I am 56 years of age and caring for both a daughter (25) born with schizophrenia and my father in law who is 86 and in final stage palliative dialysis - he suffered a heart attack last November and there has been significant deterioration in his mental function since that time and we have now confirmed dementia. They both live with my husband and me, but I am absolutely exhausted from caring and supporting both of them. My husbands family refuse to assist with my father in law as they looked after him for 6 months over 2 years ago when his wife died. Apparently they did not enjoy the experience as they had to consider someone apart from themselves! My daughter is really no trouble but the added continual nursing of my husband's father is just exhausting me and I am becoming resentful of the fact that this has all been put on us. My husbands' family live 11 hours away and barely ring or acknowledge my father in law's existence. I left my job in order to care for him full time as he cannot be left in the house by himself. Any suggestions of how to deal with these feelings of resentment would be much appreciated. I am not going to have him put in a nursing home and I am aware that he does not have that much time, but I need help dealing with his dementia and just the continual emotion exhaustion from caring for two adults.
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The only thing that helps me when I am feeling inescapable resentment is to try to calm myself. I usually do this by thinking good thoughts about the person and thinking how important what I am doing is. I've tried rewarding myself by buying something good to eat or wear, but that doesn't work as well as trying to change the way I feel about the situation.
Sometimes I don't know how we do it. I guess we're just amazing. :)
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