Anyone else Autistic and caring for an elderly parent?

I'm in a similar situation and found that getting a carers card uk made things a bit easier. It helped explain my role in certain places without needing to talk too much, which can be hard when I'm already stressed. Some local discounts were a bonus, but mostly I liked having something that showed I was doing a real job, not just “helping out.”

I’ve just been diagnosed aged 51. I’ve always known and I think all my family knew as well. My Mum lives on the same street as me and her health is deteriorating and she needs a lot of support. I do get help from my Sister but because I live so close to my Mum I inevitably end up doing most of the caring. I want to be there for Mum because she has always been there for me but what I find difficult is watching the person who has always been my lifeline get older and more dependant. I have a lot of social difficulties and I’m frightened that one day I’m going to have to live without the only person who understands me and the only person I’m comfortable being with.

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

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

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 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. 

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.