Hello!

First post here, if I miss some of the rules, please let me know and I'll fix it! Also - I'll try to be brief, but I tend to write long, so apologies for the long post. But I'll always be happy to add more details.

Information about the ill person - my mother-in-law has schizophrenia. Or something like that. I don't know too many details because, well, I've never needed to know them, and it's a fairly unpleasant subject, so I haven't talked much about it. But she's had it for more than 20 years (for reference, I've been married for 13 years and have known my spouse for 16 years). Also the last time she saw a doctor was before I had even met my spouse, and I know that medicine in this field has advanced quite a bit since then. Any paperwork that she might have had about it is long gone as well, so I really don't know the precise diagnosis - assuming one was ever made. I know that some paranoia was also involved at some point.

To complicate things, she doesn't think she has any problems and doesn't want to see a doctor - or so I've been told. Nobody has tried to do anything about it in over a decade (more about that a bit lower). In her mind, she is completely OK, and everyone else has issues, except her. And, yes, that goes with a pretty toxic personality too. My spouse tells of a pretty unpleasant childhood with her. Although how much of that is her illness, and how much of it is "herself" is hard to say. Or even if there's any difference anymore.

Currently she lives with her mother (my spouse's grandmother) and is not working anywhere. As I understand, she just stopped showing up to her work one day and that was that. I don't know exactly when it was, but also before I met my spouse. She doesn't have any disability paperwork because she didn't go to the doctors enough. She's just unemployed and survives on the pension of her mother and the contributions of me and my spouse (we try to help as much as we can).

She doesn't tolerate stress at all and easily melts down, but since her life has been quite peaceful for a long time, she's OK to visit from time to time and doesn't cause any trouble. Our kids like her, since they've never seen her bad side.

About attempts at medication - this is what I know: she did go to see some doctors initially, but has never agreed that she has a problem, even after a diagnosis. She has taken some drugs which did actually improve her condition, but she never stuck to them for long. Some family members then tried to sneak the drugs in her drink/food, but she soon found out in each case and didn't accept food from that family member anymore. TL;DR - medication failed because she didn't want to be medicated. Eventually family members stopped trying to get her to a doctor or get her to take drugs, because it just wasn't working. Again, this all was over 16 years ago.

Current situation and my problem:

As I said, she has lived more or less peacefully with her mother for the past 16+ years. Unfortunately, her mother (I'll call her "granny" from here on) is getting quite old - over 80 years already - and her health is finally starting to fail. Usually granny went to a summer retreat for 3 months every year in our summer home (used to be a farm where granny herself lived and worked with her husband, but that was looong ago). This year however she was unable to do so. She attempted it, but two weeks in had to be rushed to the hospital, and ever since then she's stayed at home with my mother-in-law. She is not as mobile anymore as she used to be either.

Now, granny is super sweet and the nicest person I've ever known, but this situation is taking its toll even on her, so she's become less tolerant of her daughter's antics. On the other hand, my mother-in-law is getting stressed over the health of her mother, and, as I said, does not handle that very well. Long story short, instead of the usual insignificant bickering the two of them have had from time to time, this time they're really starting to get on each other's nerves. Both me and my spouse are worried about them.

Some options we've considered:

• Taking granny in with us. It would be a bit of a squeeze, but we could manage. However we have two kids (kindergarten and school aged) and between them they manage to bring in a new cold virus every other week. Being all reasonably healthy people, we just shrug it off, but for granny the last few times she caught a cold was already pretty challenging. We're afraid that we're going to harm her more than help her if we bring her in.
• Rent another apartment and move one of them there. Not very pleasant financially, but we could afford it. Luckily both me and my spouse make decent wages. However we're also afraid to leave granny alone. She's not very strong anymore, and her daughter does help her in daily tasks. Both renting and apartment and hiring a helper might be beyond our means.

To be honest, we just don't know what to do... It feels like the "right thing" would be to get some sort of help for my mother-in-law, but how to do it if she doesn't want to be helped? Or if we leave her alone, how do we help granny?