Elderly Parents and Looking Out for Them

BrutulTM · 2026-02-13T21:31:24-0500

Denamian said:
Dad died yesterday.

Sorry to hear. It's coming up on the 18th anniversary of my dad dying at age 55. He died suddenly so I didn't get to tell him goodbye but I didn't have to watch him deteriorate either. Not sure which would be worse. Still wish I could talk to him sometimes.

Denamian · 2026-02-13T21:51:05-0500

BrutulTM said:
Sorry to hear. It's coming up on the 18th anniversary of my dad dying at age 55. He died suddenly so I didn't get to tell him goodbye but I didn't have to watch him deteriorate either. Not sure which would be worse. Still wish I could talk to him sometimes.

Dad had just turned 81 last month. While he was never all there after the surgery, I'm glad we had some time. I'm also glad that it wasn't too long though. Being chained to the vent and on a feeding tube was misery for him. For things to go south once it became apparent that he would likely be on them for life was a mercy.

Haus · 2026-02-13T21:57:32-0500

Denamian said:
Dad died yesterday.

After 99 days in the ICU and 20 in acute care nursing, cardiorenal failure became unmanageable. My mom, sister, and I were with him as they disconnected the vent and pushed morphine to keep him comfortable. Thankfully he went peacefully and quickly.

I'm sorry sir, you have my condolences on the loss...

I think I'm in the early stages of this with my mom. She's been diagnosed with mid tier kidney disease for a while, and lately her BP has gotten out of control and they added "class B" cardiovascular disease onto it. Her Kidney Dr took her off her water pill, and that landed her in the hospital with fluid around/in her lungs. So back on the water pill (Lasix) Took a week to get that straightened out. She goes home last week, and tonight my sister (who lives with her) calls me to tell me her ankles are swelling again even with the lasix, and her back is hurting really bad. Bad enough she asked to go to the hospital. She has also had some back issues in the past. (yeah, I have a real winning genetic lineage to lean on heh).

I'm honestly hoping she just aggravated her back, but hearing her and my sister describe it, it's higher than normal, so I'm afraid she's going into kidney shutdown. Waiting on a series of tests and a CT scan to get results to my sister before they determine if she's checking in for a stay at the hospital (which would mean me heading there later tonight).

As for if it's better to lose a parent suddenly, or slowly... I was raised by my grandparents. My grandfather slowly faded and by the time he died Alzheimer's had already taken most of "him" away. It sucked, and on top of that I was young and stupid at the time (as opposed to old and stupid now) so when it my mom called me one Tuesday night and said I should come over because it was getting bad I found an excuse and figured I could go over that weekend. And he died that night. I still carry some of the weight of handling that so wrong to this day.

My grandmother was pretty spry and going into her 80's. Had also started to get a touch of the Alzheimer's, but not super advanced. She was just where if there were multiple people talking in a room at once it was hard for her to follow and stuff like that. But she it was just her and I she was the woman who raised me. After my grandfather I decided to learn at least a little of a lesson. Made sure I was seeing my grandmother at least once or twice a week, Always gave her a kiss and told her I loved her when leaving. One morning she got up, made herself breakfast, ate, watched her morning talk show, decided to lay down for a morning nap and never woke up. But I know the last thing I said to her was that I loved her, and it's amazing how much better I feel about that.

Still miss both, think about them every day. Grandfather passed in 97, grandmother in 2011. Now I'm helping with my mom (I handle finances and bills, my sister and brother in law live with her to help that way) and getting to experience it a second time... Still sucks....

Kharzette , I have also struggled with getting my mom an "older parent" phone. Got a link to the one you settled on? I also saw all the ones I could easily get stateside seemed to be "You MUST use our service and carrier" and screw that. Right now she has an older android phone where I scaled up all the icons, and dropped direct dial icons for the 6 people she ever calls on one screen. Moderately locked down but still not optimal....

lurkingdirk · 2026-02-13T21:57:35-0500

Denamian said:
Dad had just turned 81 last month. While he was never all there after the surgery, I'm glad we had some time. I'm also glad that it wasn't too long though. Being chained to the vent and on a feeding tube was misery for him. For things to go south once it became apparent that he would likely be on them for life was a mercy.

Doesn't matter how prepared you were, nor how quickly it went. We just aren't designed to be ready for this. The death of a parent is a life changing event. I hope very much that you can find peace. Take care of yourself.

Kharzette · 2026-02-13T23:52:40-0500

Haus said:
I'm sorry sir, you have my condolences on the loss...

I think I'm in the early stages of this with my mom. She's been diagnosed with mid tier kidney disease for a while, and lately her BP has gotten out of control and they added "class B" cardiovascular disease onto it. Her Kidney Dr took her off her water pill, and that landed her in the hospital with fluid around/in her lungs. So back on the water pill (Lasix) Took a week to get that straightened out. She goes home last week, and tonight my sister (who lives with her) calls me to tell me her ankles are swelling again even with the lasix, and her back is hurting really bad. Bad enough she asked to go to the hospital. She has also had some back issues in the past. (yeah, I have a real winning genetic lineage to lean on heh).

I'm honestly hoping she just aggravated her back, but hearing her and my sister describe it, it's higher than normal, so I'm afraid she's going into kidney shutdown. Waiting on a series of tests and a CT scan to get results to my sister before they determine if she's checking in for a stay at the hospital (which would mean me heading there later tonight).

As for if it's better to lose a parent suddenly, or slowly... I was raised by my grandparents. My grandfather slowly faded and by the time he died Alzheimer's had already taken most of "him" away. It sucked, and on top of that I was young and stupid at the time (as opposed to old and stupid now) so when it my mom called me one Tuesday night and said I should come over because it was getting bad I found an excuse and figured I could go over that weekend. And he died that night. I still carry some of the weight of handling that so wrong to this day.

My grandmother was pretty spry and going into her 80's. Had also started to get a touch of the Alzheimer's, but not super advanced. She was just where if there were multiple people talking in a room at once it was hard for her to follow and stuff like that. But she it was just her and I she was the woman who raised me. After my grandfather I decided to learn at least a little of a lesson. Made sure I was seeing my grandmother at least once or twice a week, Always gave her a kiss and told her I loved her when leaving. One morning she got up, made herself breakfast, ate, watched her morning talk show, decided to lay down for a morning nap and never woke up. But I know the last thing I said to her was that I loved her, and it's amazing how much better I feel about that.

Still miss both, think about them every day. Grandfather passed in 97, grandmother in 2011. Now I'm helping with my mom (I handle finances and bills, my sister and brother in law live with her to help that way) and getting to experience it a second time... Still sucks....

Kharzette , I have also struggled with getting my mom an "older parent" phone. Got a link to the one you settled on? I also saw all the ones I could easily get stateside seemed to be "You MUST use our service and carrier" and screw that. Right now she has an older android phone where I scaled up all the icons, and dropped direct dial icons for the 6 people she ever calls on one screen. Moderately locked down but still not optimal....

I made a big mistake and went with a pinephone. There are alot of problems with it, but the main interface being a touch screen has been brutal.

When she gets a call on it, there's a bit of grey text on the screen and a picture in the middle if you have one. I don't have any pictures in her contacts so it's just an icon of a person. Then at the bottom is a reddish round icon of a telephone thing. The only thing in color is the phone part. Which would you touch to answer it?

She can't figure it out. She just stares at the screen till whoever is calling eventually gives up. Or she touches the right thing, it answers, and she stares at the screen expecting something to happen until whoever is on the other end gives up.

Also she wants to touch really aggressively and the phone tends to read that as a drag.

There's a really dangerous "drag from the top" kind of screen in the phone software I'm running where you can mess with brightness, volumes, switching the phone's cell modem on and off etc. Somehow almost every day she manages to get in there and screw everything up.

For awhile she was also sticking the center of the phone to her ear, which obviously didn't work.

And then there's contacts. The idea that you can click someone's name to dial them is so foreign. Sometimes I'll look in the recents and there will be numbers like 13729375923868203423823847923857982379387449823587293587235 where she's tried to manually dial someone, and then when it doesn't work trying again adding on to the end of it.

There's also a really frequent bug that happens with linux audio where a connected call has no audio on one side or the other. I'm not super surprised by that one as my main PC often needs a switch on/off with HDMI to get youtube audio to play etc.

The only good thing about it is, it is running linux and I can just ssh into and install whatever I want. I can even compile and use stuff and change it. Before I got painfully addicted to SWG again I worked on gnome calls a bit (the phone/contacts app) to make the phone icon for calling people bigger. I didn't quite get it installed right though.

It is cool to be able to ssh into it and update it and stuff, but everything else about it sucks. Battery lasts about a day and a half.

Denamian · 2026-02-14T00:12:02-0500

The Pinephone definitely sounds like more of a phone for tinkerers.

Dad wasn't very good with technology, but I had decent success with giving him a midrange android phone and tweaking things with a custom launcher. I had used Nova since had the prime unlock and he was on my Google family, so I was able to customize it to a point he was able to use it pretty well. There are launchers specifically for the elderly/tech inept, so you could also look into just using one of those.

Kharzette said:
Also she wants to touch really aggressively and the phone tends to read that as a drag.

Dad did that a lot, poking at things like he was trying to stab his finger through the damn phone. It took a while before he stopped treating it like it was a shitty resistive touchscreen from 30 years ago.

Haus · 2026-02-14T13:05:30-0500

OK. Interesting follow up to my mom's medical misadventures

She had to go to the hospital a week and a half ago because when they took her off her water pill fluid accumulated, caused breathing issues and coughing, drop in O2 sat, which caused her to get weak and have a fall getting out of bed. So they took her in and worked on the fluids (put her back on water pill), stabilized things and such. While there she was telling me her back really hurt, which is somewhat I thought was in line as she's had back issues. I told the nurses and apparently their treatment for it was to up her pain meds until she wasn't whining about it.

Last night she has to go back to hospital because she's had increased back pain since her last visit. Which I attested to "Crappy hospital bed is crappy". This time we take her to a different hospital because that closer one to her house straight up sucked. Better hospital actually takes the time to run a CT on her back. Turns out the fall due to the low blood O2 sat a week and a half ago.. gave her a minor compression fracture in her lower back. Nobody at White Rock thought to check an elderly woman who had a fall and complained of back pain that her back might be hurt.

For those in Dallas, Avoid White Rock Medical Center at all costs it would seem....

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Elderly Parents and Looking Out for Them

BrutulTM

Good, bad, I'm the guy with the gun.

Denamian

Night Janitor

Haus

I am Big Balls!

lurkingdirk

AssHat Taint

Kharzette

Watcher of Overs

Denamian

Night Janitor

Haus

I am Big Balls!