Anyone else Autistic and caring for an elderly parent?

What an emotional topic. I'm very sorry to hear from all of you those horrific stories. Mine isn't much better... I spent few months very ill and can't get up of the bed. I was advised to not move because of health complications and possible high danger if I did. I couldn't get myself food nor water living in chronic pain attacks that no sort of pill, kneedle or emergency room could relief. Only a surgery relieved that pain. My mom used to leave the house every day for long hours to hang out with her friends, she didn't have a job nor was ill. She didn't skip a day of going out to chitchat with others and enjoy herself leaving me absolutely alone home with no food nor water until around 17:00, her time to get back home. She used to sneak out the flat in the morning so she wouldn't wake me up, because when she did she'll then have to ask me "how do you feel?" And possibly be "stuck" with me home. Am I going to take care of her when she gets old?? Absolutely not. 

Bless you for sharing your story. You sound like a very caring and empathetic person.

Thanks Debbie. It's good to know that others have trodden the same difficult path.

Yep. My parents are very frail now and my brother is no where in sight.

The insanity in my family goes back a long long way.

Ten years before my mother's heart attack I was very ill and lying in bed for several days.  I spent a whole night awake, coughing up blood every few minutes.  We didn't have a phone in the house (days before mobiles) because my mother considered them an obscene monstrosity.  So getting any medical help was difficult.

I asked my mother to contact a doctor when she brought me breakfast in bed because I was unable to even get out of bed.  Instead she expressed deep disappointment, that after all the trouble she had gone to making breakfast and bringing it to me, I wasn't eating it.  It reminded me of the scene in 'Red Dwarf' where Kryten was bringing food to his dead skeleton shipmates for a million years.

She made no effort to contact a doctor or anyone.  My father spent hours ranting and raving around the house that I wasn't allowed to 'pretend to be ill'.

Eventually I managed to write a brief note asking for a GP to visit  me at home and my father hand delivered it to the GP surgery.

Robert124 said:

an insane situation

So sorry to read that.

It must have been so stressful for you.

It reminded me of what happened with my dad.

He had a heart attack overnight.

My mum didn't call an ambulance until many hours later.

She said it was because he said he didn't want one but she was also very wary of medical intervention (and refused it for herself).

He died that day.

He had had a heart attack previously in a public place and died and an angel in disguise gave him the kiss of life so we had a couple more years of his life .

Again.  I'm in the same boat of rarely socialising.

I cared for my mum from 1993 until her passing in 2012.  It was a nightmare that just got worse and worse.  Her dementia and other health problems just got worse over time, never better.

I gave up work in 1993 and started official caring after an insane situation.  I came home for the weekend on a Saturday morning to find my father watching TV at almost full volume. When I turned it down I heard my mother crying out in pain upstairs.  She has spent two days asking him to call a doctor, he ignored her request and just turned the volume on the television up so he couldn't hear her.

After I called a doctor and she went to hospital they  diagnosed pneumonia and a possible heart attack.  She then spent 3 weeks in hospital.

I'm hoping for the same thing. The problem is I never socialise so meeting someone seems impossible. I need to work on getting myself out there more, I suppose 

I cared for my mum 2015-2019 as dementia slowly destroyed, and finally killed her. It was incredibly hard and exhausting and traumatising work but there was never a moments doubt that I would. She had been so supportive and kind to me through many serious life events that it was absolutely right that I should, she wasn’t a perfect mum though, called me a “house side” as she was really prejudiced against fat people, and no doubt was part of the environment that damaged me as a child. But I knew that her faults were part of her upbringing and the society she was part of, an era we now criticise for their beliefs, wrongly imo as right and wrong change in space-time. For the last four months of her life I’d had to put her in residential dementia care, taking her that day was absolutely the worst day of my life but I’d reached rock bottom physically and mentally so it was a last resort. I thank her every day for her many many gifts which totally overwrote her faults. 

Jenny Butterfly said:

I snatch little windows of comfort where I can.

That is so well expressed Jenny.

I wish you as many windows as possible.

I was a carer for my mum until 5 years ago.

I actually felt as though I was her carer my whole life though, including as a child, because of her instabilty.

However, proper hands on care was part of my life quite a number of years.

I was 1st working full time, then able to go part time (because my personal circumstances changed) and then able to give up work.

I eventually managed to get carers from the Council but it was a huge battle to do so and they weren't the best.

I wish you well and will be thinking of you as I know how incredibly tough it is.

I'm a little further along.  I'm 40 and my Mum is 68.  It might be in ten years time or less that she goes.  I'm really hoping to meet and marry someone before she dies so i won't have to deal with her death alone.

Me too. I'm 31 now and my mother is 55 - in 20/30 years I will probably be in the same position and it makes me worry endlessly. 

I live with mine.  So i can see a future where i could be in the same situation.

Yes.  I was a carer for my elderly mother until  she died in 2021 plus I'm now a carer for my adult sons.  I often feel alone too, and as if my back's against the wall but I snatch little windows of comfort where I can.  Not easy though.