbours triggered another paranoid delusional episode with building noise – he’s become more and more of a shut-in who just expected my grandma (82F) to do everything for him.
This, combined with multiple instances of him refusing to take certain tablets because he thinks their side effects are worse than what they prevent – as an example, he stopped taking his urinary continence tablets because he claimed they made his urethra hurt – has meant we have a fully incontinent grandfather who, up until last year, was sleeping in his armchair and constantly commenting on whether he needed to/was currently “going”. He does this for attention and some weird pathological need to like seeing women panic and fuss over him. He has made absolutely zero effort to help himself and we had to put him in a care home because none of us can lift him and he was causing constant stress for us all.
Since Christmas, he has decided he doesn’t particularly feel like walking anymore and refuses to even indulge the staff when they repeatedly ask him if he’ll be willing to get up, but he’ll always refuse and either say they “weren’t polite enough” and were “rushing” him, or he’ll claim that he really, REALLY wants to try walking, honest, but the nasty mean staff are ignoring him when he asks. My mum and grandma believe him because they always want to believe what he says, even when he’s been caught in these very obvious lies.
My grandma is an absolute pushover and constantly defends and enables his behaviour, so he never took any of his doctor’s advice or her advice (such as “keep moving or your muscles will atrophy”) and is now bed-bound in a care home. His only hobby is making her worry by constantly ringing up and complaining about how horrible the staff are to him and how “service is unsatisfactory”.
I am barred from visiting because I finally lost my temper and shouted at him that he was not in a hotel, and my grandma and mum (who were already being snippy with me for not smiling and serving him hand and foot like they do because he’s “in a bad situation and you should feel sorry for him”) lost their temper with me. Their entire demeanour changes when they’re around him. They sort of cluster by his bedside like a little cabal and the second they think you’re being sly they get really nasty with you.
I get why, because he actually used to act like a normal person, albeit with some occasional schizophrenic episodes – my uncle hanging himself and him being the one to find the body didn’t help – but I don’t know what’s caused him to start acting like this and, as I still live with my parents, I don’t know how to tell my mum that I don’t want to hear about it anymore, especially as nobody in my family really has boundaries and I’ve grown up being my mum’s “vent sponge”, as you will.
They went to visit him yesterday and his glasses were all twisted and bent out of shape. The simple answer is that they fell and got caught on something/stuck in his bed and twisted, but my grandad presented this as “this one big lady (who I don’t like and call The Gorgon) knocked them off my table and twisted them because she is a boorish oaf who has it in for me for some reason, and then when I told the other useless staff in this place they blamed ME for having too many things on my table!!!”. Grandma got upset at this harrowing and candid account of tragic elder abuse, and my mum thinks he’s actually telling the truth for once because she can’t believe he’d just twist his glasses and throw them under the bed like that!! And he sounded really upset this time!!! And she asked his head nurse and the head nurse said “well we know what [grandad’s name] is like, don’t we?” as in he lies constantly and is generally unpleasant to everyone there and thinks they all have it in for him. Which is true.
My mum unfortunately operates under the same conspiratorial “they looked at me slightly funny so that means they hate me, it’s because I accidentally stood on their toe once two months ago and they’ve never lived it down. everything this person now does must now be interpreted under the assumption they hate me” us vs them type thinking that makes it even harder to talk to her about this, because she’ll just be like “oh so I should disown him then??? Hm???”
I can’t tell if my granddad’s schizoaffective disorder, psychotic depression, whatever it is is kicking back in. I know this doesn’t entirely excuse his behaviour, because he is now deeply unpleasant and insufferable to be around, but has anyone else dealt with this, or with having family like this? What did you do? How did you cope? I’m really struggling with this mentally and don’t know what, if anything, I should do.
TL;Dr grandad with history of schizophrenic type behaviour has been coddled and enabled by my grandma to such an extent he needs full-time care. Doesn’t/refuses to understand he’s in a care home and will tell any and all kinds of lies if he thinks we’ll “let him come home” (he cannot). Mum and grandma refuse to tell him for fear of his reaction because they’re conflict avoidant and subconsciously want to believe the care home is mean to him. I can’t tell if this is his mental illness or he’s just awful now and always has been?
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Also, supposedly, he had another psych eval before he went in and they found he was fully of sound mind, but he’s unironically calling the care home staff “my enemies” and he HAS nearly managed to fool a psychiatrist into not getting him sectioned before, albeit when he was a bit younger
I mean, who cares? Just ignore all of them; he’ll be dead soon.
I understand you too well: sometimes you don’t know anymore if it’s mental illness, manipulation or both.
You are not cruel for wanting to protect your mental health and put distance from someone like that, even if they are family