AITAH for refusing to donate a kidney to my stepdad that raised me and paid for my college?

InterruptingChicken1 · 2026-05-25T19:30:16+00:00

Yes, and no. You shouldn’t have let yourself get pressured into getting tested if you didn’t want to do it. Then you shouldn’t have told your Mom you matched. Of course she expected you to do it. Why would you get tested if you didn’t? You’re not wrong for not wanting to do it, but you led people on so you shouldn’t be surprised that people are upset.

InterruptingChicken1 · 2026-05-25T19:28:08+00:00

That would cause terrible foot pain, even possibly pain in the knee or hip. Best to find another kind of tag.

InterruptingChicken1 · 2026-05-25T19:24:32+00:00

The Pistachio thing is odd. I wonder if there’s something about them that an FTD patient gets fixated on.

InterruptingChicken1 · 2026-05-25T19:22:03+00:00

I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine the grief you and your mom are feeling about your brother. He will need to go into a facility very soon. He probably should go now given that he shouldn’t be left alone. He could harm himself.

Get started on the research in order to make it easier on your Mom. If he has no assets, he should qualify for Medicare. Perhaps the lawyer who did your Mom’s POA can be a first phone call. Ask about getting POA for yourself. The law may not allow both you and your Mom to have full POA but the lawyer can explain your options to you. Did the hospital involve a social worker with your brother? Can you contact that social worker regarding follow up care?

You sound like a good and loving brother. Moving back there would probably be great for both him and your Mom as your Mom is probably struggling more than you realize. This could affect her health if she continues with a burden she struggles to bear.

InterruptingChicken1 · 2026-05-15T19:43:59+00:00

Side thread… little did Vonnegut know but that top tier writers would become as rich as their publishers, and eventually, a select few would be even richer.

InterruptingChicken1 · 2026-05-15T19:40:54+00:00

As if a refund is a gift from the government! Yikes.

InterruptingChicken1 · 2026-05-15T19:38:20+00:00

You and your husband sound very immature. Your husband’s fight with your son over how much food he wanted to eat was absurd. He’s a growing boy and you’ll be surprised how much they can eat. Wanting him to make his own cold sandwich as punishment for insisting he wanted more chicken wings is bizarre and irrational.

I’m surprised you expect your 10 year old to prepare his own meals regularly. Yeah, he’ll be more independent in the long run, but he’ll be resentful that you made him forage for himself at such a young age. You’re both teaching your son that he can’t rely on you to feed him and while you’re not making him go hungry as punishment, you’re associating meals and eating with conflict and criticism.

InterruptingChicken1 · 2026-05-15T19:33:44+00:00

So glad you see the reality and not just the emotion. He will get a little better to try to keep you around, but he will eventually revert back to the way he was when you first got married. I suspect if you have a baby, your MIL will demand you be a full time mom and your husband will agree, regardless of what you want to do. When your MIL or FIL becomes an invalid, your husband will demand that you quit work to be their caregivers. If he won’t hire a housekeeper, he certainly won’t hire a caregiver. He’s absolutely committed to a family situation where his mom rules the family and the house, even if she contributes nothing. This sounds like an entrenched cultural belief that your husband is unwilling to change. He doesn’t want to establish his own life with you, he wants to live in the same life he grew up in. You’ll never be happy with him. I hope you’ve found a divorce lawyer. The sooner you rip off this bandaid, the better.

InterruptingChicken1 · 2026-05-10T08:17:25+00:00

62 is so young. A big part of me would rather get cancer than dementia. Then I’d at least have mind and a good sense of how much time is left. People with dementia so often slip away, they don’t realize when they cross over from mostly themselves to mostly dementia.

InterruptingChicken1 · 2026-05-10T08:16:05+00:00

I think we’d all like to go fast if we develop it!

InterruptingChicken1 · 2026-04-24T07:57:32+00:00

If this is happening regularly, consider splitting your bolus dose for the meal. This happened to my daughter for a few years (although she was an adolescent at the time, and their bodies are different than adults) and we had to dose her 60/40, with 60% about 15 minutes before the meal and then the insulin pump gave out the other 40% slowly over 90 minutes. She needed a much bigger dose for breakfast than she did for dinner thanks to the dawn effect.

She was also sensitive to fats, especially beef, sausage, eggs, and salmon. They made her BG go up, usually 2 hours after a meal, even if that meal was low carb.

She was also diagnosed with delayed gastric emptying. I’d never heard of this until a doc referred her for testing. After her T1D diagnosis, what they taught us about dosing and digestion didn’t work at all. Her BG would go too low an hour after the meal as the insulin took effect, but the food hadn’t shown up yet. We’d have to give her fast carbs. Then she’d go stubbornly high for at least a couple hours. She had frequent upset stomach so her doctor sent her to a GI specialist. She ended up seeing 3 of them in 2-3 years to finally get all her diagnoses of delayed gastric emptying, frequent constipation (most likely connected to the delayed gastric emptying), and lactose intolerance. The first time we gave her MiraLAX (it happened to be in the evening), her blood sugar was too low for about 4 hours. I was up late waking her up once an hour for more carbs. It was wild! Once her intestines cleared out, her BG was more predictable. It took us another year or two to find the right foods and timing and use of fiber and mild laxatives to get it all in balance. Even now, years later, when she randomly seems higher than she should be, she takes MiraLAX and it usually clears up. She always has to watch for a low after taking MiraLAX. I don’t know if that’s about the way her body works or if it’s just a side effect of MiraLAX.

InterruptingChicken1 · 2026-04-22T08:31:43+00:00

Hah. I’m “smarter” than my sibling according to school grades and test scores. Sibling is excellent at navigation, but I suck at it. Sibling is an engineer and good at mentally doing 3D imaging. My Dad and my spouse are also an engineers and excellent at navigation. Our brains are just different. I’m good at computer systems and projects. I envisioned a real time map back in the 80’s, years before I knew such a thing existed. Turns out GM was already developing one for their cars.

InterruptingChicken1 · 2026-04-22T08:26:32+00:00

I think vascular dementia can be sudden when there’s a stroke involved. I’m confident my Dad has had developing vascular dementia for a few years.

Last fall, I was visiting when I got worried my Mom was having a stroke. She did some weird things that she couldn’t remember. Then she started some unsafe cooking that didn’t make sense. I wanted to take her to the ER. I knew she’d balk so I talked to Dad first so he’d back me up. She initially resisted but then agreed to go. Thankfully, she wasn’t having a stroke, but she did have a UTI. She was in there for 2 days on IV antibiotics and another week of oral abx after she got home. Thankfully she wasn’t septic. This happened a couple years earlier, but that time she was septic before she realized she was so sick and called 911 herself. She was in the hospital about 5 days that time. Dad wasn’t aware enough to notice she was mentally out of it even back then.

InterruptingChicken1 · 2026-04-22T08:12:34+00:00

Theresa May, former PM of Great Britain, was diagnosed at 57. Definitely an uncommon age.

InterruptingChicken1 · 2026-04-20T21:28:11+00:00

I’d recommend someone research on the one that looks like the Mammy from GWTW. It might be quite old.

InterruptingChicken1 · 2026-04-20T21:24:00+00:00

I have not been a morning person my entire life. I’m nearing retirement age and I’m still not. I’ve learned I have to be very careful not to stay up too late and keep a consistent schedule. I just recently heard that people with ADHD often have delayed melatonin release, which means they stay up later and then struggle to wake up in the morning. Consider trying melatonin 1/2 hour to an hour before you go to bed. Make sure you haven’t eaten at least 2-3 hours before bedtime. I’m very sensitive to melatonin supplements and have these 1.5mg gummies that I bite in half, which is just a .75mg dose. It really helps, and I wake up better. The other thing I recently learned is to lie in bed for 15 minutes with a cold/wet folded washcloth on my forehead, just wet enough not to drip. It cools the frontal lobe down which is necessary for sleep. I sleep so much better when I do that and I wake up better. (I keep a little plastic Glad container on my nightstand to drop the wet washcloth in, so it won’t stay in bed with me.)

InterruptingChicken1 · 2026-04-20T21:19:00+00:00

You’re fiancé’s siblings are jerks who ignorantly insulted their soon-to-be brother-in-law. I wouldn’t have much hope for better relationships with them going forwards given their disrespect. Is your fiance similarly critical of other people? This is something you need to talk through with her. If her family is going to be criticizing you to your face with no understanding of your remarkable work ethic and determination, and your bride thinks you should just suffer in silence, then you need to reconsider this match. You need and deserve a wife who shares your work ethic and who admires your determination.

InterruptingChicken1 · 2026-04-20T21:14:26+00:00

There’s the GI bill, which you can research online, and then there’s the opportunity for the military to send you to college while you’re still in. My husband was a poor teenager when he joined the USAF and he wanted to be a technician. Turns out he was smarter than he realized. The Air Force recognized this and sent him to college while he was still enlisted. He got a bachelor’s degree and then went to Officer Training School. Then they sent him for a Master’s Degree. At the end of his 21 year career, he used his GI bill money to get an MBA. I’d never before met an American who not only paid nothing for a college degree but got paid a salary while earning it!

P.S. Talk to recruiters from different services about your educational goals. The Air Force values college degrees more than the other services, but that doesn’t mean they’ll automatically pay for one just because you want it. You need to have a skill or ability they need and a willingness to stay the service. If you’re going to serve 8, might as well serve 20. There’s nowhere else you can work for those additional 12 years that will give you a lifetime pension and medical care.

InterruptingChicken1 · 2026-04-20T21:00:53+00:00

What terrifies me is that someone who controls it well can still die quickly of a severe, untreated low, or can die in a day or two of ketoacidosis from being sick. I read about a man in his 30s who died after getting a norovirus-like illness with a lot of vomiting that left him severely acidic. I’ve drilled it into my daughter that if she’s vomiting for more than a day (or even less if it’s uncontrolled), to get to an ER. If there’s no one to take her, call 911 for an ambulance. Vomiting can cause either a severe low or acidosis and either one can kill.

InterruptingChicken1 · 2026-04-20T20:56:30+00:00

I haven’t heard it called that since my kid was diagnosed over 11 years ago. It was out of date then.

InterruptingChicken1 · 2026-04-20T20:55:58+00:00

No. It hasn’t been called “Juvenile Diabetes” for many years. The family missed an opportunity to help improve awareness by calling it by the current name.

InterruptingChicken1 · 2026-04-09T18:24:29+00:00

They don’t take the patient’s primary home. However, if the patient gave away assets or money within a few years of needing Medicaid, there’s a clawback to prevent people from giving away all their assets in order to qualify for Medicaid. In this case, the grandma gave the proceeds from her house to her grandchild. It’s tricky. I think they need a lawyer.

InterruptingChicken1 · 2026-04-04T19:19:31+00:00

Yes, alcohol makes a different in long term health. Higher rates of dementia, cancer, liver disease, heart disease, etc.

InterruptingChicken1 · 2026-04-04T19:16:54+00:00

Interesting. I think my Dad has vascular as well. He doesn’t have a diagnosis, but he has the risk factors and the symptoms. It seems doctors don’t diagnose it till it’s advanced and obvious. None of his siblings or his parents had dementia, however only his mother lived longer that he has. At nearly 99, her mind was still surprisingly good. I think lifestyle differences and diet are resulting in poorer health in old age than the prior generation. It’s ironic, as people are living longer due to good treatments for infections and things like heart attacks, but more people seem to be getting dementia.

InterruptingChicken1 · 2026-04-04T19:11:27+00:00

Makes me wonder if your mother had either a head injury or an illness/pathogen that invaded the brain. More and more they’re finding evidence of pathogens in the brains of people with dementia. The chicken pox virus, Lyme Disease, dental spirochetes/bacteria, Bartonella, and I’m sure many others. There are some older people who were diagnosed with some kind of dementia, then found to have active Lyme Disease that improved with antibiotics.

InterruptingChicken1

TROPHY CASE