Advice on caregiving abusive parent
Hey there. I hope this is the right place for this post. I don't want to go into too many specifics but the long and short of it is that my mother has Parkinson's and lives across the country from me (US based). While she believes we are on good terms, I've been gray rocking her for years and have dealt with abuse from her in the past. We stay in contact but she is on a strict information diet about my life. There is no world in which I will allow her to move in with me, for both of our mental health and I've been very explicit about this since her diagnosis 5 years ago.
However the burden of care falls to me now. She has been living independently but recently I've had her friends reach out to me with concerns about her deteriorating health. She is still driving against my wishes (just found out that she's had cataracts this whole time too!) and is generally very reluctant to do anything she doesn't want to. I know she is not compliant with the exercises her doctor has given her, although I believe she is compliant with her prescriptions.
She is not the most reliable of narrators when it comes to what is going on, although that has been true my entire life and doesn't seem to be affected by the PD.
This is all to say that her friends and I suspect that she needs to be moved into assisted living in the very near future. I know that she will be against it, as it's something we've been discussing for the past few years. I'd love for her to stay in her own home, however it's multifloored and she is experiencing hallucinations. There seems to be a lot of cognitive decline happening as well, such as completely misunderstanding/misremembering conversations and struggling with logical reasoning.
I guess this partially a vent but what I would really appreciate it is how to handle the discussion of moving to assisted living? I'm traveling cross country to see her in a week and am just dreading this conversation. Other thing to note is that she's visited some retirement communities already and didn't hate some of them, however she has made no movement beyond that and my understanding is that many have multiyear waiting lists. How can I bring this discussion up with her and convince her to move while she has the choice without it turning in a brawl? Has anyone had experience doing in home care for the short term, and how did you get your parent who believes they are perfectly fine to be on board? How can I protect my mental health during all of this? How can I try to keep her happy? How can I convince her to stop driving???? Please help and thanks.