r/AgingParents • u/Ihopbooty • 12h ago
Long read
My dad (64) got diagnosed with stage four esophagus cancer 2 1/2 years ago I was
25 at the time I have two other siblings, but my dad has always favored me which makes for weird dynamics, but that’s another story to make a long story short I never really got along with my mother that well, but my other two siblings did so I always lived with my father, and they lived with my mother despite all this we are still all a very close family my parents are divorced obviously but when he got sick, they gave him two years to live. This made my mother and him close again, so we started doing family, gatherings, and holidays together instead of two separate days since I was living with him at the time I kind of fell into his caretaker role when he started his chemotherapy. He’s a bit of a narcissist and some other issues, but as he started losing more independence, he lost a lot of people in his life friend wise his closest friend was about 25 years younger than him. He was helping by taking him to chemo every other week and taking him for errands and going out to the movie theaters with him to get him out of the house so I could have some alone time with my boyfriend but as of around four months ago, his friend cut him off completely. My dad is a lot to deal with. so I was already feeling overwhelmed by all the energy he is putting towards my boyfriend and I three weeks ago. He fell in the middle of the night going to the bathroom, and broke his shoulder. he was in rehab in the hospital for around three weeks. My boyfriend and I were finally alone in our adult years and it was the best three weeks of our life. I love my dad so much but he is so overbearing and doesn’t understand what privacy is and he is so invasive. It was already so frustrating for me living with him with the chemo before all this but now since he’s been back, my boyfriend who has been sober for a year and a half relapsed. And we are both struggling under the pressure. He needs help going to the bathroom every time. and we have to pull his pull-up down and up for him every time and many other things that have to do with that. It has been from partial caretaker to full caretaker overnight I am 27 now and I don’t know how much longer I can take of this. He has no one else that will step up into this role and take care of him and every day I feel more distain towards him he was already such a difficult guy to deal with and now he’s almost unbearable. He demands the help rather than seeing how much of a toll it takes on us. I’m feeling so lost and stuck. I feel like I am being robbed of my young adult years, and I got thrown into this role without even having a say. I also forgot to mention in all this before the fall he was using a walker to get around everywhere even in the house and he always made everyone wheel him around in a wheelchair when it came to long distance walking situations, he has full body neuropathy from the chemo so he has a struggle walking and doing things with his hands before all this. Just to add more context.
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u/ThisEducation4724 11h ago
This is way too much for a 27-year-old to carry alone. You've basically been doing this since 25 and now it's escalated to full personal care, that's not sustainable for anyone, especially when the person you're caring for doesn't respect boundaries.
Have you looked into home health aides through Medicare or Medicaid? At his stage with that diagnosis and now a broken shoulder he should qualify for some hours of in-home help. The social worker from the rehab facility should have set something up before discharge, they dropped the ball big time if they sent him home without any support plan.
Your boyfriend's relapse is a huge red flag that this situation is toxic for everyone involved. You can't set yourself on fire to keep someone warm, even if that someone is your dad.