Overwhelmed

Sometimes Vwaves it helps to write things down, even if you destroy the piece of paper afterwards. Plus it helps to vent on GN!
I hope your daughter gets help for her ME and starts to want to help herself as it’s a phsychological problem as well as physical and it’s a complex illness.

My daughter has kind of given up on trying to get better from CFS. She is not interested in group meetings which I suppose is fair enough and everyone suggests things to try which might help but she says nothing helps!!!!
Definitely does help if she is careful not to get overtired. I literally see her wilt. We went out with the kids this morning but by 1pm she needed her bed! I had the kids for the afternoon and she was okay again when I dropped them back but she will go to bed at 6 or 7. Not much of a life! It must be soul destroying. She has seen the Doctor a lot and had every test. She has been diagnosed with this a couple of years now.
I sort of wonder if she was happier if she would feel better and vice versa if she felt better she would be happier.
Not much I can do for the CFS.
Funnily enough I feel a lot better since posting and getting all the ideas and support! Thank you again.

CFS is the American name for Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, the most exhausting disease known with relentless pain all over. Depression comes from people disbelieving and I can see your daughter, her family and you are going through a nightmare now. First, the more your daughter pushes herself the iller she will become, she must have help from somewhere to look after herself and keep the family together. You all need support, not from the psyches, from people who can give practical advice to cope with things now. It's unlikely the ME will be cured, it can get into a remission if she gets sufficient bed rest when she needs it. She needs a good doctor to ensure there are no other treatable illnesses lurking beneath her devastating symptoms. This illness affects whole families, it usually strikes suddenly and you also need as much help as you can get now . All best wishes

Time for your daughter and SIL to start putting the thumb screws on whatever post adoption support the agency/local authority have available. I appreciate this support is often crap, but ominous noises about disrupting the adoption can have some effect. They need additional help to cope, and it has to stop coming from you.

patriciageegee, I private messaged you but I don't know if you know how to receive that. I think you can just click inbox! Hopefully we will make contact x

patriciageegee I am so pleased you are going to try and arrange a meet up and hope you really hit it off!

vwaves I hope you will enjoy getting to know a friendly native and that this will be the start of happier times.

to both and I know curiosity killed the cat but I would love to know how things go!

You are clearly suffering from burnout. Consider either going on a retreat or taking a month's very simple holiday
to rest , recover and get your head straight. Life is not a rehearsal. Figure out what you can and cannot reasonably do to nurture your own life and still be of some help to others.
Get them to buy in the help they need if it is too much for you. Are you enabling some members of your family to continue their destructive behaviour patterns by taking over their responsibilities?

Weaves looks like you might have made a Warrington friend already !
When you are in the middle of a Maze you can’t see the way out Take yourself away for a weekend and look at your problems through the eyes of these caring messages You will be able to work out a more manageable timetable to please yourself and everyone you love but you will need outside help you are only one not four
I always find a pen and paper for , pros and cons, do and don’t do lists a good way to start
Good luck ?

I've been doing too much for my daughter and SIL .... who both work full-time and are extremely capable. But I love doing what I do as it gets me away from a mentally exhausting home atmosphere ( a baby for a husband). Most weeks I manage to walk 35-40 miles in their service( I don't drive) and I'm fitter than ever, give me physical exhaustion over mental exhaustion any day!! But you VWAVES.... are being worn o a frazzle !! Stop now and think... I really liked that fridge magnet quote "stress is your mouth saying yes but your gut saying no".... says it all!! Good luck VWAVES... time to look after No. 1

No wonder you are feeling so overwhelmed and confused vwaves. I nee ded a drink and a good lie down just after reading your post. There are so many conflicting issues apparent responsibilities and and also so many options. You could come up with a thousand combinations and
permutations.

The first issue is identifying what YOU want to do with this next stage of your life. When you have done that then you can consider the multiple other responsibilities you either have (or think you have) and work out how they fit into YOUR plan. Only then you will be able to move forward.

I think you are so overwhelmed and almost paralysed by the crush of responsibilities that you would benefit from seeing a really good counsellor who can help you to untangle the threads and help you to identify where, how and who you go with from here.

Would strongly suggest that you make no big decisions until you have some sort of life plan worked out. One if my pretty basic personal rules is to never make an important decision if I am depressed. You can guarantee it will be the wrong decision.
Can only wish you Bon voyage as you embark on this new journey. ?

Sounds as if your immune system might already be down, what with the chest infection. When mine gets down with too much bab!sitting I start getting boils. They are like the canary in the mine. Time for you to tell those involved that you need to build yourself up ie stop everything and look after yourself or you will be no good yourself or anyone else.
Book another holiday.

Vwaves sorry for going off on a bit of a harsh one regarding good old Wazz it tends to get a bad press and I tend to get a little protective of it. Great suggestion from synonymous - not quite sure how private messages work on GN but it would be lovely if you fancied meeting up for a coffee and I can bore you rigid with all the wonderful aspects of a WA postcode

Vwaves, what an awful situation for you to be in. No wonder we are called the "sandwich generation", caught between grandchildren and elderly parents. With all this going on in your life its a wonder you haven't got health issues - and where would your family be if suddenly you were too ill to assist them? I thought the procedures for adopting children were quite stringent so I wonder why your daughter who obviously has issues was able to take on these children? I know there is help out there if your grandson has issues but it is a question of pushing for it. My H has lots of issues both mental and physical which I have to deal with on a daily basis so I know how stressful these things can be. I also help my daughter with her children as well as going to work and I have elderly parents who fortunately are still quite independent but I worry about what its going to be like as they get less so. I do hope you find a solution although I know it won't be easy but do try and take your own well being into account.

patriciageegee of course it isn't the town and if you read what the poor lady is trying to deal with that will tell you what the problem is. She is undoubtedly homesick for what she has left behind but once she backs off from so many commitments and her health picks up she will discover what you already know. She could do with a friend so perhaps if you are still living in Warrington you could both meet up for coffee some time and you could share with her all the good things about where she is now living. Just a thought!

there is no specific nhs available medication for cfs, and therapies which have been suggested and are still recommended by NICE has been shown to be not only useless but actually damaging. Many people who were able to live some sort of life ended up in a darkened room unable to bear the stimulation of another person in the room after forcing themselves to attempt graded exercise therapy or adaptive pacing therapy. Others just killed themselves in despair. CFS is not another term for ME but it often used as such, quite erroneously, which adds to the problems of diagnosis and treatment. Most 'helpful' people suggest doing all the things which the condition makes difficult or impossible as a way of getting better - rather like suggesting that someone with multiple compound fractures in their leg would recover more quickly if they removed their plaster cast and went skiing. You must decide where and how you want to live and then calculate what time you can devote to your family. I think you need to take time to assess your options and make some decisions just for you. Your son-in-law is the one with the responsibility for making decisions with your daughter about her health, if you are an only child then it may be that it is your parents who need more of your energy at this time. It's a balance between duty and choice which I think you need to decide on and achieve before spending energy on others. Good luck!

ooh patriciageegee. So sorry if it came across that way. I wrote
"My neighbours are lovely and I go to some nice classes and walks but otherwise haven't made many friends"

I prefer smaller places and nature not an urban environment Just a preference nothing against Warrington per se!
I came here to help my daughter. Of course I had been here before and knew it wasn't like Cornwall!
And yes the situation has made it harder to settle.

move to Prestatyn. Its only 50 miles from Warrington and you know already that you can build up friends in a smaller town as you have a caravan there you might put your stuff into storage and try it out for a bit before b uying again.

You can decide to help your daughter say once a month. have some time for your son's family and think carfully about the kind of life you need to lead seeing art gallerys etc.

You are in a sandwich of needs between your parents and your daughter. Both sets of needs will increase not decrease with time and your health and vitality should take priority in your life.

Good luck.

I should have said I think I could make friends in Prestatyn. Someone set up a Friend Finder group and I managed to make a couple of coffee mornings. Haven't actually got over that way much. It is a smaller place which I can walk around in and people chat in shops etc. There is a nice cinema -ironically Merlin cinema which we had in St Ives.

As a proud Warringtonian I take exception to your extremely negative view of my home town vwave. Of course it isn't lovely Cornwall whatever made you think it was? Did you not check it out before you moved here? We may not have the drama of wonderful sea shores or the rolling downs of Sussex and we may have suffered civic vandalism in the destruction of our Tudor, Georgian and high Victorian town centre and the deprivations of many industrial towns but to suggest it's a cultural wasteland full of knuckle-dragging neanderthals amid a post-apocalyptic scene of urban decay is, as we say around here, "strictly norron!" (complete with glottal stops). I can only assume it's your difficult family circumstances colouring your dystopian opinion but it really isn't fair to Warrington or its townsfolk.

Thank you so much everyone. I tried to reply to some posts but the replies show up in odd places so generally thank you. I can't say how nice it has been to feel supported. Probably a lot of my 'run downness' is not having friends around to have a good laugh and escape with!
Anyway self care it is!
And I will reread all your messages from time to time to remind me to stop and look at what I want. There are some really good suggestions. Thank you. x

Brilliant. Thank you

You are having a rough time! We look after grandchildren and feel guilty saying no , especially to my daughter who is a single parent. But I made it clear that we need a break once a month and asked that they find paid help to step in for us to disappear in our campervan for a few days. We come back feeling de-stressed and ready for the fray again. I hope you find something that works for you.

Oh, vwaves you poor love! I read this to DH and he said you have set yourself a tough task which stopped me in my tracks. Forgive me for just thinking on virtual paper but I just wondered what would happen if you just stopped and got off this treadmill in which you have become enmeshed. I don't think the world would stop and you might even be able to give yourself the TLC you clearly need to get better from this chest infection. You wouldn't have that if you were not run down so clearly you are already on the slippery slope. If finances allow could you get away for an all inclusive holiday somewhere warm to get better? If no cash could a friend put you up so that you could relax and recuperate?
You see I think your first priority is actually you and that is what your body is telling you. It is a warning, so stop and look after your health or you will be the one in trouble and who will actually drop everything to look after you?
Speak to DD and SIL and tell them that you are really unwell because you have been overdoing things. End of. No need to work out how they are going to manage because they did it before you got there and if you dropped dead they would jolly well have to anyway. Sorry to be so blunt but it is true.
Speak to brother and tell him that his parents want to visit him and he will have to manage that as you are too unwell to be involved. End of. Why should you get involved after all?
As for parents and spending three weeks with them. It is too long really and in fact you should ALL be having a holiday. Tell them that you cannot carry on in the same way and that you need to work out a different way forward. They probably don't realise that you are getting older too! You are still their child!
There are ways and means of getting help for all the different situations which exist and you do not need to be the king pin so extricate yourself from as much as you can as soon as you can.

Hi vwaves; some fab advise here.You must do what you need/want to do.. I moved away firm my kids/parents when I remarried. But now drive up (1 hours +drive each way) to child mind for DGD once a week, twice during hols.... wouldn't want to do more! Also had to help out with DS mental health problems and ageing parents...( Dad now died and Mum in good Apartment with Care attached - had 2 siblings to help with that).. it is difficult but living further away somehow made it easier ( live 2 hrs away).
Not wishing to sound like I'm only thinking of "Me" but never thought about moving back closer, as I believe now it's my time to do as I need/want with my OH...

Dang if I know why my post appears twice