I am learning very quickly what it's like to be in the sandwich generation. Today my mother, who is 73, had knee replacement surgery in Nebraska as I was on my way home from work here in Kansas. My daughter needs a babysitter for her children tomorrow while she works an evening shift at the hospital. I feel torn between wanting to help my daughter, and needing to be with my mother. Mama told me a couple of weeks ago, when she announced the date and time of her surgery, that she didn't want us to bother with coming up there to visit her, but she really had no realistic ideas about what the surgery involved or how long she would be in the hospital.
After watching the instructional video the doctor had sent home with her, she realized that maybe I knew what I was talking about when I said there was no way she could have the surgery one day and come home the next day. She is worried about my dad being at home alone. He will be 80 years old later this month and has been fighting prostate cancer and hypertension. He has never cooked anything in his life, and will eat only cold cereal and sandwiches while she is laid up unless someone is there to cook for him.
My brother and his wife live just a short distance away from my parents on the old homestead, but they both have full time jobs and 2 children to care for. My sister lives in Nebraska. My youngest brother works full time as a mechanic about 20 miles away. I live about a 45 minute drive from my parents and work nights.
Anyone have any suggestions?

Countrygirl, thanks for sharing! I recall a time when my mom was sick and all of us had to get together and work out a schedule.

All of us were very busy with our own families, but Mom and Dad needed help and we were going to be there. Each week we put our schedules together (there are 5 of us, one of whom lived out of town), and we took turns based on what worked for our families.

What we found was a closeness among us we hadn't had since childhood. We were intimately connected again and it was a blessing. All of us are close, but hadn't had to make time to see each other on a weekly basis.

I don't know if this is possible for you and your siblings. I only share this because it worked and no one felt all the pressure.

I might also mention that when the out of towner came to town she stayed with Mom and Dad and all of us had a tremendous break because she was basically there 24/7. She did more than her share and she lived 20 plus hours away!

I wish you all the best...and remember to try to take care of yourself too!

My husband, Dennis, and I drove up to Lincoln yesterday to see my mom in the hospital. She came through the surgery ok, although she is having considerable pain, even with a morphine pump at her disposal, and some nausea. Even so, she was more worried about my dad and how he was getting along without her and how he would react to her being gone for so long. Dennis and I will go back to Lincoln on Monday to bring her back to a hospital closer to home. My brother, Tom, took my dad up to see her the day of her surgery. I haven't had a chance to talk to my sister, who lives in Nebraska. She works two jobs and its hard to catch her between them. My youngest brother, Bret, may be going up there sometime this weekend.
Hopefully, I can get my schedule changed around so that I can help her next week after she gets home.
Becky hired a babysitter the other day to watch her two children after school until Rusty, her husband, could pick them up after work. So everything has worked out pretty well. As it usually does. It is easy to hit the panic button when situations first arise, but I am gradually learning to just take life one moment at a time and answers have always appeared in their own time. The Lord does provide, but on his time schedule, not ours.
Have a good weekend, all. I will be working the next three nights at the hospital in Salina.

Yesterday, Dennis and I drove to Lincoln, Ne. and brought my mother back to a local hospital to finish her physical therapy. She will be at the hospital for up to a week (I doubt she will be there that long), then will return there twice a week for a while for therapy sessions. She is a proud and determined woman with a high pain tolerance. Today, she said she walked around the hospital a couple of times unassisted (her idea, not the doctor's). The only problem that remains is the nausea that continues to plague her. She has been fighting that since the surgery. I told her to be sure to tell the doctor about it when he makes rounds, because there are medications that can help with that. My dad was there visiting her today, he was sporting a new shiner that he got on Sunday. But that's a whole different story.

My dad is going to be 80 years old this month. He still lives at home on the farm with my mother. He is basically retired from farming, but still putters around on the tractor for different tasks. He has gone through 42 sessions of radiation therapy for prostate cancer, which appear to have been effective, as his last blood labs were pretty normal. Of course, the cancer could return at any time. Since being diagnosed with cancer, he has become much more frail, and wearies easily. He walks with a slight limp due to longstanding knee problems.
Last Sunday, my mother came out of the bedroom to smell smoke and discovered their back porch was full of black smoke. She immediately called for my dad to check it out. He found the wall behind the hot water heater in flames. They doused the wall with water and thought the fire was out. My mom left my dad at home and went on to church. When she returned, she found that the flames had kept reigniting for over an hour and my dad was exhausted, and the walls were severely damaged from the flames and from being torn apart by my dad trying to discover the source of the fire. He eventually discovered that a propane pipe leading to the heater had rusted through and was leaking propane, which was ignited by the pilot light. It was burning inside the wall behind the heater. He managed to get the fire out without having to call the fire department, but the pipes to the heater and the walls will need to be replaced.
Then yesterday, he was operating a power drill and somehow the force of it threw him to the ground, where he fell onto a piece of angle iron, giving him a black "shiner" and bruising his forehead above his left eye.
I told him I wanted him to carry his cell phone at all times, especially when he is alone because if he is to remain on the farm alone, we need to know that he is safe. We are constantly checking on him to be sure he's not on a ladder somewhere, operating machinery and tools that he can no longer control, or that he hasn't fallen and broken a hip or other bones. My mother worries almost constantly about him. She told me once that if he falls and breaks a hip, she will have to put him in a nursing home, because he is a big man and she cannot lift him by herself if he is unable to care for himself.
I thought when my children became adults I could start to relax. What a fool I was!

We are truly the sandwich generation. Wow, what a week it was for you and your parents. How is your mom after her surgery?

It is so hard for our parents to get old and realize they can't do what they use to.

Sounds like your dad loves to keep busy. Bless his heart! Nothing is going to get him down! I do think he should carry a cell phone too. What a picture for me who pretty much lives in the city. An eighty year old man working on the farm with a cell phone! Beautiful!

I am also concerned about the fire. Don't you think someone should go to the house and check that out? I would hate for something else to happen with the propane when they least expect it.

Fires scare me. I had a friend die in a house fire, (so did her brother, same fire!)so I will always pick up the phone and call the fire department.

Fire terrifies me too. When I was an adolescent, my younger brother accidentally set his hand on fire when he lit a match with a gasoline soaked hand. He was only about 8 years old. I can still hear his screams. Its a wonder he has the use of his hands, but we got the flames out before they were able to do much damage to the nerves and tendons.
Then, in 1999, losing my youngest daughter in that house fire when her furnace heat shield developed a crack, allowing the flames of the pilot light to ignite the house timbers around the floor furnace. The house went up like a tinder box, trapping her and her boyfriend. For months afterward, I could imagine her screams and her pain. It still haunts me.
Not long afterward, I accidentally forgot to pay my gas heating bill. The gas company shut off our gas, and after I paid the bill, the repairman came to relight our pilot light. He found the same malfunction in our basement and said our house would have been the next to burn down. So we put in a new furnace, heat and smoke detectors, carbon monoxide detectors, and fire extinguishers. We get our furnace checked on a regular basis and I usually remind our friends and neighbors to do the same.
As the 5th anniversary of her death comes near (Feb. 21), I find myself thinking of my beautiful daughter more and more.

I talked to my mother the other day on my way to work. She seems to be doing ok, although she is still fighting some nausea and vomiting. I told her to be sure to let the doctor know. She is using her continuous passive motion machine that the doctor ordered her to use. Those are wonderful machines that will bend her knee at a degree and rate controlled by her. She puts the machine on one end of the couch, then puts her leg in the padded "holster" and velcro straps herself into it. Then uses a handheld remote control to start it. It runs for about an hour then she shuts it off. We use them in the hospitals all the time.
My dad is doing great. He is so glad to have Mama back home again, even if she is unable to do much cooking and housework.
I hope to go out there to visit tomorrow on my day off.

I worry about my parents - in their 80's -- because they don't seem to realize they can't do what they used to. Dad finally stopped climbing up on the roof to clean the gutters -- but he still tries to work with the chain saw. My mom is misplacing things so often now that I worry if she'll forget to turn off the stove when she goes to bed -- and neither of them should really be driving -- dad told me he was thinking about something and drove right through a red light and my mom thinks that a 35 mph sign means from one mailbox to the next -- topping off at 50 mph. She won't wear her glasses and she simply shouldn't be driving. What do you do? If I ever want her to talk to me again -- I certainly can't tell her she needs to stop. It makes me think about an 80+ yr old man that couldn't pass the driving test here in Fla -- went back to his home town in Ohio and got his license -- two months later -- ran over two little girls sitting in their driveway waiting for the school bus and killed both of them -- kept going -- the police found him at his daily restaurant having breakfast -- he thought he had hit the trash cans and didn't have a clue he had hurt anyone.

In the case of countrygirls mom having surgery -- I work for a home health care agency -- and we do that alot -- go in for a couple of hours during the day for a week or two to help people like your mom and dad out until they are back on their feet -- fill in when the family can't be there -- so you may want to check that out too. It can be expensive -- but when you consider the babysitting fees and gas prices -- maybe it would be helpful. And maybe you could find someone to "live in" and help around the farm -- exchange room and board for helping with chores (and keeping an eye out for your parents in the meantime)

With your children you are supposed to be in charge -- you're allowed to make decisions about their life -- but with your parents -- they really don't appreciate having a youngster telling them what to do --

I wish I had a large family at times like this -- my sister is in Nebraska and my brother is in Montana -- leaving me here with my parents -- and with only one son -- I worry who's going to be here to take care of us when we get to that age.

Maybe I better start training my pomeranians to cook, clean and change Depends

My dad would never go for having anyone come in to help other than family. He is so tight with his money that he once saved dead grasshoppers in the refrigerator for a year to use as fishbait rather than throw away the unused ones. I have wanted to get my Mom online for several years, and have told them we could talk every day instead of on a weekly basis. But he won't let my mom spend the money for internet service...even if I offer to pay a year's service, he doesn't want her on the computer all day, so he won't allow it. He can be rather domineering at times.
Today we went to dinner at a restaurant and my brother and sister split the cost of my parents' meal so they wouldn't have to pay for it. It was a celebration for my dad's 80th birthday, which was last Wednesday.
I worked in a nursing home for 12 1/2 years, so I am aware of a lot of the resources available, but as I said, if they cost money, my dad won't stand for it. So it falls back into my brother's and my hands. My mom also says she never wants to leave the farm, so we'll just have to pray and check on them as much as possible.

People in their 70's - 80's come from a totally different world than what's going on in today's society. Some of them keep up with the times and others hang on to the values their parents raised them with and there really isn't much we can do if they don't let us -- if you say to them -- I'm worried about you -- they say don't be.

I like the bumper sticker I saw the other day

Be kind to your children -- they're the ones picking your nursing home

Let's hope that when it's our turn to be taken care of by family members -- we remember how hard our parents made it on us to help.

There are definitely genearational differences. I can see them happening already between my children and me.

We have to try to remember where our parents are coming from with their thoughts and ideas. They lived in a very different world growing up.

Brought this post back after talking with a friend who's helping her parents more each day.

Many of us are having to take charge of our parent's finances. The more independent we get, the more dependent they become. It's sad because I know they don't like losing their independence any more than we like assuming their tasks. It's all part of the life cycle. Don't you think?

I also think about some of them losing their license due to vision problems. I dread the day someone has to take my keys from me.

But I have to admit, if anyone wants to pay my bills, they can. Heck, you can even use your own money!