10,000 Days With My Mother-In-Law

Living with the elderly, and the ups and downs of a profound experience

This is a story about what to do with mom and dad when they get old. For us, the tale is still very much alive; we are still living it. Soon, we hope, we’ll be able to write the ending.

What to do with our parents, our elderly and sick family members and friends is a very controversial topic. It is filled with ethical decisions, emotional baggage, cultural considerations and financial calculations. It also informs us on our moral compass and most important, a personal definition of doing what’s right.

If you are living with an elderly person or are considering the possibility, I think you’ll be interested in our experience. Although I don’t think our story is unique, it does cover just about every decision one will be faced with while navigating through this maze. We are near the end of a very personal human event, and with people living longer than ever, more and more will be forced to live through what we have experienced. Unfortunately, most are not prepared (we certainly weren't) to handle the many challenges to be faced along the way. It is my hope our experiences — good and bad, successes and failures — will help those of you who want to know what’s around the bend.

My wife, Gail, and I, met in high school. She was an only child, and I was one of 5 kids. My dad passed away when I was 13, and I met Gail at age 15. We married, moved to Buffalo, NY when I was transferred from Boston with Hewlett-Packard, and had a family. A few years after our move, Gail’s parents decided to move near their daughter and grandchildren, and that is when our story begins. Little did we know how much it would affect just about every facet of our lives.

When my in-laws moved into our house — a house we had just purchased with lots of room — my wife and I thought her dad would live forever and her mom had no more than 5 years. Maybe 10. At the most. After all, she had just recovered from ovarian cancer, had polio as a kid, and had pretty bad diabetes and heart disease. In addition, she had recently stopped smoking after 40 years, never exercised (polio resulted in one leg being shorter than the other) and her diet consisted of diet Coke, meat and potatoes. My mother-in-law is a nice lady, so when she told me her biggest fear — being placed in a nursing home — I promised her that as long as she could tell the difference between her daughter and a head of broccoli, we’d take care of her at our home. With her rapidly declining health at age 70, I never thought we’d ever have to worry about it.

At the time, I was 32 years old, a successful salesman for a high tech company making a decent buck, and enjoying life. It was January, 1987; almost 28 years ago. Four years after they moved in, my father-in-law died; my mother-in-law, the person we thought would pass quickly, will turn 99 this coming January 30. A bit of a mind bender for me, is that I’ll be 60 in a few days. During this span, I have spent a little over 10,000 days living with her, and to say the least, it has been interesting, sad, amazing, dysfunctional, enlightening, destructive, educational, depressing, humorous and sobering.

At about noon today, I made my mother-in-law lunch, put some cortisone cream on her chest to help with a rash, and helped her clean her hands with a bowl of warm water and hand towels. Earlier this morning, my wife changed her soiled diaper and cleaned her up, changed her bed linens, checked her blood sugar level and administered her medications. To keep our sanity, an aide came for a few hours later this afternoon to give us a break and we left the house to get some air.

At this point, you may be asking, ‘why didn't they just place her in a nursing home?’ It’s a fair question and will be a central theme in this story. So will aging in America, the pros and cons of a three generation home, dignity, assisted living and nursing homes, hospice, geriatric research and the future, the medical community, death and dying and finally, looking back… what would we have done differently with what we know now. With so many people moving towards age related disabilities and mental disorders, more and more pressure will fall onto the next generation to take care of them. To make it even more difficult, economics will have a huge part in determining where mom and dad spend their last few years… and it may be your home.

I look forward to your comments.