The Mock Turtle

I mentioned on the Covid thread that my elderly father has been staying with my sister in London after coming over for a visit and contracting the virus. He went over there on the 23rd, so almost two weeks now. Today, he casually let it slip that he forgot to bring his blood pressure meds over with him. My sister has taken him to a walk-in clinic and has conspired with his pharmacist in Limerick to get a copy of his usual prescription because obviously he doesn't know what he's taking. FFS!

Also, Pip, what's the latest with your Dad? How has he been since you sprung him?

Oh, your dad! I’m glad he’s sorted.

Mine went back to the GP & is low on folic acid, so going to take supplements I think. His tremor seemed to have gone when I saw them on Friday last week. He does need to take better care of himself though.

He & Mum were back to being Mr & Mrs Twit within 48 hrs of discharge.

Zoomer, I need to have a rant about blood pressure medication too.

Mum has had high blood pressure for as long as I can remember and has been medicated for it. She's useless at ordering new meds since automatic repeat prescriptions were stopped and she often tells me she's only got 1 tablet left when I need to reorder them.

Over the last few months her mobility has become severely limited to the point where she gets pain in her calves after only 200m or so. She's had blood tests, scans and blood pressure checks all over her body. Last week her systolic pressure was at 200 and the nurse wanted to ship her off to hospital. I had been poisoned that day and she'd had to leave me fainting/vomiting to go to the appointment so the nurse accepted that's probably why her blood pressure was high.

Anyway, she was told to take it daily and it's not dropping by much. The GP called her today to check on her and he asked her to do her BP while he was on the phone to me - it was 196/89.

She's been diagnosed with Peripheral vascular disease - the treatment is BP meds, cholesterol meds and blood thinner. She stomped like a fucking toddler . Actually stomped her foot on the floor and shouted no when we said she needed to increase her meds. I calmly asked her why she didn't want to take any more medications and her reply was "because I don't want to." So I called her a toddler. I eventually convinced her to take the extra blood pressure meds and the blood thinner but failed on the statins. Once I put the phone down I burst into tears and told her to go and look into the faces of her grandchildren and tell them that she's refusing to take a couple of tablets and would rather have a heart attack then walked away, called my sister and told her to deal with her.

Her side of the family has a history of blood clots - her dad had a cerebral one (and died), her sister had a pulmonary embolism at 21 (and died). Another of my Aunts (her sister) had one and survived and I've had 3. Blood thinners were inevitable at some point in her life.

God, Kleio, how massively frustrating for you, you poor thing! Did your sister manage to make her see sense?

Glad your Dad is better, Pip, but sorry about the twittage.

I hope nobody minds me popping back up to bump this thread.

I have run into a situation with my Dad and was wondering if anyone has any advice/experience.

So my Dad is in his mid-80s, very much compus mentis, but is also a complete luddite and has macular degeneration, so can't see very well.

For the last few years, I've been handling his online banking - checking there's no suspicious activity on his account, and transferring money for him when he asks me to. I've also booked stuff online for him with my CC and then transferred the money to myself.

He gets paper statements, so he can see for himself what I've been doing. But also, obviously, he trusts me completely and I would never do anything to betray that trust. However, we're both aware that legally this is a bit dodgy.

A couple of years ago, his bank brought in tighter online security which necessitated installing an app on your phone, so I installed it on my own phone, and have been approving login/transactions from it. Today when I went to do a transaction on his account, the approval app thingy didn't work and I got locked out of his online account. I immediately rang him to let him know and he said he received an sms from them and frankly, it appears we've been rumbled. It was probably bound to happen sooner or later, mind, given that we're not even in the same country.

I've been looking up various "elderly customer" info for his bank (Bank of Ireland) and it appears that you're either expected to be able to handle all the online banking stuff yourself, or you get a "vulnerable customer" account that cuts you off from online banking completely. There doesn't appear to be a middle ground.

Has anyone found a solution to this particular problem? Setting up a POA seems like the obvious (if extremely complicated) answer, but he doesn't lack mental capacity, he's just very short-sighted and panics around technology.

A POA is what you need. It doesn’t mean you take over completely, he can still use his bank account etc as required but you do have the authority to do the things he can’t.

My grandpa (my dad's dad) took the unusual step of putting my mum as a named holder on his bank account (when he was about 60, not because of any illness concerns but because he was often away on business and off gallivanting around the world). Would that be a possibility?

I am a jointly named on a couple of mum’s account, so have a debit card to use as ‘my own’ for the current account I also have POA but that wasn’t required to put my name on them, I did however have to be present to sign paperwork.

Like others have said a few years ago my mum added me to most of her back accounts and I have my own debit card etc so if I need to stuff for her I just use that

It was relatively quick to organise but I did have to go to the bank in person

I opted not to get statements

Thanks guys. I'm going back over there in a couple of weeks, so I'll look into POA and getting added to the account before then.

You can sign up for the POA now online and then get him to sign it when you get there. It takes a while.

Thanks again, all.

I have talked to him more last night and it appears he read the message he got from the bank wrongly. There was a question mark after the bit about somebody else accessing your account, that he didn't see. So we might not have been rumbled after all.

I see if we can unlock the account when I get there. And if we can't continue doing that, I guess I'll have the talk with him then about POA, but I know he's not going to like it.

My understanding is that POA is a pre-emptive action. You wouldn't legally be able to put it in place if your dad was mentally incompetent, as he needs to be of sound mind to hand over the authority. Just saying as, putting it in those terms, might make him feel a bit more reconciled to it.

That's true. I do also feel that if someone is getting to get POA in the event of him being mentally incapacitated, it should be one of my "more competent at life" siblings though.

I would definitely think about arranging POA for the future (if not you, a couple of siblings) as it is definitely something most people only realise they need to sort out when it’s too late.

Me and A have it in place for each other, and will add the chaps on when they are old enough. We both have had it in place for our parents for a very long time. It’s just there if you do ever need it (especially in a medical emergency)

I definitely don’t think that’ll solve your current banking issue though - hope you can sort it on the app in person, otherwise I would see if you could be added jointly onto his account.

Mum and her partner have just started setting up POA for themselves, and are giving me and my brothers "joint or several" power. Which sounds like the wrong term to me, but the aim is that any one of us could act, since like your family, we're spread around the world. Obviously this requires us to agree between ourselves and then trust that B1 who lives nearest will do what we agreed. In practice one of us could clean them out though, I suppose.

My brother have a joint and several poa for my mum.
With this I can't have a banking app for her on my phone, but I can see and manage her account if I log on online. I normally just look at her statement every couple of weeks to make sure nothing odd is going on. That's Nationwide and only possible because I bank with them as well.

I have a banking app for my mum and all her post comes direct to me but that’s the extreme end of POA. You could legitimately have it set up for someone who was completely capable of managing their own affairs on a daily basis but needed help with eg filing a tax return.

So is it worthwhile setting these things up as a precaution when aged parents aren’t yet doddery? I’m sorry this is an issue for so many of you.

Going back to the original worries that prompted me to start this thread, my dad had to have a bone marrow biopsy this week for unexplained anaemia. He has very high iron levels, but low haemoglobin. It could be something really serious and I think he’s very scared. They’re still acting like the Twits though.