For a couple of years I’ve been caring for a wheelchair-bound elderly relative I’m very close to. When I started, she complained to me that no one was doing anything to help her.
She has multiple medical conditions which are all the result of a poor lifestyle throughout her life, such as smoking for 50+ years, being extremely overweight since childhood, and never ever doing any form of exercise at all beyond walking around a supermarket.
In my role as her carer and advocate I have ensured she is getting the treatment for all her conditions, and I have studied her conditions so I understand them.
I take her to all her medical appointments and consult with medical professionals to try and make sure they know everything they need to know, including what she doesn’t tell them.
On the rare occasions where a medical professional hasn’t done something right (through reasons that may be no fault of their own), I have stepped in to put things right.
So now every single one of her conditions has been investigated, addressed, and treated, and although her overall wellbeing has improved a lot, she still has low energy and stays in bed for up to 18 hours a day.
Doctors and therapists have told her on multiple occasions that she needs to become more active, and she has been shown some simple exercises she can do in a chair, but she point blank refuses to do anything.
A couple of times a week I take her out for the day and try to get her more active, but she resists constantly.
I’ve bought her resistance-bands and other equipment, shown her how to use them, shown her youtube workouts for elderly people, and done those workouts with her several times to see if she can cope with them - which she can easily. But she won’t do them herself, and has nothing but silly nonsensical excuses for not doing them.
She says that going up a flight of stairs to use the toilet is all the “exercise” she needs to do, or can do, which isn’t correct at all. She only says this to me, never to the doctors or therapists, she tells them she can do the exercises, will do them, or is doing them. She’s not.
Today she saw a nurse who she’s never seen before, and she told this new person that “nobody believes she doesn’t feel well and nobody is helping her”, which is just completely untrue. Everyone believes her and everyone is doing everything they can to help her, she just won’t help herself.
I don’t know what else to do for her, and to be honest, today I felt a little disrespected that she told a complete stranger that no one helps her, effectively throwing me, her doctors, nurses, and therapists all under the bus, and for what? A little bit of pity?
When I first started she told me no one was helping her, I’m now questioning if that was true.