[busterarm]

Aye. I feel like I have it bad in my situation with one elderly parent...

I have a coworker with both his elderly parents and his wife's elderly parents. All four of them are deteriorating rapidly and need constant care and hospital visits. On top of that he has two sick, aging dogs.

We commiserate about the multiple full-time jobs that we have, but seriously he has it unfathomably worse than I do. I'm stressed to my limit and can't even imagine where he's at.

[EA-3167]

I think this goes back to cultural expectations to some extent. In some cultures the response to that is, "Your parents probably had full-time jobs and then they raised you on top of it, and part of the cycle of life is 'paying that back' when they're old and sick." Granted smaller and more diffuse family units make that harder, but part of it is just the lack of a sense of filial debt to the people who bore and raised you.